November 15, 2009

Attachment to the Perpetrator

Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, emotional pain, Family Members of Trauma Survivors, Friends of Multiples, mental health, Physical Abuse, sexual abuse, therapy, Therapy and Counseling, Therapy Homework Ideas, Trauma tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 7:53 pm by Kathy Broady


Last night, I saw another television documentary on Jaycee Lee Dugard – the young woman who was kidnapped at age 11, held captive for 18 years, and found alive, along with her two daughters on August 26, 2009.

Jaycee is now 29 years old.

Jaycee spent the past 18 years held captive in the backyard of a registered, violent sex offender, Phillip Garrido.  Garrido fathered Jaycee’s two daughters, and has been charged with numerous criminal offenses.

While most of the world was thrilled to see Garrido arrested and locked away into police custody, Jaycee and her girls had different emotional reactions.  Initially, when questioned by the authorities, Jaycee was supportive of Garrido, she refused to admit her real identity, and when the facts weren’t adding up, she claimed to be hiding from a fictitious abusive husband that lived in another state.  She had chances to tell about her perpetrator, but her first responses were to protect him.  Her two daughters cried when they heard Garrido was arrested.

Garrido spent years torturing these young women, but yet they were clearly connected to him.

How can this be?

This dynamic is called Stockholm Syndrome.  It is when victims form positive, caring attachments with their violent perpetrators.  The more victims have to depend on their perpetrators for their very survival, the more likely the victim will form an attachment to their perpetrator.

The world has been appalled as they heard this story.

But this story is not a new story.

This story happens to many children every day of the year.

Many dissociative trauma survivors have lived a life all too similar to the life that Jaycee lived while with Garrido.  As children, most dissociative trauma survivors lived – day after day, year after year – under the strict sadistic control of a sex offender.  They were repeatedly sexually abused, many became pregnant, they were given hidden identities and new names, and they were taught bizarre religious beliefs.  Many DID survivors were locked and confined in unhealthy places, made to be completely dependent upon their abusers, and the reality of their daily abuse was hidden from the neighbors.  It is not at all uncommon for DID survivors to have been sexually involved and sexually controlled by their perpetrators well into their adulthood.

The main difference between most DID Survivors and Jaycee Dugard is that most DID survivors were not kidnapped by a stranger.  Most DID survivors who have lived this kind of ongoing abuse were simply living in their family homes.

These DID survivors were being raised by their father and mother.  They didn’t have the hope that someday they would be rescued and returned to their “real family”.  They were with their real family.

In either situation, the child-victims learned to adapt to the sadistic behaviors of the abusive parental figures in order to survive.  Despite the extreme abuse, they learned to depend on the abusers.  Everything from breathing, food, clothing, water, shelter, warmth, education, medical attention, etc. was controlled and monitored by their abusers.  There was no personal space.  There was no way to get away.  There was no known place to run to even if they had gotten away.

The child-victims knew they were stuck there.

They knew that their life and basic survival needs were completely dependent upon keeping the perpetrator happy.  They learned to base their own survival on effectively meeting the needs of the perpetrator, and the perpetrator had the power to decide if they would live or die.  To survive, they became loyal to the perpetrator.

Perpetrators purposefully create this kind of dependence in their victims.  They want their victims to feel trapped, and to lose hope, and to be stuck in their abuse.  They do not want their victims to know there is a way out, or to find a way out.  Perpetrators want to be in control of absolutely everything, barely leaving their victims room to breathe on their own.

In keeping the required secrets, the surviving children often  learned that the ONLY person to turn to in time of trouble or need is the perpetrator.  To get their daily survival needs met, the child learned they had to placate, please, and depend upon the abuser.

In these long-term abusive situations, the perpetrator is both the caretaker and the abuser.  The child learns to love and hate this parent.  The child feels either trapped in the abuse, or feels tied to them in order to get their needs met.

Consequently, the child-victims have to depend on their abusers for their care.  Who else will feed them?  Who else will get their books for school?  Who else will provide clothing and a place to sleep? These children have no where else to turn, so they form a variety of trauma bonds with their perpetrator.

Since the child-victim’s life depends on their perpetrator, the victim develops a loyalty to the perpetrator.  They experience a positive loyalty when the perpetrator meets their daily needs.  They experience a fear-based loyalty when their life depends on it.

Whether the offender parent is being appropriate or violent, the dissociative child is drawn into the relationship, and feels emotionally connected to the perpetrator.

Child-victims might split off parts that keep the abuse separate from their feelings of love and appreciation.  It’s hard to genuinely care about someone who is hurting and abusing you, but child victims often have to manage both of these scenarios. They might split off parts to deny the abuse, so they don’t have to remember the violence.

And after living that dynamic for years of time, survivors lose the ability to recognize who or what a perpetrator is.  They grow up feeling responsible for pleasing perpetrators, learning how to tolerate abusers instead of learning how to leave perpetrators. They grow up believing that attaching and bonding to a dangerous person is critical for their own life.

Attachment to the perpetrator creates many layers of confusion for many years to come.  It is a critical area of healing that requires a great deal of work in the therapy setting.

