April 3, 2010

This is Easter Weekend

Posted in Dissociative Identity Disorder, Prevention of Sexual Abuse, Ritual Abuse, sexual abuse, Therapy Homework Ideas, Trauma tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 2:27 pm by Kathy Broady


.

Hi Everyone,

This is Easter weekend.

For DID trauma survivors with a ritual abuse (RA) background, this is a very difficult weekend, full of difficult memories, painful emotions, and system conflicts.

*** I’m going to speak of some of the horrors of ritual abuse – here is your trigger warning – for those of you that need one of those. ***

With ritual abuse, anything that represented something positive in the Christian faith would have been turned into something dangerous and harmful in the dark worlds.  The good would have been twisted into evil.  The light would have been made dark.  Distortions, perversions, confusion, pain, violence, and chaos would have been celebrated.

Opposites are taught – white becomes black.  The day-world church is very distinctly different and opposite from the night-world church.

Children should never ever be exposed to the level of sadistic violence that occurs in ritualistic ceremonies.  It is wrong for this to happen.

Children should never ever be forced to participate in the outrageous activities and horrendous practices of the dark night ritualistic world.  It is wrong for this to happen.

If you were forced to participate in sadistic ritualistic activities, my heart goes out to you.  You’ve seen some of the worst of the worst that happens in this world.  It is not ok that anyone hurt you like that.

If you were ritually abused, you would have been painfully traumatized, emotionally tortured, sexually assaulted, and physically beaten.  These are horrible crimes.  It was wrong for anyone to do this to you.  It was wrong if your parents did this to you.  It was wrong if strangers did this to you.  It was wrong if friends or neighbors did this to you.  It is wrong, criminally wrong, for any and all children to be forced to participate in these kinds of activities in any way, shape, or form.

You did not deserve that kind of treatment.  (Don’t believe lies that say otherwise.)

You were not born to live in the darkness.  (Don’t believe lies that say otherwise.)

You were not destined to belong to evil.  (Don’t believe lies that say otherwise.)

You are not the child of Satan.  (Don’t believe lies that say otherwise.)

You do not have to live your life chained to this darkness.  (Don’t believe lies that say otherwise.)

It is ok and important to get healing from any kind of ritualistic abuse that has happened in your life.  RA is gory and violent, it’s controlling and demanding, it’s hateful and sadistic, but it does not have to define who you are.  You do not have to stay connected to anyone or anything that pushes you into that direction.

You can separate from those people, places, organizations, and become your own true, genuine self.

You can make your own decisions for what you believe in, and for what kind of life you want to have.  You don’t have to be involved in a RA lifestyle if you don’t want to.  You don’t have to go to any more RA gatherings, and you don’t have to be one of them.

Your abusers would have told you otherwise, but now that you are an adult, you can decide for yourself.  You can think on your own, and you don’t have to be bullied any more.

You can be your own self, with your own life.  You can develop your own values, beliefs, and preferences.  You don’t have to like the things you were told to like – you can decide for yourself what it is that you like.  You don’t have to want the things you were told to want – you can decide that for yourself as well.

You don’t have to be one of them.  You can have a life full of kindness, gentleness, compassion, empathy instead.  You don’t have to prefer violence and hatred.  You can be different from that.

If you have dissociative identity disorder (DID / MPD), be sure to let the parts who were ritually abused to experience some of the more positive things in your life.  They might initially say they aren’t interested (I’m guessing they were taught to say that), but if you encourage them to experience some of the positive things in your life, you can help to bring healing to them too.  Don’t leave them stuck in their traumatic history – help them to heal and to have a chance to live in a safe, positive, warm place.

All the parts of you can heal from the atrocities of ritual abuse.

