04.25.09
Long-term Costs Severe Child Abuse
Long-term, chronic, and severe child abuse causes a variety of medical and emotional issues for the survivors of such extensive abuse. Dissociative identity disorder (DID/MPD) is one long-term issue, but medical complications are extremely common as well.
In addition to addiction issues and mental health issues, most survivors find that they have numerous medical issues as either a direct or indirect result of their severe childhood sexual abuse.
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INCREASED MEDICAL COMPLICATIONS
- Numerous medical complications or physical ailments from the years of internalized stress, anger, bodily harm, etc.
- Increased risk of stress related diseases, including depression, bipolar, PTSD, anxiety, etc
- Colitis, high blood pressure, heart disease, gastrointestinal problems, fibromyalgia, etc.
- Frequent headaches and migraines
- Numerous dental issues, including harm to the teeth, especially if the survivor experienced a lot of drugging
- A history of shaken baby syndrome, whiplash, broken bones, head injuries, etc.
- Bizarre illnesses or medical conditions that are difficult to explain or diagnose
- Inability to thrive – failure to grow
- Physical or mental impairment due to early childhood injuries
- Brain development affected – people who are severely sexually abused in childhood have permanent changes in their brains, specifically in the left hemisphere. These changes cause increased difficulties in the way they think, react, feel, and behave.
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Long-term, severe, chronic child abuse causes long-term, severe, chronic medical issues, with both physical health and mental health.
Who pays for that?
One of the most frustrating negative effects of childhood sexual abuse is that the survivors as adults, on their own and struggling through each day, are left to manage the costs of their medical and mental health treatment by themselves, with minimal financial assistance from the people that actually caused the harm.
Going the legal route in terms of suing for damages is typically unrealistic. Besides, dissociative survivors often need long-term therapy and treatment prior to being ‘emotionally together enough’ to even consider a lawsuit. Either the survivors have not yet sorted out their trauma history / information in order to be able to present an organized, sequential legal suit, or they have too much internal conflict going on about what to tell, who to tell, etc. And, of course, being angry at the perpetrators is such a frightening thought that taking their perpetrators to court can be completely impossible.
So by the time dissociative survivors are able to deal with the legal world, they have already had to find a way to get years of therapy in the first place.
It’s so very frustrating to see the perpetrators walk away, comfortably well off after demolishing and destroying the lives of the survivors. Just like the pimps on the streets are comfortably rich in comparison to the beaten up, drug-addicted, stressed-out girls they sold on the corners, organized perpetrator groups are wealthy in comparison to the girls they’ve sold, abused, and used up.
Sometimes, perpetrator fathers will pay for therapy costs / medical bills as a quiet “under the table” compromise to their children. The “I’ll pay for your medical bills in exchange for your ongoing silence and not taking this to the public arena” exchange does happen, but it does not come without its own complications. Perpetrator fathers are very good at guilt-tripping their daughters, and having an ongoing connection to their perpetrator creates a constant tension and conflict in their healing process.
Insurance companies and disability policies are providing less and less coverage.
No one wants to pay for the crimes done by sex offenders, yet these offenders have created horrible life-long wounds for children all over the world.
One of the costs of long-term, severe child abuse for survivors is dealing with the complications of getting proper healing in the first place.
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POOR MEDICAL AND THERAPEUTIC ASSISTANCE
- Excessive monies spent on medical bills, treatments, therapies, etc.
- Years of misdiagnosis, poor medical treatment, inappropriate therapies
- Hospitalization after hospitalization after hospitalization – It’s not at all uncommon for survivors with DID to have over psychiatric 30 hospitalizations in their lives.
- Costs to insurance, government medical funds, unpaid medical facilities, etc.
- Finding appropriate therapeutic help is extremely difficult, and too often non-existent, leaving the victims to suffer even longer
- Maintaining appropriate therapeutic help for the years it takes to overcome the depth of the damage is complicated and expensive. The treatment is heart wrenching and grueling work. And yet, intense therapy is required to improve a survivor’s devastated quality of life
- Expensive medications are often needed for years to assist with stability
- Psychiatric medications, though helpful in many ways, have many disturbing side effects that are also difficult to live with
- Psychiatric medications are not prescribed in an exact science type of way. Survivors will go through years of trial and error to find what works for them and when. Different doctors prescribe medications differently.
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So who pays for all of this?
Unfortunately, for the most part, survivors have to pay for their own healing by themselves, which means more sacrifices made by people who have lost quite enough in their lives already.