Do they love their abuser?  Do they hate their abuser?  Do they recognize their abuser as an abuser? Can they recognize who in the world is or isn’t an abuser?  Can they leave their abuser?  Can they bond with a non-abuser?

Even as adults, far too many DID survivors can no longer separate who is who.  They will live a life connecting to one abuser after another, yet they won’t be able to recognize a safe person when they meet one.  DID survivors may feel more comfort in the victim role, and they may prefer the familiarity of abusive relationships over the strange unknown of safe relationships.  Or, they may assume that all people are abusers, and thus miss out on the opportunity to learn the difference between a safe person and a perpetrator.

Every DID survivor has attached to at least one perpetrator in their lifetime, and probably more than one.

It is critical to work on this trauma dynamic in therapy.  This work is essential for healing.  Otherwise, DID survivors will feel a high degree of comfort with perpetrators, and will not be able to stay connected to a safe person when they meet one.  Or, they’ll accuse a safe person of becoming a perpetrator.

There are a lot of different possibilities, most of them ending up as relationship disasters.

In order to have any chance at having successful social relationships, dissociative trauma survivors absolutely must address the attachment they feel to their perpetrators.

The health of your future relationships depend on it.

———-

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

June 7, 2009

12 Tips for Reducing Shame

Posted in Dissociative Identity Disorder, Trauma, Therapy and Counseling, DID Education, DID/MPD, therapy, sexual abuse, Self Injury, Depression tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 5:33 pm by Kathy Broady


One of the hardest areas of healing work in trauma disorders is dealing with shame.

For many survivors of sexual abuse, healing work involves learning about a lot of intense memories that leave them feeling a great deal of shame, humiliation, and embarrassment.  These are difficult emotions to process, and the memory material is typically very overwhelming.

Some survivors feel immersed in shame from the very beginning of their abuse.  They are appalled at what is happening for them and hate every minute of it, even if they can’t get away from the predators. With every incident that happens, they feel worse, and worse, and worse.  The more degraded the survivors are during the abuse, the greater shame they feel.

Shame can become all consuming.  It drowns any feelings of self worth and erodes at self-esteem.  It leads to self-injury, increased dissociation, suicidal thoughts, suicidal behavior, depression, PTSD, anxiety, addictions, etc.  Shame, at its most intense, can destroy lives.

Survivors will internalize the harsh destructive words of their abusers, and if they hear those messages with enough repetition and intensity, they will believe the negativity as truth.

For the host alters of the dissociative systems, there could be nothing further from the truth than hearing what the other alters in the system are saying about abuse.  The fronting, daily-life dealing alters are typically not at all aware of the depths of the abuse, and the horrors expressed by the parts much further behind them does not feel real.

However, the alter parts hidden deeper in the dissociative system often have a very different experience than the front alters.  Dissociative walls and consistent amnesia keep their two worlds apart from each other.

Sometimes the abuse-laden parts have become so entrenched in their abusive worlds and so blocked from any kind of participation in the outside world that they do not understand the extremity of the worlds they know.   For dissociative survivors who have been sold into sex slavery or prostitution or pornography, this dynamic can be all too true.

System parts that are taught by their perpetrators to feel pride in being used as sex slaves know that to be their world, their truth, their reality.  They own that pride, and do not think twice about it being a difficult or questionable lifestyle.  They have been encouraged to handle the pain, they learn to believe they like the pain, pain becomes associated with pleasure, and they have a sense of accomplishment for completing various sexual tasks, no matter how extreme.

These alters strive to make accomplishments in that world.  They may feel quite successful at their “jobs” and have few feelings of shame.

Reclaiming those parts from their abusive worlds means that these parts will eventually connect with the horror and shame that they pushed away years ago.  The parts that have been sexually passed around from person to person to person will start realizing how much that trauma actually affected them. What once gave them pride, will lead to painful agony, shame, and distress.  They will realize how much they have been hurt.

However, once they realize they are being abused (or have been abused), they can make decisions to stop the abuse.

They can work with their therapists and the host parts of their system to get away from the abusers, inside and out.  This is done through internal system work, freeing each part from the ways they have been trapped in their memories. (Remember, people with DID tend to keep internalized realities, dynamic re-enactments of the abuse with introjects of abusers in what feels like the current day timeframe.) This work can also happen in freeing the dissociative person from a real-life, current day abuser.

Once survivors feel more distance between themselves and the abuse, they can begin to heal from the barrage of shame-inducing, horrific traumas that happened.  They can gradually begin to understand what things belong to the perpetrators vs. which things are truly about them.  They can begin to develop a separation between themselves and the world of sexual abuse.

Healing from that internalized sense of badness is a big part of the therapy work.  As survivors learn they are truly victims of crimes, and that they are not to blame, they can begin to let go of the sense of shame that has surrounded their lives for years.

As survivors remove the overwhelming trauma from their lives, they can then, in turn, fill their lives with positive activities from their own unique preferences.   They can begin to feel better about their lives.  They can feel healthy pride in what they are doing, and feel pleased in their accomplishments.  They can replace the feelings of deep dark shame with a sense of happiness and self-worth.