But for that to happen, you will need to be willing to introduce the light of the day-world to those parts that were split off into the world of darkness.  Invite them to actively participate in your day-world.  Let them have a cup of coffee or your favorite soda.  Let them sit outside in the sun.  Let them listen to some of your favorite music, or watch television, or walk the dogs in the park.  Let the have a turn at your favorite computer game, and to nibble on your favorite treats and munchies.  The dark-side parts will need to experience some of what your world is like in order to understand how it can be better for them.  Be gentle with them.  Slowly show them the things that you like.

It might feel scary to interact with these parts, but keeping them separated from you only keeps them stuck in the darkness they have known.  With the help of your therapist, let those parts become more connected to your personal worlds where they can learn about kindness, gentleness, peace of mind, etc.  Build up your courage and ability to listen to them.  Comfort them from the hurts they have experienced.  Help them to get out of those places that have been so violent.

Separate yourself from anyone in the outside world that wants you to stay in the darkness.  Firmly reclaim all your insiders as parts of you that belong with you, and not to anyone else.  Work very hard to not leave any of your parts left stuck in such violence.  Have the courage to pull them all out into a life of safety.

Your whole system can have the life that you want.  Don’t let any of them stay stuck in the yuck of the past.

Let them experience the goodness and joy that can be part of Easter.

———

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

Copyright © 2008-2010 Kathy Broady LCSW and Discussing Dissociation

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

October 31, 2009

The Layers of Halloween Weekend

Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, emotional pain, Mind Control, Prevention of Sexual Abuse, Ritual Abuse, Self Injury, sexual abuse, Trauma, trauma therapist tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 4:53 pm by Kathy Broady


.

It’s Halloween weekend.

This is a difficult, heavy weekend for a lot of dissociative trauma survivors.

I’ll say right upfront – and please hear this clearly — that it is NOT a difficult or triggery weekend for every DID trauma survivor.  To assume that every dissociative survivor has experienced the same kinds of abuse is completely wrong, and I will be the first trauma therapist to say that not everyone has gone through the dark sadistic abuses associated with the days most commonly known as Halloween.

If you can enjoy the fun sides of Halloween – bags of candy, apple-bobbing parties, carving pumpkins, or trick or treating in silly costumes — that is great news for you.  Halloween is a non-abusive, non-holiday, safe-on-the-surface level social event for most people.  For these folks, it is not intended to be anything more traumatic than seeing the pretense of gross plastic items stocked in the party aisles of a store.  For the more courageous and daring, they will spend $20 at the locally created “Haunted House” – something quickly assembled much like a traveling carnival booth.

But for some dissociative trauma survivors, these days surrounding Halloween are very dark, and very scary, and filled with deep historical meaning.  There are far too many triggers everywhere, and the hidden, layered symbols feel anything but safe.

For anyone who has experienced the horrors of organized ritual abuse, the days surrounding Halloween are very truly difficult.  The nights are worse.  The heaviness, the darkness, the pulls toward things not comfortable feels very disturbing and over-powering.

Many survivors feel scattered or disorganized within their system.  Or they might feel like the internal dark ones are enveloping or surrounding them.  Or they feel pulled to gory pictures, or negative thoughts, or self-injury.  Images of gorging on food, or death and violence, or various sexual abuses might flood their mind.  These snippets can be indicators of memory flashbacks, or pulls to participate in current day nightmares.

Even if you went there in the past, you don’t have to go there anymore.

Even if your insiders are remembering their past, remembering then is not the same as being there now.

DID survivors with an RA history might not feel like their usual selves during the time around Halloween.  They might feel like isolating from their safe support people, and feel more drawn towards their abusers.  They might feel pulls to go out, or to go to some unknown somewhere…

However, on days like this, staying home – literally staying indoors and refusing to leave the safety of your home – is often the very best thing you can do.  Reassure your insiders that they do not have to participate in anything scary, and that they are allowed to be safe.  They do not have to be hurt anymore. They do not have to be handed over to danger.

They can stay home in the safety of your home.

It might be a battle.

If you been ritually abused, it probably will be a battle.

You might have parts in your system who have experienced unspeakable horrors during this week of time.  But the more you can protect them from ongoing abuse, and gently comfort them in regards to their past abuse, the better.