Is that fair? Is that right?
No, that is not fair. No, it is not right. Not at all.
But it is typically the only way for survivors to get the healing they need.
Is your healing worth this for you?
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By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
04.18.09
Fear and Mistrust
The NICSA Survey (Negative Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse) on AbuseConsultants.com asks if trauma survivors have felt an impact on their feelings of fear and ability to trust.
It is abundantly clear from the results of the survey that dissociative survivors of severe, chronic traumas typically have lives filled with fear.
For victims of childhood sexual abuse, fear becomes their constant companion, a way of life, a normal state of mind. Fear becomes ingrained in behaviors and in emotions, and it is wired deeply within brain activity. It becomes very difficult for the traumatized person to re-connect with a feeling of safety.
Fear locks the PTSD in place. Or maybe, the PTSD locks the fear in place. Either way, the past constantly affects the present, and overcoming the years of fear is a major hurdle in the life of a trauma survivor. It takes experiencing safe situations over and over and over to help balance out the years of trauma-based fear. One “corrective emotional experience” will likely not be sufficient for healing. Bunches and bunches of corrective emotional experiences are necessary.
In my years of working with trauma survivors with Dissociative Identity Disorder, I have found some of the following fears to be common:
FEAR
- Constant fear and no sense of safety or security anywhere or any time
- Constant fear about something, anything, always
- No peace, no ability to relax, constant hypervigilance
- Inappropriate or extreme over-reactive responses to problems due to fear and ingrained beliefs that something bad will happen
- Always waiting and anticipating the next bad thing that will happen
- Very fatalistic thinking, preparing for doomsday — because bad stuff did happen so frequently, repeatedly, it was the one constant that could be expected — so it’s best to always be prepared for and expecting the worst
- Fear of public places, or interacting out in the world. Maybe this is a fear of leaving home, or simply a fear of interacting with so many new people.
- Fears involving grocery stores — makes shopping for food extremely difficult or simply more expensive at the smaller corner stores.
- Shopping malls, which are typically too stimulating and overwhelming, with far too many lights, sounds, flashing items, too much movement, crowding, and chaos.
- Churches — fears of judgment or demonization, or frankly, fears of being abused in the church or by a church member or church official. All too many DID survivors experienced variations of spiritual abuse.
- Schools — involving a fear of failure, a fear of not being able to concentrate or pass, an inability to be consistent in class, and lost time / missing time making it difficult to retain classroom learning.
- Crippling, debilitating fear can make a person housebound for extended periods of time — this clearly creates enormous difficulties in living daily life.
A close companion to overwhelming fear becomes the difficulties with trust. When someone is so fearful, it is very difficult to trust. Years of negative, traumatic, painful, rejecting experiences have also taught the trauma survivor that trust is not necessarily a smart thing to do.
Once again, having a huge number of appropriate, safe corrective experiences will eventually make a significant difference. But this does not happen quickly.
In my years of clinical work, dissociative trauma survivors and victims of childhood sexual abuse experience a great deal of mistrust in some of the following areas:
MISTRUST
- Not believing that anybody or anything can be trusted
- Severely damaged, or no sense of trust in God
- Severely damaged, or no sense of trust in people
- Great difficulty with expressing tender, vulnerable emotions with other people or themselves
- A belief that people can be dispensable possessions or dehumanized objects
- A deeply ingrained mentality that people are to be used or manipulated or controlled, including themselves
- Extreme difficulty in forming and keeping interpersonal relationships due this intolerable level of mistrust
- Often a belief that animals and nature are the only living things that can be trusted for comfort and companionship
- Repeated confused conversations and tangled interactions with other people because of a tendency for survivors to incorrectly jump to negative assumptions and perceptions based on past troubles instead of looking closely at the current day reality.
- An inability to develop or maintain a sense of self-trust because the defined sense of self was lost long ago during the abuse.
- Dissociative Disorders create amnesia and loss of time, and severe abuse creates a wide variety of alters with any number of conflicting beliefs and perspectives, making the ability to trust time, memory, and consistency within oneself not easily obtainable.
The struggles with fear and mistrust can affect a trauma survivor’s entire life. The negative, painful, destructive lessons taught by sadistic perpetrators are hard to overcome and require a tremendous amount of therapy, healing work, determination, willingness, and persistence.
How have feelings of fear and mistrust been difficult for you?
What do you do when your fear overwhelms you?
