Those reactions will almost certainly traumatize the victim further and delay his or her recovery. He or she needs to have access to caring friends and professionals who can be trusted to act compassionately. They need dignity and respect. During the Intermediate Stage, intrusive memories and disruptions in eating and sleeping patterns are common. Avoiding medical and dental treatment and otherwise neglecting oneself is common during this stage.
Many survivors report nightmares and flashbacks.
Survivors may feel able to cope one day and out of control the next. The survivor of any trauma in the Intermediate Stage needs to process very intense feelings during this stage. For the survivor of incest, there is a good chance that the skills to process these intense feelings were never learned in the first place since incest and the dysfunctional family dynamics where incest typically occurs tends to prevent children from attaining many of the expected skills of life. He or she may have never been allowed to have any such feelings before. Once the survivor can identify these feelings, he or she needs to learn how to cope with their intensity and work through them so that the intensity of the feelings no longer intrudes on the survivor's life.