The days surrounding Halloween can be some of the most difficult, triggery days of the year.

However, I encourage you to use this time to get to know those parts of your system that have managed this for you.  Listen to them, and let them tell you some of their life experiences.  They will need the opportunity to heal from their trauma history as well.  And yes, it will be very hard for you to hear their life stories, but they have the same right to begin having safety, comforts, healing, and protection just like the rest of you.

Even if you feel afraid – don’t leave your most traumatized parts stuck in their abuse because you are too afraid to work with them.

Even if you feel horrified – don’t turn your back on helping these parts simply because you are horrified about what they had to go through.

Ignoring their pain, or refusing to teach them about the lighter sides of life means that they are left neglected and stuck in the darkness.

That’s not ok.

They need your help, even if that is not how they are first saying it.

Be brave.  Allow your whole system to heal and to experience safety.  Don’t leave any of your insiders stuck in the darkness.  It is not their fault they were abused in the darkness.  They are there because they were forced to be there.  It’s not their fault they were split off in that dark place.  But they originally came from you, so they belong to you.  Don’t let the darkness keep those parts, not even one of them.  They need you and your help to get them out of that darkness.

They need you to have enough courage and willingness and compassion to allow them the same chance at healing that you are having.

So be kind to your insiders.  Be willing to help the ones that have experienced the worst of the worst.  Let everyone within your system find freedom – healing – safety – gentleness – acceptance.

Help them find the way out.

__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

October 23, 2009

Remembering Annemaria

Posted in Depression, DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Family Members of Trauma Survivors, Internal Communication, Ritual Abuse, Self Injury, sexual abuse, Therapy and Counseling, Trauma, trauma therapist tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 11:55 am by Kathy Broady


.
There is a young woman who will always be precious to me.  I haven’t spoken to her in years, but she forever changed my life.

This date – October 23rd — had specific meaning for her.

And every year on this date, I specifically think of her.
.
.
Back in the 80’s…

Annemaria was a 13 yr old wildly aggressive but enormously quiet girl that kept setting fires in the residential treatment center and starting fist fights with grown men.  She was a complicated child, and was court-ordered to have an assessment by a psychologist.  Fortunately for Annemaria, the psychologist had just attended a presentation about multiple personality disorder (MPD), learning about the symptoms of dissociation and trauma.  Annemaria was quickly diagnosed with MPD and due to the variety of extreme acting out behaviors she demonstrated within the custody setting, she was given an unusual opportunity.

It was clear that Annemaria was acting out her child abuse history.  She openly admitted to purposefully committing violent crimes so she would be taken out of her abusive home.  It was a brilliant plan for finding safety from her offender-parents.  Unconcerned about the long list of legal charges against her, she knew she would be safer living in residential treatment centers, and she was glad to be there.  No one doubted her abusive past, and a long string of child protection workers advocated for her safety.

As requested, the Court agreed to give Annemaria the longest sentence possible so she could remain in the residential treatment center instead of being forced to go home.  They did this for the preventive safety of the people she would be willing to assault in the future, but also for her own current-day safety and protection.  The Court also ordered that she be given specialized treatment and intensive therapy.

Since she was so violent towards men, she was to be assigned a female staff member, and this staff member was to devote the vast majority of her time to working individually with Annemaria.

This is when Annemaria changed my life.

I was assigned to be Annemaria’s personal staff member.

I knew about sexual abuse, but I didn’t know a thing about MPD.  I had been trained to work with family systems, but I didn’t know anything about internal systems.  But I was thoroughly pleased to have been given the assignment of working with Annemaria.  I knew it would be fascinating work, and frankly, Annemaria and I already had a little bit of a connection.  Afterall, I was the only person in the entire treatment center that she would speak to.