Overcoming shame is not easy.  It is hard, grueling, intense emotional work.

The intensity of the shame felt by a trauma survivor can be a type of emotional barometer for the amount of healing work that needs to happen.  The more that shame overwhelms the survivor, the more healing work is still needed.  As the depth of this shame lightens, the more the survivors have progressed in their healing journey.

1. As a trauma survivor, know and understand that you are not a bad person.
2. Come to terms with how the abuse was not your fault.
3. Be brave enough to look honestly at the trauma that happened in your life.
4. Find the strength you need to get away from your abusers.
5. Work hard to be safe and to end any and all abusive relationships in the current day.
6. Realize that you will be able to build a happy life that you are proud to have.
7. Believe that you don’t have to let your shame destroy you.
8. Recognize the perpetrators for what they are – nasty violent sex offender criminals.
9. Let the perpetrators keep the responsibility for their own behavior.  Don’t take on what belongs to them.
10. Do your healing work – process your trauma, grieve the way it has affected your life.
11. As you heal, be willing to let the resolved issues settle into the past.
12. Fill your life with activities and people that you genuinely like.

__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

May 31, 2009

Now I have lost my father…

Posted in Depression, DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Family Members of Trauma Survivors, HBO's Series "In Treatment", mental health, sexual abuse, therapy, Therapy and Counseling, Trauma tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 5:23 pm by Kathy Broady


“So thanks to all of this therapy, I have lost my father.”

“You haven’t lost your father….You did lose the father that you thought you had…”

“OK, I get it.  I didn’t have the perfect dad…. And my therapy has successfully shattered my romanticized image of my narcissistic father.  Is that how you would say it?”

“I would say, the patient, born to a depressed mother, idealized her father so as to not feel completely alone….. and now she can see her dad for who he really is.  It is shattering.  But if you can now move beyond that connection to your father, it may open the possibility of finding love elsewhere.”

“Now I’m left with nothing!”

“Maybe it’s worth it to finally take off the blinders, even if you don’t like what you see. Or you are left to wonder in the darkness for even longer.”

“Why did you take my blinders off?”

“I didn’t remove your blinders.  You did.”

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This is a paraphrased, condensed conversation from “In Treatment” – Dr. Paul Weston’s final session with Mia.  In this session, Mia discusses a difficult conversation she had with her father, and she realizes that her father – the man she idealized for years – actually did things to hurt her.

This “In Treatment” episode highlights a dynamic that many trauma survivors face in their therapy process.

Many dissociative trauma survivors enter therapy with the belief that their parents would not and could not hurt them.  While it is certainly true that some survivors with Dissociative Identity Disorder have one “safe” parent (a non-offending parent that was not directly involved in the abuse), most DID survivors have at least one parent with a dark, offender side to them.

Through the years of growing up, many survivors that split within themselves also keep a split view of their parents.  This is easy to understand especially when you keep the dissociative framework in mind.  For example, the day parts (front parts, host parts) that are not allowed to know about the abuse, will very often view the father as a relatively normal father that does normal fatherly things.  They will see their father as a good guy, a man that provided for the family, and while they may not always like the rules of the household, they typically won’t think of their father as an abuser of any sort.  In fact, these day / host parts will adamantly say that they have never been abused by their father, and will be highly insulted if anyone thinks otherwise.  The day parts will know nothing else about the father other than his day world presentation, and they will especially not know anything in regards to any kind of abuse or trauma or perpetration.  They often feel a strong connection to the father, and are convinced that he loves them (and specifically not in a harmful, sexual way).

These day parts may be in denial about the father’s abuse, or in the context of dissociation, they probably did not experience very much if any abuse from their father.  When this is the case, these parts can come to the absolute adamant defense of their father, and not be lying.  As far as they are concerned, their father was NOT a perpetrator, and they have absolutely no recall and no memory of anything else happening.  Sexual abuse and trauma may feel like totally absurd oddities, and these parts will argue incessantly about their father’s innocence.

So, what happens when the other parts of the dissociative system start to talk about their experiences with the father?  What if the inside parts actually did experience sexual abuse or physical abuse from the father?  What if these parts have memory after memory of abuse by the father, and remember nothing nice about him?

Now what?

Who is telling the truth?   Are the day parts that say the father did not abuse them telling the truth?  Or are the inside parts that clearly have body memories and flashbacks of painful sexual abuse telling the truth?

Who is lying?
Who is telling the truth?

Actually, each of these parts, in most circumstances, is genuinely telling the truth from their own perspective.

The day parts genuinely did not experience abuse by the father.
The inside parts genuinely did not experience anything but trauma from the father.

How is that possible?

Because of the dissociative walls in between the different parts of the system.   Strong, intense dissociation can create absolute amnesia.  What happens in one world will not leak through to the other worlds.  One side of a dissociative person can have totally and completely different memories than the other people in the dissociative system.