What do you do to build trusting relationships with other people?
What have you done that was successful at helping to eliminate or remove these negative effects of childhood sexual abuse from your life?
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By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
04.15.09
Negative Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse Survey
April is Child Abuse Prevention month.
Education is one of the biggest factors in the prevention of child abuse. Those of you that have been sexually abused or physically abused know the effects of that abuse all too well. Child abuse can affect the entire life of the survivor, and the seriousness of its effects cannot be ignored.
If you are a trauma survivor, you can help to inform others about the seriousness of sexual abuse.
Are you the supportive loved one of a trauma survivor?
Are you the parent of an abused child?
Are you the spouse / partner of a trauma survivor?
Have you completed a Negative Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse Survey?
To help further understand the implications of treatment for childhood sexual abuse, AbuseConsultants.com would appreciate your participation in an educational survey, NICSA Survey. Your responses can be completely anonymous, and additional comments are welcomed.
Please go to AbuseConsultants.com and follow the links provided on the home page.
The following areas of impact are questioned on the NICSA Survey:
- Addictions
- Anger Issues
- Anxiety and Panic
- Bipolar Disorder
- Criminal Histories
- Damaged Relationships
- Depression
- Destroyed Career
- Detachment from Self or Others
- DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder)
- Eating Disorders
- Experienced Losses in Life
- Fear
- Increased Medical Complications
- Lack Parenting Skills
- Long Term Disability
- Loss of Education
- Mental Health Problems
- Mental Torment
- Mistrust
- Numbness or lack of feeling in the body
- Ongoing Violence and Abuse
- Poor Coping Skills
- Poor Medical Assistance
- Poor Self Care
- Poor Therapeutic Relationships
- Poverty / Financial Devastation
- Self Destruction and Self Mutilation
- Self Esteem Issues
- Sexual Deviations
- Sexual Problems
- Sleep Complications
- Suicidal Ideation and Behavior
- Suicide / Death
Do you relate to any of these areas of impact?
Has your childhood sexual abuse complicated your life in any of these ways?
How severely has your abuse affected your life?
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If only someone had been able to prevent the abuse from happening in your life…..
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By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
04.12.09
Reclaiming the Holidays
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Do you remember the DiscussingDissociation article from December 2008 called “Holidays for DID Trauma Survivors… Making it Nice for the Littles”?
If you have not yet read that article, please check it out. It was written in reference to holidays during the Christmas season, but the points are still very much applicable today on Easter, and during Passover.
We have seen the numerous comments from people about how the Spring time holidays are difficult, painful, emotionally challenging, etc. I have been listening to dissociative trauma survivors for many years, and that is a consistent theme for survivors with DID/MPD.
While you cannot change the past, you can make a few things happen that will help you to feel better in the present.
At some point that works for you — don’t put this off forever! – do the memory work that is connected to the pain you feel about the Easter / Spring time holidays. Find the ones inside that have those horrible memories, listen to what happened to them, look at whatever images they need you to see to understand, address their concerns, and help to move them forward to the here and now.
Remember, as long as your internal parts stay stuck in time, and are internally locked in the past, they will continue to re-live and re-live and re-live those memories.
For survivors with Dissociative Identity Disorder, memory work also includes doing internal system work and making changes in your internal landscapes. Read the January 2009 articles, “Using the Internal Landscape to Increase Internal Communication” and “When It’s Dark and Scary on the Inside…” as guidelines for working with trauma memories.
Also, since many trauma memories are related to or contained by child parts, it is also important to refresh your memory on how to work with child parts. Have a glance back at “Thinking Ahead – Preparation for Working with your Child Parts” and “Understanding the Child Parts in the Dissociative System”.
Working with the child parts that hold the painful trauma memories, and helping them to find ways to reconnect with the here and now, both internally and externally, is crucial in your healing process. If you are still hurting today, and your trauma happened years ago, a great deal of that pain you feel is coming from the child parts that experienced the pain and abuse in real life.
Don’t avoid those little ones just because they are hurting.
That’s not going to help. It’s not going to help you feel better, and it’s certainly not going to help those little ones feel better. It’s not ok to repeat the patterns of neglect and avoidance that you might have seen from your own parental caregivers while growing up.
Be courageous as best you can, and do some kind things to help your child parts to heal.
Find ways to give something positive and fun to your child parts today.
Give them a piece of Easter candy, especially if they have never had the chance to have safe, and yummy “real” and actual candy before.