I had two years to work with Annemaria.  We did hours and hours of therapy every week, and even more hours of everyday life-skills work.  She blossomed in that safe, healing environment but for such a young child, her stories of abuse were more than any of the treatment staff could fathom.  Eventually, a non-threatening but strong young man was assigned to assist me during Annemaria’s acting out or heavy-duty memory flashbacks.  She bounced a lot of male anger in his direction, but he handled that like a pro.  The work was tough, and we leaned on each other a lot.  Even so, I developed secondary PTSD, and experienced numerous nightmares after listening to Annemaria’s stories of trauma.  I really hadn’t known such horrors existed.  Talk about a learning curve…  They hadn’t explained ANY of that in grad school!

I had so much to learn.  I had no idea anyone could be abused in the ways that Annemarie described in such vivid detail.  She was only 13.  It had just happened.  She had been abused her whole life, but still… it had just happened!  Even though she was dissociative, she knew a lot about it.

She and I taught each other about two very different worlds.  She taught me about her world, and I taught her about mine.  We both ended those two years in a very different place.

I was truly never the same.

I hope that I impacted her life in the same way.

I also wish I could re-do those two years with Annemaria.  Now that I have had 20 years experience working with MPD – currently called Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) — I would do those first two years very differently.  I’ve learned more about self-injury and how to manage those behaviors effectively.  I’ve learned about depression, anxiety, PTSD and vicarious traumatization.  I’ve learned about flashbacks, amnesia, body memories, and internal system communication.  I’ve learned about organized abuse, the sex slave industry, pornography, and ritual abuse.  NOW I am properly prepared to address the issues that Annemaria was speaking about.

But then?

I just didn’t have a clue.

And how sad was that.
.
.

Today is Annemaria’s day.

And today, while I was recording my BlogTalkRadio show on Internal Communication, I thought of Annemaria.

While I felt confident in explaining how so many things work for DID / MPD, I thought of Annemaria.

I just wish I knew then what I know now.

I could accomplish so much more with Annemaria in two years at this point in time than I could have back in the 80’s when I was new to the field.  It saddens, me in that respect, because I didn’t give to her then what I could give to her now.

But she changed my life.

In fact, she changed the entire course of my life.

I would not be where I am if it were not for Annemaria.

And for that, I owe her a few years of decent therapy.

Annemaria, if you ever find me again, you’ve got yourself a therapist for as long as you need one!

And thank you, Annemaria.

Thank you.

———-

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

July 16, 2009

Being Hated, Feeling Hated, Overcoming Self-Hatred

Posted in Depression, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Family Members of Trauma Survivors, Self Injury, sexual abuse, Therapy and Counseling, Trauma, trauma therapist tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 4:45 pm by Kathy Broady


Practically every dissociative trauma survivor that I have ever spoke to has said to me at some point in time or another, that they have felt hated, truly hated. What’s worse, they didn’t feel hated by strangers — they felt hated by their loved ones. They felt hated by their mothers, their fathers, their siblings, their spouses, their children, their friends. They felt hatred from the very people they cared the most about.

What effect does feeling hated have on someone?

How does this experience change someone’s life?

It’s a natural human response to want to feel liked, loved, cherished, treasured. Children very much want to be the in the spotlight for their parents, the apples of their eyes. They each want to feel special, and to be treated like they are the most important person on earth. This is normal for children. It is part of a natural, normal, healthy development.

What happens if a child does not experience a positive sense of self in early childhood?

What happens if that child feels hated instead of loved?

What if the only time the child feels loved, accepted, appreciated, wanted is during times of sexual abuse?

What happens when abusive parents treat their children in such consistently abusive and neglectful ways that the children are left with feelings of self-hatred instead of self-love and self-acceptance?

What are some of the effects of being hated?

  • Inherent sense of badness and worthlessness
  • Long-term self-hatred and self-loathing
  • Loneliness and Isolation
  • Sadness, emotional pain, emotional scars
  • Self-injury, self-destruction, and suicidal behaviors

Children that are treated with hatred internalize that hatred. Children find it difficult, if not impossible, to blame their parents for their hateful behavior. Instead, children will blame themselves. Children decide it must be their own badness, their own poor behaviors, and their own inadequacies that forced their parents to not love them.