One side of the dissociative person can be totally blocked off from another side of the dissociative system.  What can be true for one set of system alters can be entirely false for another set of system alters.  It is this very conflict that supports and creates the dissociative splits in the first place.  When something is too conflictual to be contained, splitting off the opposing information into different parts of the dissociative system helps the child to manage each of the conflicting worlds.

Thick dissociative, amnesia-creating walls allow the day world to not be overwhelmed or upset about abuse – they can’t tell or show difficulties when they don’t even know about the abuse.  They can interact with the public world and not see or know or tell anyone about abuse.  They can function normally in school or at work, and not give off too many troubling signs.  Their dissociative walls serve to exclude them completely from information about the abuse.

For the parts that withstand the abuse, their thick dissociative walls keep them isolated and contained away from the world.  These parts experience nothing but their abusers.  They cannot grasp how wrong and vicious abuse is, especially since they have no other awareness of right and wrong, or that it shouldn’t be happening to them.  This leaves the abused parts completely trapped in their abusive worlds because they cannot conceptualize anything other than tolerating abuse.  Abused parts don’t attempt to leave their abusers as they simply cannot fathom any element of life outside of their abusive prison walls.  They do not know that a life different from abuse can exist.

When a trauma survivor with DID presents in therapy, both sides of their system will begin to speak.  The front parts will share their happy day-life experiences, and the inside alters will tell their stories about trauma.  The therapist sitting outside of the dissociative walls will hear both sides of the story.

Part of the healing work is then to get these two sides to listen to each other. Of course, there is a balance and a timing for when to say what, but the basic goal is to lower the dissociative walls and let each side of the system learn about the reality of the other side.

The day parts will hear that their father was not always so kind and gentle with them.  The inside parts will catch up to the current day timeframe and learn that they do not have to stay stuck in abusive relationships.  Each side of the system will help each other see the whole picture.

It’s not easy – but taking the blinders off and looking at the whole picture of your life and your relationships are extremely important pieces of your healing journey.

You can do it.  The safety and healing will be very much worth the hard work involved.
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  • Have you realized that the various parts in your dissociative system have experienced very different lives from each other?
  • Are you willing to take your blinders off and look at the whole truth of your life?
  • Do you understand what it means to keep internal parts stuck within dissociative walls where they know only the world of abuse?
  • What are the worst things that could happen to you if you actually lowered your dissociative walls and connected with the realities of your other parts?
  • What are the benefits of genuinely connecting with the others in your system?

__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

May 9, 2009

Mothers and Mother’s Day for Trauma Survivors

Posted in DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Family Members of Trauma Survivors, Prevention of Sexual Abuse, sexual abuse, Trauma tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 4:17 pm by Kathy Broady


For dissociative trauma survivors, Mother’s Day is often a painful time.

For survivors with dissociative identity disorder, mother issues are usually complex and difficult to sort out.  Momma-trauma comes in a variety of forms.

For some survivors, their mothers were simply not there to protect them from the violent abuse of the father or other sadistic family members.  These mothers were away at work, or away at the hospital, or too ill to tend properly to their children, or divorced from the fathers and living in separate homes, etc.  Many of these mothers love their kids dearly, but still were unable to protect their children from trauma and abuse.  Most of these mothers are not to blame for the abuse – many of them are absolutely horrified and deeply furious to find out, years later, how much abuse their children went through, and their feelings of guilt and shame are huge and overwhelming.  None the less, their inability to protect their children creates mixed feelings for those children.

For some survivors, their mothers were too blind or too lost in their own denial to be willing and able to protect their children from abuse.  These mothers do have some responsibility for their role in not protecting their children.  These are the mothers that were in the home, and could have been instrumental and helpful for the protection of their children, but out of their own fear, denial or dissociation, refused to look, and refused to protect.  These mothers let their own fear be bigger than their willingness to protect their children.  These mothers may not have been directly used as accomplices, but their fears and unwillingness to protect would have most certainly been taken advantage of by the abusers.

Ouch.

For other survivors, their mothers were the abusers.  These mothers were absolutely in the room at the time of the abuse, they caused physical pain, they did inappropriate sexual touch, and they played mind games on their children.  These mothers are every bit as much a perpetrator as any other criminal.

Ouch.

So every year when Mother’s Day rolls around, it is difficult for survivors who grew up with mothers like that.  It hurts.  It’s confusing. The pain of what was longed for, but never given pierces the heart.  The agony of wishing the mother had been willing to do something helpful grows cold out of the slow but torturous and accurate realization that the mother adamantly preferred apathy or self-protection over her children’s safety and welfare.

The heart-wrenching pain caused by an unattentive or abusing mother carries on for decades.  The wounds do not heal quickly or easily.  The hurt is felt for years and years.

It’s not right for mothers to cause such harm to their children.  Those mothers are a disgrace.  They are criminal.  They are not “mothers”.

  • Real mothers are good mothers that firmly protect their children from abuse, as much as that is humanly possible.
  • Real mothers are good mothers who fight to get quality help and genuine safety for their children when someone else hurts their children.
  • Real mothers are good mothers who do not complacently overlook or ignore the needs of their children.
  • Real mothers are good mothers that put the needs of their young children over their own.
  • Real mothers are good mothers that tend to the daily needs of their young children, and adjust with the various changes needed as their children get older.
  • Real mothers are good mothers that work hard at being loyal, caring, kind, compassionate, loving, and giving to their children, forever and for always.