Let them have a picture of a little duck or a baby chick and spend a few minutes coloring or drawing a pretty spring picture, with fresh grass, safe flowers, colorful blossoms, etc.
Play a few fun games (not hurting games) with Easter eggs or colored toys.
Let them sing some favorite spiritual songs or say some prayers today.
Let them do anything that is fun for them, something that does not get to happen just any day, ie: watching a favorite show on tv, having their favorite snacks, etc.
It doesn’t actually matter what you do with your kid parts as long as you do something nice, memorable, and positive for them, with them.
Give your kids a pleasant, positive memory today. Let something good become part of their life experience. The more you build something positive for their lives, the sooner your negative memories can be less enormous in proportion.
What good times are you going to have today?
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By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
04.10.09
Difficult Holiday Times
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For many dissociative trauma survivors, various holidays and times of year are more difficult than other days. Some survivors may know they typically have a difficult time at the change of seasons, or when Easter-time comes, for example, but they may not have the memories or internal information to understand why they consistently have a difficult time at that time of year.
- Are you struggling more now that Easter is here?
- Does Good Friday have any specific meaning for you?
- Does Passover have specific meaning for you?
- Do you consistently have trouble with functioning at this time of year?
- Do you remember anything that would make this hard time make sense?
When survivors with DID/MPD are sitting on unprocessed memories and their system is separated by strong dissociative walls, the host of the system may have absolutely no awareness of why certain times of year are more difficult than others. The host might know that there are consistently difficult times. They might have an acute awareness that they “hate this time of year” but they still might not have an answer for “why” certain times of year are more difficult than others. Host alters, fronts of the dissociative system, can be aware of the side effects of having a hard time, but still not have any explanation for what it’s about.
- Do you find yourself switching more than usual?
- Are you missing more time, even in small chunks? What about in big chunks?
- Are you experiencing more headaches, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, flashbacks?
- Are you seeing flashes of images, or fleeting snippets of pictures that don’t quite make sense?
- Do you feel unsettled or jittery?
- Do you feel confusion and time distortion, as if it is another time than 2009?
- Are you extra sensitive to certain smells, sounds, lights, and movements?
- Is there more noise, commotion, chaos, and activity coming from deep within your system?
- Do you feel not quite like yourself, as if there are others standing nearby to you, affecting you?
- Do you feel more suicidal or more vulnerable to self-injury, self-harm, and self-destruction?
If you are experiencing these type of symptoms, and yet have no answer for why these things are happening, you really can do something to help solve the mystery.
Any guesses for what to do?
Do you want to know why you are having such a difficult time?
My answer to that is to ask inside. Listen to what your insiders are telling you. There will be someone inside your system that knows why this time of year is so difficult. You might have insiders that have been particularly split off to handle situations from this time of year, so if you can find who that is, you will get some answers for what is going on.
Frequently, my interpretation of the above listed symptoms is that the dissociative walls – amnesiac walls — that previously blocked you completely from an awareness of what happened, is now starting to crumble. What was once kept from you, is now starting to seep into your awareness. For whatever reason, the dissociative wall is starting to weaken, and you are getting bits of information passed to you from others deeper within your system. Maybe they want you to know? Maybe they need your help? Maybe they are ready to begin sharing their story with you?
- Are you willing to help the others in your system that have experienced such difficult times?
- Are you going to turn your back on those ones in your system that are hurting and struggling?
- Are you going to continue to deny their existence because their life story is so completely different than yours?
- Are you determined to strengthen your dissociative walls? Or are you willing to lower those dissociative walls?
Understanding your life, your symptoms, your history, your struggles, etc all go back to having good internal communication. As you talk to your inside people, and ask them what THEY know about what is going on, you will get the answers you are looking for.
Someone inside will know why this time of year is difficult.
Someone inside will be able to explain what those flashbacks and picture flashes are about.
Someone inside will know why you are so sensitive to certain smells, sounds, movements, voices, etc.
The majority of the answers for why you are struggling are contained within yourself, within your internal system. Talking to the people in your system that are on the other side of the dissociative wall will give you a ton of answers to what is happening. Whether you are willing to listen to them or not, or believe them or not, is a totally different issue, but if you want to know why you are struggling, you can find out.
Lots of times, it will be because certain insiders are struggling, and their depression, or their fear, or their anxiety, or their panic, or their PTSD flashbacks will be overflowing onto you.