With each violent assault, abusive parents spoke hatred to their children. Even if the words “I hate you” were never said, it was understood clearly enough by the children. In order for their loved ones to purposefully cause so much hurt and harm to them, their parents must have hated them. It is not hard for children to figure out that people causing physical injuries and emotional wounds are acting in hateful ways. Children will feel that hatred to the very core of their being.

Children tend to internalize that hatred as if they deserved it. They decide that they must be bad, they must be worthless, they must “need to be punished”, they must “need to be abused” because of their badness. Children cannot blame their parents — so they blame themselves.

The more the children are treated with hatred, the more the children hate themselves.

They may learn to hate the parents / abusers eventually, but their first response was learning to hate and despise themselves. And the self-hatred isn’t something they just grow out of or leave behind the way they might leave the actual abuse. Self-hatred can continue to affect them for all the years of their life. It is a fundamental part of self-injury behaviors. Without intense self-hatred, survivors would not be nearly so prone to cutting, burning, overdosing, or any other number of self-destructive and suicidal behaviors. It’s not uncommon for trauma survivors to carve or burn “I hate myself” messages into their body, sometimes scarring it for life. I dare say, most survivors that commit suicide were able to do so because of their incredibly deep sense of self-hatred and self-loathing.

People that truly hate themselves don’t want to live with themselves.

It’s equally difficult for people that hate themselves to be in long-term positive relationships. Trauma survivors often find it easier to love someone else more than themselves, but part of being in a positive loving relationship is comfortably accepting the reciprocal love-caring-compassion-support from others. People that inherently hate themselves find it very difficult to believe that they could be loved / lovable. This belief will ultimately (and repeatedly) be noticeable. It will cause problems in those relationships, and it will absolutely undermine the strength of those relationships.

The emotional pain connected to feeling hated digs very deep within the core of the person. It is hard to battle on an intellectual level, and it penetrates into the deepest layers of the person’s being. The emotional wounding caused from feeling hatred is one of the most difficult traumas to heal. Layer upon layer of years of blame, guilt, shame make the self-hatred feel locked into place. It’s just soooo hard to feel differently.

But part of healing from trauma involves healing from that self-hatred. Survivors may not be able to change the behaviors and actions of their perpetrator parents or any other abusers that have acted criminally towards them, but survivors can learn to separate themselves from such hateful people. It will take working with all the parts of the internal system, but then again, remember that healing for all the inside parts is important.

Learn to separate who did what, and what belongs to whom. The person that committed the hateful acts is the creator of the hate. That negativity belongs to them. Hateful people can project their own feelings of hate onto anyone around them. As survivors become old enough to think through the emotional process of their abuse, they can begin to build emotional protection around those kinds of hateful attacks.

Let the hate belong to the ones that sent it. Don’t take it in, don’t claim it as yours, and don’t let it apply to yourself. Picture a strong emotional, spiritual shield around you, and let that protect you from the barbs of the haters. Hold tight to your own feelings of kindness, compassion, caring, gentleness, and know that your own ability to love and to connect are coming from a different place than hatred. Recognize that your ability to genuinely care for your loved ones is proof in itself that you are not to be hated or considered worthless. Your ability to feel genuine kindness, gentleness, patience, and compassion prove that you are a good person, completely different and separate from the haters.

The haters will always be haters. Unless they work on their own deep-seated self-hatred, they will always project hatred onto others.

But you don’t have to accept yourself as a rightful target of their hatred. You don’t have to be one of them. You don’t have to shove hatred in the face of everyone else, and you don’t have to internalize it within yourself. You can be different from that. Let the hatred belong to the ones that it came from. Give it back to the abusers and let them own it for themselves. Don’t contain that for them. You don’t have to accept their hatred as yours when it came from them.