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What kind of mother are you to your children?

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If you are a trauma survivor…

  • What kind of mother did you have?
  • What affect has your mother had on your life?
  • How did your mother fight to protect you?
  • How did your mother contribute to your abuse?
  • What thoughts and feelings do you have now, all these years later?
  • What do you wish you could say to your mother, but couldn’t / wouldn’t say to her in real life?

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Mothers and Mother’s Day.

So painful for so many people…..

__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

April 25, 2009

Long-term Costs Severe Child Abuse

Posted in Depression, Dissociative Identity Disorder, mental health, sexual abuse, therapy, Therapy and Counseling, Trauma tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 2:45 pm by Kathy Broady


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

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

March 28, 2009

United States of Tara – Going too Far

Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, mental health, therapy, Therapy and Counseling, trauma therapist, United States of Tara tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 2:23 pm by Kathy Broady


Ok.  So I was all kinds of optimistic and hopeful that the Showtime series, United States of Tara, would be a positive statement for dissociative identity disorder.  After all, Showtime interviewed Dr. Richard Kluft, an informed psychiatrist, one of the founding fathers of the treatment of DID/MPD.  That was a good sign, wasn’t it?

Well.

As a trauma therapist with 20+ years of clinical experience working with multiples, I have to say I’m quite frustrated that Showtime has presented multiplicity in this way.

First of all, the word is dissociation.  Pronounced di-soh-see-ay-shun.  The word is not disassociation.  There is no additional “a” sound in the word.  Saying dis-a-soh-see-ay-shun is the wrong pronunciation and a different word altogether.

Secondly, there is not a medication that can remove or prevent or end dissociative identity disorder.  Medications can address various symptoms, and can even slow the thinking down, but medication cannot remove multiplicity.  The idea of drugging away the parts is particularly offensive to me, and as far as I am concerned, it is totally opposite to genuine treatment.  Insiders are there for a reason, and promoting the idea that the inside can be drugged into silence seems abusive to me.  This idea is absolutely absurd and smacks of perpetrative behavior.

Moving on…

I understand the idea of “creating additional drama” for the sake of entertainment and to get a viewing audience.  Fine.

And I can understand that the visual presentation of the various alters is metaphorical for how switching feels from within.  It is true — or can be true — that when insiders surface on the outside, they “feel” like they look on the inside.  Insiders are often confused and upset about looking externally very different than they feel internally.  They are convinced they are shorter, or wearing different clothes, or have different hair, or are even a different gender, etc.  And yes, internal parts are very often adamant about being a very different person from the host personality.

For the Tara show, the insiders get to look as extremely different on the outside as they feel on the inside.  However, it’s not typical for DID’ers to actually present so drastically even if they wish they could.

The different presentations of Tara are excessive, but it makes the point, and it helps the viewing audience to catch on to a switch to one part from another.  I would have hoped the viewing audience did not have to have that much help in recognizing switching, but maybe they do.

Now to my biggest beef about United States of Tara: the criminal behavior.

I suppose that somewhere out there in the world, there are multiples that beat up teenagers on school property, break in to and vandalize homes of others, urinate on others while sleeping, froth and drool in public, and sexually assault their child’s underage boyfriend.  I suppose I cannot say that no multiple in the world would ever do that.

But really?!!!  Is this the kind of message that we want the viewing audience to have about DID?  Do multiples really present as the criminally insane?

Not to me!

The multiples I have met in the past 20+ years are not out-of-control monsters like this.  Their inside parts know that there is a legal body age, and while they typically feel younger than the body age, the insiders have an understanding that they are not actually the same as outside people of that age.

DIDer’s might have flashbacks or a hard time functioning or emotional outbursts, but typically, trauma survivors will have enough self-control to manage their behavior without committing a crime in public.

Showtime crossed the line by making Tara a sex offender.

It is true that many multiples have been tangled up in sexual crimes, but typically, multiples that are in treatment have not chosen the life of a sex offender.  All too many trauma survivors were forced to perpetrate as part of their victimization by organized perpetrator groups, or even by violent single abusers, but being forced to hurt others is not anything near the same as purposefully deciding to sexually offend in the day world.

Most multiples are not sexually inappropriate of their own volition.

For the writers of United States of Tara to present multiplicity in this light is cruel and inaccurate.

I’m disappointed, to say the least.

What a slam.
A great big huge insulting ridiculous slam.

I am not impressed.
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  • What do you think?
  • What are your thoughts about the show United States of Tara?
  • Are you criminally insane?
  • Would you do the behaviors that Tara is doing on this show?
  • If you are multiple, what are your feelings about being portrayed in this way?

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__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

March 8, 2009

10 Life-Lessons I’ve Learned from Multiples, part 1

Posted in Dissociative Identity Disorder tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 1:34 pm by Kathy Broady


No, I’m not a multiple.   I do not have multiple personalities and I do not have dissociative identity disorder.

