Seeing trauma in the Mirror: Childhood sexual abuse and bodily expression in adulthood

Background Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is linked to disrupted body boundaries and difficulty inhabiting the body as an integrated part of self. Such disruptions are thought to be encoded procedurally rather than verbally, so self-report may not fully capture them. The Mirror Game, a nonverbal dyadic task, allows such functioning to be observed directly. Objective This study examined whether adult women with self-reported CSA differ from a comparison group in nonverbal behavior and dyadic coordination during the Mirror Game, and whether CSA severity is associated with these behaviors. Methods Thirty-nine Israeli women (23 survivors, 16 without reported CSA) completed a 15-min Mirror Game with a female expert player blind to group status. Interactions were coded with the Mirror Game Scales; the Together and Free composites were primary outcomes, and the 20 individual scales were exploratory. CSA severity was assessed with the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire sexual abuse subscale. Results Survivors scored lower than the comparison group on Together, g = 1.12, 95% CI [0.44, 1.80], and Free, g = 1.19, 95% CI [0.50, 1.88], and were more often classified as Difficult to Play With (87.0% vs. 37.5%). Across the full sample, sexual abuse scores correlated negatively with Together, r = −0.47, and Free, r = −0.50. Exploratory analyses showed lower scores among survivors on 15 of 20 scales. Conclusions Survivors showed a broad, though not uniform, pattern of constricted embodied and relational engagement. Findings support the Mirror Game as an observational complement to verbal report of the embodied consequences of CSA.