Spend your time in life doing things that you enjoy and let you genuinely feel better about yourself. Connect with the people and animals that you care about, and build bigger boundaries and stronger separations from the people that treat you with hatred. Give positive time and pleasant experiences to the people around you, and let your own behaviors define who you are.

Be a good person, and let the very fact that you are choosing good, positive behaviors define to you that you are not that hated person you once felt you were.

If you want to be a good person, you can be. You are not who your haters say that you are. Let their nasty ways belong to them. You can be someone very different from them.

You can be as good of a person as you want to be. No one else gets to define you — the final word on who you are belong to you, and only you.

__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

July 14, 2009

Split Decisions

Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Internal Communication, sexual abuse, Trauma tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 1:03 pm by Kathy Broady


When you have dissociative identity disorder (DID/MPD), and you’re thinking as a multiple personality — thus having a multitude of different thoughts at once time — it can be very difficult to make decisions.

How do survivors with DID ever make up their minds?
How do survivors with DID decide whose opinion to follow?
How do survivors with DID ever decide what is best for them?
How do survivors with DID sort out having a dozen different opinions at once?

It is complicated to think like a multiple.

There are gaps of missing time, non-sequential pieces of information, jumbled feelings and emotions, snippets of conflicting facts, confusion, voices from the past, fears of more punishment, flashbacks, internal arguing, programmed thoughts, insistent introjects, personal insecurities, etc.  The chaotic internal workings of a dissociative trauma survivor can make it very difficult to think clearly.

Non-dissociative “singletons” (people who do not have multiple personality disorder) can experience simultaneous mixed feelings, opposing thoughts and conflicting perspectives on specific situations as well.  Singletons can write out extensive lists of “pros vs. cons” on any number of situations.  Non-dissociative singletons do not experience just one thought or one feeling at a time either.  They see the big conflicting picture all at once.

So what makes decision making even more difficult for survivors with DID?

All too often, dissociative trauma survivors functioned through the difficult times of their life by separating their thoughts and feelings into individual compartments and using dissociative, amnesiac walls to keep these compartments separated.  Having mixed emotions and conflicting beliefs at the same time was often too much to manage in the middle of a traumatic event.  Dissociative survivors learned to split the different feelings and the different perspectives into different parts of themselves, blocking one perspective away from the other.  It is easier to separate and contain overwhelming conflicting emotions when the two opposing emotions did not have to directly collide with each other.

For example, all children love their parents.  But if a young girl has a father who is sexually abusing her, and a mother that is either pretending not to see that or is helping the father to abuse her, then huge conflicting emotions are going to occur.  The child will want to please her parents, even in this painful abusive situation.  But in order to do that, the child will have to find ways to separate her experience of the parents she loves from the parents who are hurting her.  Dissociating the conflicts into separate parts help this to happen.

  • The child can split off a part of herself that is willing to obey her father even to the point of acting like a passive or promiscuous young child that appears to want to be sexual with the father.
  • She can split off a part of her that feels the physical pain and injury of the assault.
  • She can split off a part of her that contains the intense betrayal by the mother.
  • She can split off a part that holds the emotional pain, deep wounding, and heartbreak of the assault.
  • She can split off a part that holds the anger and rage at having been assaulted by both of her parents.
  • She can split off a part that holds the fear of being violently assaulted by her parents again and again.
  • She can split off a part that is the happy little girl who goes to school the next day,  blocking out all the pain, acting very connected to her parents, not showing any sign of having been through a horrendous assault the night before.

The person as a whole sees the situation as a whole.  But if a dissociative trauma survivor has separated the different feelings and perspectives and kept that information separated locked and blocked behind various dissociative walls, then the survivor is aware of only some of the information at any given point in time.  She is not aware of the whole picture, because she has it dissociated parts of it away from herself.

Dissociative people are accustomed to separating the intense conflicting emotions and managing only one or two at a time.  This might help in the short-run, but it does not help in the long-run.