But I know multiples very well.

I am a trauma therapist who has worked almost exclusively with people with dissociative disorders for 20+ years.  I have met more multiples than I can count, and I have spent hours and hours and hours each week — and most days — with one multiple or another.  Sometimes I talk to multiples in person, sometimes online, sometimes on the phone.  I have led in-patient hospital-based groups for multiples, outpatient groups for multiples, online groups for multiples, and spouse groups for the supportive loved ones of multiples.  I’ve met multiples from various countries and several different continents around the world.

At this point in time, I don’t think there is anything someone with DID/MPD could say to me that would be shocking, or more horrifying than the already horrific stories that I have heard.  I do not mean that to say that I’ve heard everything because I haven’t. Everyone’s story is absolutely unique to itself. It never ceases to amaze me how many different versions of trauma exist out there in the world.  But after a while, the versions of evil and horror and terror and exploitation become equal to each other as another chapter in my Listening Book.  There is no way to categorize which traumas are worse than the others – it is all abuse, criminal, and painfully life-altering.

I haven’t heard it all, but I’ve heard enough to not be surprised anymore.

For some, I’ve been at the very beginning of their DID/MPD healing process, being the therapist that diagnoses the Dissociative Disorder and the first person to explain what dissociation is to the struggling survivor sitting in front of me.  For most, I’ve become involved mid-journey to the healing process.

I’ve seen all the stages of healing, and I’ve witnessed many of the adjunct disorders, struggles, and complications that often appear alongside dissociative disorders.  I’ve sat years and years of time alongside some multiples, and had brief exchanges with others.

And with each dissociative person I meet, I am reminded of some of the things that multiples have taught me:

1. The Strength of the Human Spirit.   No matter what happened, no matter how severe the abuse, no matter how much the perpetrators try to use mind control and programmed thinking to manipulate someone, there is still a real person in there.   Dissociative survivors have always maintained the ability to think for themselves, even if they had to hide that deep inside a variety of complex dissociative layers.  With some gentle encouragement and safe support to be who they really are instead of who the perps were trying to force them to be, all DID survivors can overcome the roles that were coerced upon them and decide to have the life that genuinely fits them.  The strength you have to be you can overcome any of the garbage piled on you by a perpetrator.  Despite all that has happened, dissociative survivors can maintain a sense of themselves.  How utterly impressive is that!

2. The Creativity of the Mind.  The mind of a dissociative person is completely creative, complex, and unique.  To be able to solve such serious life problems while so very young, alone, powerless, and resource-less is awe-inspiring.  Finding ways to exist and to maintain sanity without mentally breaking or totally self-destructing, even if that meant finding ways to co-exist with evil as safely as possible, is awe-inspiring.

3. The Strength of the Mind.   Dissociative people have a mental strength.  They developed and perfected this strength during the years of mentally withstanding their abusers. They can think past the twists and turns of manipulation, they can see through lies and half-truths, and long ago realized they don’t have to totally become what is being forced upon them.  The years and years of fighting off abusers that play twisted mind games have created a mental strength that is admirable.

4. The Incredible Ability to Withstand Enormous Physical Pain.   As sad as it is to think that any person has had to learn how to withstand various physical tortures, people with DID/MPD have learned how to survive through these kinds of ordeals.  It is mind-boggling to me that people can have such strength and ability to overcome such physical pain and torment, and not be completely psychopathic and violent afterwards.  Dissociative people can maintain the ability for gentleness, kindness, compassion, and caring even after being physically tortured.  That’s truly amazing.

5. The Strength of Connection and the Power of Love.  Even though surrounded by too many abusers and violent sadistic criminals, most of the dissociative people I have met have retained the ability to love and to connect with someone else outside of themselves.  The ability to bond, and to love, and to have compassion for someone else was not squished out of them, even though the predators of the world would have tried repeatedly to destroy that ability permanently.   This is foundationally important.  Unless someone truly becomes an antisocial sociopath, they cannot completely belong to dark evil organizations.  If trainers and abusers cannot make a person absolutely willing to hurt others, without remorse or regret, then they cannot make a true abuser out of them nor have complete control of that person’s deeper true self.  Maintaining the ability to love and to connect, even when beaten to near-death by abusers is truly inspiring.

To be continued…

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In the meantime, please ask yourself:

  • Do you see these strengths within yourself?
  • Have you recognized the depth of strength and character it takes to mentally fight off the invasive effects of abusers?
  • What strengths do you see in yourself that are not yet listed?
  • Which of these listed strengths is a surprise to you?
  • Do you have what it takes to continue separating yourself from the actions and beliefs of your offenders?

.

__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

February 27, 2009

2009 CONFERENCE ON CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN

Posted in mental health, Prevention of Sexual Abuse, sexual abuse, Trauma, trauma therapist tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 11:34 pm by Kathy Broady


Next week, I will be attending the 2009 CONFERENCE ON CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN.

AbuseConsultants.com will be an exhibitor at this conference.

If you are attending this conference, please stop by my exhibit table and let’s chat for awhile!