If you are not sure why you are having a hard time at this holiday season, look inside to find the part / parts of you that have direct knowledge of those hard times, and go from there.
You can do it.
If your insiders are brave enough to start telling you about their struggles, be brave enough to listen to them.
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By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
04.05.09
Multiplicity in the Home
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What does your home say about you?
Is your multiplicity evident in the way you keep your home?
Your home is your own personal space and it is important that you are ok and comfortable in that space. Your home may also be reflective of who you are or how your life is at the moment, including the way things work in your internal system.
When you look around the rooms in your house, what evidence is there of your DID/MPD? Could someone wonder if you had dissociative identity disorder just by the items you have in your room?
If so, that is not necessarily a problem or concern, but it could be very interesting to have a look around and see what your system is saying by the way your house / room looks. Take that exterior picture and see how it applies to your internal system.
Look for the evidence in your home of the following three areas related to multiplicity:
A. Child Parts
Think about the way your child parts impact your life and your system. When you look around your home, what kinds of things do you have that show you have kid parts, alive and well, active and interested in child-related items? Do you have 10 – 20 – 30+ visible items that belong to child parts? Do the rooms look more adult, or do the child items outnumber or overpower the amount of adult items in your rooms? How is that reflective of your internal system? Meaning, do your child parts tend to outnumber or override the adults in your system just like the child items are visually predominant in your house?
If your child parts are more visibly dominant in your home, how are they emotionally dominant in your life? Do you make more decisions based on the preferences of your child parts than with your adult parts? Do you respond or react more with your child parts vs. your adult parts? Do your kids have the final say more than you realize?
B. Parts of the Opposite Gender
When you look around your home, what items do you have that show you have male alters (or for guys, having female alters)? Like Buck from United States of Tara, do you have items that are clearly and distinctly very masculine in presentation? Does your home look like a guy’s room or a girl’s room?
Look around your home again — is your living space decorated more with more feminine tastes or with more masculine tastes? How does that match your internal system? Is your system predominantly male-dominated or female-dominated? How have your powerful male alters affected how your home looks?
There are women who can have predominantly male-based systems. There are also women who have systems whose main internal leaders are male. How do these male-lead preferences affect the way your home looks? Would your male-dominated system “allow” a flowery pink décor in your home?
C. Organization vs. Chaos
Is your house a picture of organization or a picture of chaos? How does that relate to the amount of organization and chaos that you have in your system? If you cannot organize your external house, does that parallel your difficulty in organizing your system, and vice versa?
Do you find yourself cleaning your house more when you feel dirty and gross on the inside? Or do you find that you cannot clean your house and that when you feel messy and dirty internally, your external living areas also look messy and dirty?
Who cleans your home? Do you have a designated homemaker like Alice in United States of Tara? Do your cleaning parts have a history of having to do cleaning jobs in connection to your abuse? Does this make it easier for you to clean, or more difficult for you to clean? How does cleaning your home relate to your childhood in any way?
What seems to be a normal, mundane task can actually have deep roots in your history, including your trauma.
Your external world may often be a picture of your multiplicity, your internal world, and your trauma history.
- How does your home reflect your multiplicity?
- How does your home look like your internal worlds?
- How does your home look like your emotional state of being?
- What is your home saying about you and your system?
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By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
04.01.09
United States of Tara – If you were the writer…
Obviously, there is a tremendous amount of controversy and upset amongst the survivor community about how Showtime has presented dissociative identity disorder in United States of Tara series.
Thank you, everyone, for so many lively comments on the previous post about this topic. I think that’s excellent. It is very good to speak up about your cause and let the world know how it really is. One way to combat the misinformation is to make sure the correct information is out there, available, and viewable for those that really don’t know.
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Now I have some questions for you.
If you were the writer of the Showtime series United States of Tara, and knowing dissociative identity disorder as well as you do….
In your opinion, how should the United States of Tara series end?
What would you like to see?
What would you have liked to teach about DID/MPD through this media opportunity?
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I realize Toni Collette, Diablo Cody, and the other producers of the show are not likely to ask our opinion, but I’d still like to know. AND, I think this public blog site can be a good place to express your opinion. Don’t be silent about this — let the world know what you think!
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Remember how we re-wrote the Hole in My Sidewalk poem? If you were to tackle this project, how would you re-write the Tara show??
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Mostly what I want to know…. If you were the senior creative writer of the series, what would you include, and how would you end the season?
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All creative and playful comments welcome. 
Let’s have some fun!!!
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Kathy