So how do dissociative trauma survivors make good decisions if they are used to looking at situations from the constraints of one limited perspective at a time?  What happens when they cannot see the situation as a whole?  How can they make a good decision if they cannot put the entire picture together at the same time?

This is a common problem for survivors with DID.  The part of them that sees and recognizes the dangers cannot always communicate with the happy naïve part who is determined to believe she is safe and unharmed.  The ones that believe they are out of harm’s way (and who wouldn’t want to hold tight to that belief?) refuse to connect with the fear, anger, pain of the trauma (because who would want to feel that?!)

The problem is that by not seeing the whole picture at one time, dissociative trauma survivors find themselves tangled into a variety of dangerous situations.  For example, they can bond to dangerous people without recognizing the danger.  They see only as much as the current perspective allows them to see, and they don’t even realize that there is trouble looming in the near future.  By dissociating the perceptions and experiences that might better recognize the danger, dissociative survivors can put themselves in high-risk situations over and over and over again.

Building the strength, the courage, and the willingness to talk to all the other internal parts in your system is key to getting past the dissociative walls and being able to make decisions from a more complete perspective.  Face your difficult emotions, confront the truth of your trauma, listen to all of your inner selves, and recognize that other internal parts have valid information.  No one can make a good decision based on partial information.  Be willing to look at the whole picture.

As you learn to trust your internal parts to give you the rest of the story, you will be less vulnerable to people who aggressively or suggestively tell you what to think.  The more you can trust yourself, the less vulnerable you are to people who would manipulate your thinking by maneuvering behind your dissociative walls.  Predators and perpetrators will have less ammunition to use against you when you can trust your own selves.  They will not be able to abuse you as much if you are aware that it is happening.  The less you dissociate time and information, the more you can appropriately handle life’s current day conflicts.

If you truly know the whole story of what happens in your life, both in the past and in the present, then you are less vulnerable to feeling or thinking or believing something just because someone else more aggressive tells you that you do.  You can learn to connect to and trust in your own thoughts or feelings or beliefs, and to make your own assessment of a situation based on that.

Look at the whole picture and think for yourself.

__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

June 28, 2009

Protecting Your Inner Self from Perpetrators

Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, mental health, Mind Control, Ritual Abuse, Therapy and Counseling, Trauma, trauma therapist tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 9:08 pm by Kathy Broady


Trauma survivors know all about perpetrators.  Dissociative trauma survivors know all about sadistic perpetrators.  Dissociative trauma survivors with a background in ritual abuse, or mind control, or sex slavery organizations know all about truly evil perpetrators.

Those of us in the world who were not directly exposed to such darkness have a hard time grasping its depth.  It seems surreal to us.  Unfathomable.  While many therapists may truly believe “in their heads” that abuse and evil exist in this world, having that head knowledge is still a far cry from truly knowing and experiencing yourself as the target of evil.

I’ve been working almost exclusively with dissociative trauma survivors for over 20 years, and I have listened to and believed what my clients have told me. I know the politically correct answer is to say that I can neither confirm nor deny the abuse of others, but let’s face it.  Either trauma therapists believe their clients were genuinely abused or they need to get out of the field and go work somewhere else.

But do therapists really know what evil is? I dare to say, no, most do not.

They have head knowledge, but most mental health therapists have not experienced evil.  They haven’t been the target of a predator.  They haven’t had their soul ravaged or clawed into.  They haven’t had their body destroyed or ripped apart.  Of course, there are some wounded healers that have truly been able to rise above their own traumas and actually do have a genuine sense of how deeply evil can wound, but these are a rare find.

(But be careful, there are far too many wounded who should spend more time on their own healing before jumping into the helping profession.  If you happen to find a therapist that truly has done their own healing, then you are very fortunate – that person will be able to help you.  But please watch out for the professionals who are still mid-process.  They can cause a lot more harm than they might mean to cause.)