.

http://www.ccawonline.org/try_2.html

2009 CONFERENCE ON CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN

March 2-4, 2009
Dallas Texas

CO-PRESENTED BY GENESIS WOMEN’S SHELTER
AND THE DALLAS POLICE DEPARTMENT

The 4th Annual Conference on Crimes Against Women offers the most practical, current, and relevant training provided by the country’s leading experts in the fields of intervention, investigation and prosecution for the full range of crimes committed against women.

Federal, state, and local law enforcement officers; domestic violence, sexual assault, and homicide investigators; probation and parole officers; state and federal prosecutors; nurses; victim advocates and domestic violence shelter staff, will gather again this year in Dallas to participate in workshops, computer labs and case studies that will address all types of crimes in which women are targeted.  This year’s agenda will address issues related to the prevention, investigation and prosecution of domestic violence, stalking, sexual assault, serial murder, Internet-related offenses and other crimes.

Some of the workshops include:

COMBATING PROSTITUTION
By Christina Smith
Prostitution has been an age-old problem around the world.  But with the ever-growing popularity of technology and the Internet as well as other trends in criminal behavior, law enforcement officers must look beyond the traditional places when investigating prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation of women.  This workshop will provide practical information for combating these crimes. The emerging trends in prostitution will be discussed.  Additionally, the issues of substance abuse, human trafficking and other factors that affect prostitution trends will be examined.

DETECTING DECEPTION
By Jim Tanner
Improve your interview skills. Learn how to tell when someone is editing something out of a verbal or written statement. This session will cover the basics of Discourse Analysis, a lexical and syntactical approach to analyzing statements. Using clear examples, Dr. Tanner will explain how a respondent’s shifts in words and grammar can point interviewers to “hot spots” in a statement that need to be probed. You will never listen to a conversation or interview the same way again if you attend this session.

“EVERYONE JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!”: WORKING WITH FEARFUL AND RESISTANT VICTIMS
By Susan Clark
In this workshop we will explore the psychological dynamics involved in victims’ interactions with criminal justice professionals. Faced with a volatile mix of anger, alarm, denial and unpredictable responses – how professionals can communicate effectively with traumatized and resistant victims.

HOW WOMEN CAN PROTECT THEMSELVES
By James A. Savage, Jr. and Kristen Howell
This is a two-part workshop.  The first part will present a number of simple security and emergency planning measures designed specifically for women as well as effective strategies that can be adapted and used by police officers and other professionals to deliver these important learning points to their constituents and communities. Also covered will be several aspects of personal safety and security to include travel, shopping, home, school and work that often are overlooked or not commonly known

The second part of the workshop will discuss safety planning for battered women who are either in abusive relationships or trying to safely terminate those relationships.  Safety planning techniques include how to be emotionally and physically safe from the batterer, as well as how to manage the batterer when he is violent and when he is the Honeymoon stage and promising change.  This presentation will also go beyond the run-of-the-mill safety planning techniques by helping domestic violence experts identify and train women how to augment their own survival skills with skills to effectively leave and leave safely; as well how to maintain safety in a technologically advanced world where hiding is no longer a plausible strategy.

“MY DADDY HURT MY MOMMY”: INTERVIEWING CHILD WITNESSES TO CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN
By Irish Burch
This workshop will provide investigators and others with an overview on the importance of forensically interviewing children who have been exposed to violence. It will provide participants with an understanding on the types of information that can be gathered and how the interview process can aid in gathering key information for their investigation.

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN GOES HIGH TECH
By Cindy Southworth
From Caller ID Spoofing to stalking victims through social networking sites, abusers are misusing new high-tech tools to commit the age-old crimes of domestic and dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.  Learn how everything from GPS to Spyware to Virtual Worlds can be misused to harm a victims and how agencies can become more tech savvy to address these crimes, safety plan with victims, and safely incorporate technology into their own work.

SERIAL SEXUAL ASSAULT AND OFFENDER CHARACTERISTICS
By Craig Ackley
This workshop will present information on the different types of offenders who commit sexually assaults.  Included in this presentation will be a focus on understanding offender characteristics, motivations, and risk for violence.

UNIQUE APPROACHES TO INTERVIEWING POTENTIAL VICTIMS OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING
By Bill Bernstein
This workshop will be an interactive training that will address the crime of human trafficking from the perspective of helping the victims. It will include a discussion of many of the obstacles faced by those interviewers of human trafficking victims. Techniques and strategies for overcoming these obstacles will be presented.

WORKING WITH EXPERTS TO EXPLAIN VICTIM BEHAVIOR IN SEXUAL ASSAULT AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CASES
By Jennifer Long
When a victim alleges a sexual assault, the prevalence of myths causes the public to search for a reason to doubt the allegation rather than to search for the truth.  This presentation compares the myths about victim behavior with the realities of the behavior, addresses the necessity of offering expert or other testimony to explain a victim’s behavior and offers recommended strategies for explaining victim behavior—either through the introduction of expert testimony or through the victim’s own testimony—at trial.

RESPONDING TO STRANGULATION AND TRIAL PREPARATION: WHAT LAW ENFORCEMENT AND HEALTH CARE NEED TO KNOW
By Tiffani Dusang and Eddie Hazell
This workshop will address the issue of strangulation. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a leading cause of physical and psychological injury to women between the ages of 15 and 54. An episode of IPV often includes multiple actions, and the violence typically escalates over time. Often times these injuries result in permanent disability or disfigurement and can include strangulation. Responding to strangulation, when it occurs within a domestic violence context, requires an understanding of the overlapping dynamics of power, control, love and fear. Due to the variable ways strangulation can be accomplished severity cannot be decided by visible bruising or injuries. Victims have complex needs that thorough well-documented reports can provide objective and factual demonstration of the inflicted violence. These reports can be crucial at trial and impact the outcome of any legal case as well as victims.

And many more….

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If you have the opportunity to attend this conference, please do so.

And remember to please stop by my exhibit table and say hello!

__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

February 10, 2009

Current Day Abuse – When Dissociative Survivors are Trapped, Owned, and Exploited as Adults

Posted in Child Alters, DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, mental health, Prevention of Sexual Abuse, sexual abuse, therapy, Therapy and Counseling, Trauma, trauma therapist tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 1:11 pm by Kathy Broady


Dissociative Identity Disorder is created from severe, chronic child abuse, but does that abuse automatically stop in childhood?

Unfortunately, no, it does not.

All too many survivors continue to be trapped in abusive environments long after their childhood has ended.  Sometimes this abuse continues with the same family-related perpetrators that abused the survivor all throughout the childhood years.  For example, far too many adult children of creepy-fathers are still being sexually abused into adulthood.

Creepy-fathers don’t necessarily stop being sex offenders just because their children get older.  These lifelong predators already know how to manipulate your dissociative system, and they will continue to “call out” and dominate the child parts that they controlled for all the years previous.  The child parts don’t necessarily realize that they are in an adult body, or that years of time have passed, so it still feels like more of the same to them.

Typically, in situations such as these, the dissociative walls that separate those abused child parts and the adult host can still be locked solidly in place, allowing no seepage of information to pass through.  The adult DID survivor may not have any conscious awareness that they are still being abused in this way.

Scary.
And sad.
But true, far too often.

Sometimes, the ongoing abuse is more organized than in-home family abuse.  The sex slave industries can use, own, control, sell, and exploit dissociative survivors for many years.

Slavery didn’t end with the Civil War – it just became more hidden.

One of the current ways that slavery still exists — even in 2009 — is through the entrapment of the dissociative population.   Various prostitution / pornography organizations can “own” and exploit survivors by using physical violence, emotional blackmail, drugs, mind control techniques, and dissociation as means to maintain their power and control.  Extricating these dissociative prisoners from these organized predators is a complicated and complex process, but possible nonetheless.

Adult trauma survivors with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) have had years of experience managing severe trauma while simultaneously blocking themselves off from the reality of that trauma.   Dissociative walls can provide an element of amnesia that both protects the person from the overwhelming crushing awareness of ongoing abuse, but also traps the survivor in an ongoing continuation of that abuse.

If dissociative survivors have current-day chunks of missing time blocked from their awareness, they cannot know what happened to them, but they also cannot remove themselves or protect themselves from the ongoing trauma and abuse.  Without effective therapy and treatment, they also cannot remember or control the fact that they could be handing over their children to be used in the same abusive ways by the very same perpetrator groups.

Unfortunately, we all know that the kiddie porn industry is alive and well.

Dissociative survivors that grew up being used and sold within the kiddie porn industry are at a higher risk of continuing to be owned by, and forced to work for that industry even as adults.

When DID survivors are involved in current day abuse, it is imperative to break down the amnesiac walls created through dissociative processes.  The survivors have to have the courage to look at what they are involved with, and then have even more courage to problem-solve their way out.

Dissociative survivors trapped in other kinds of family violence and domestic violence are vulnerable in these same ways.

Trauma therapists must be aware of these possibilities so they can actively work with the dissociative population in order to assist them to gain freedom from ongoing abuse.  Therapy with a strong emphasis on increasing internal communication and lowering amnesiac barriers is essential.

Therapists need to use basic good trauma therapy while doing this work. Listen closely to the inside parts, help sooth the pain, create both internal and external safety, reconnect the isolated parts with the rest of the system, address the concerns raised by those internal parts in all the normal ways, etc.  Many of the very same processes that work to help heal “regular abuse” continue to be effective in addressing more extreme abuses.
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***  To all dissociative survivors —
You don’t have to stay stuck in the abuse cycles.  If you are able to read this post, you are able to do the work it takes to remove yourself from any ongoing abuse that you are tangled in.    Of course, your perpetrators won’t tell you that you can get out, but you can get out and away from them anyway.  You are older, wiser, and stronger than you were when you were just a child.  You can find ways that will work for you, you can find  safe people to help you, and you can be safe.  Talk lots and lots to your inside people – it’s only as you work together as a team that you can beat the external controls.  It takes a lot of hard work, but if you all really want to be free from abuse and safe from harm, you can be.  It can happen.

__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

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