Despite my sheltered upbringing, in the past few years, I have been getting a deeper grasp on how cold and evil people can be.  I’ve had a closer look at the destructive handiwork of predators.  Initially it took me off-guard, because I really believed in the goodness of people.  I was raised to trust, to forgive, to love, and to see the best in others, and I do that easily.

So being targeted by the calculated coldness of predators has been quite an eye-opening experience.  I still shake my head in surprise, completely amazed at how vicious people can be.   The lies, the twists, the deception – the depths to which people will sink when they have no conscience to guide them – it’s totally mind boggling to someone raised by a family who truly believed in goodness.

How does someone protect themselves from blatant attacks by a predator trying to destroy them?  When someone is trying to rip at your very core, how do you stay safe and solid within yourself?

First, know that they don’t know you.  They know what they want you to be, but they don’t know who you truly are apart from them.   As a result, they don’t speak the truth about you, or about anyone.  They speak through the tools of their trade.  They tells lies, they create deception, because these are the things they know.  They know darkness, and they know cold, calculated, purposeful destruction of people.  Yes, they purposefully work to destroy good people.  But they are not you.  And they are not me.

You don’t have to listen to them.  You don’t have to believe them.  You don’t have to be who or what they say you are.  You don’t have to do what they say to do or think what they tell you to think.  They are flat wrong in their words, their actions, and their motives.  Learn who you truly are, apart from their lies and their manipulations and their tricks.  Learn to think for yourself, neither in obedience to them nor in reaction to them, and that will help you to separate yourself from them.

And believe in your true self.  Your life, your beliefs, your heart, and your soul belong to what you are willing to fight for and to what you stand for when there is nobody but you yourself telling you where to stand.  You don’t have to give any of yourself away to the dark, cold emptiness of a predator.  If you know and connect to your true self, that alone can be a protection against any predatory attack on your self.  Knowing who you truly are is an armor against the lies and tricks intended to destroy you or hurt you by telling you who and what you are.

And learn how to compassionately love.  Hold onto that gentle love you feel, and never let it go.  Evil does not love.  If you can genuinely love and care for others, you are not one of them.  Stand solid in the knowledge of your own goodness, your spiritual faith, your strengths, and your ability to think and to feel and to love.  Let that repel the evil away from you.

Separate yourself from them.  Know who you are apart from them.

And stay far away from them.  The best protection you can have is not to give them the opportunity to say or do anything to you.  Protect yourself.  If you know that somebody is a predator or a perpetrator, stay away from them.

Because you are not them. And they are not you.

You do not belong to them, no matter how much they come after you.

You do not belong to them, no matter what they did to you or what they said to you or what they made you do.

Stay true to yourself, and be who you are.  Be who you truly are.  And let the power of compassionate love overcome any darkness that tries to change you.

If you forget, remember the beauty and simplicity in an opening quote from the movie, “The Notebook”:

“I am no one special – just a common man, with common thoughts.  I’ve led a common life.  There are no monuments dedicated to me, and my name will soon be forgotten.  But in one respect, I’ve succeeded as gloriously as anyone who has ever lived.

I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and for me, that is always good enough.“

__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

June 25, 2009

When a Perpetrator Dies….

Posted in DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Self Injury, Trauma tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 8:26 pm by Kathy Broady


Did you experience the social earthquake today?

The sudden death of Michael Jackson today has caught everyone by surprise.

Will he be more remembered as the King of Pop?  Or will he be forever remembered as a suspected child molester?

Everyone will have strong views about it, I’m sure.  I can’t even begin to imagine all the controversies that are going to be brought back to the surface.

The death of a famous celebrity icon affects so many people.  Early unexpected deaths of the rich and famous create a public stir for months and years to come.  Everyone talks about it.  Even twitter was overloaded with the breaking news. Anyone that sang and danced along with some of his songs will feel the loss.  Every choreographer will feel a sting and sadness.  We’ll see new books, new articles, new blog posts.  His face will be on magazine covers and newspaper headlines and in every version of media that we have.

In fact, it’s already on the news, online, in twitter, in chatrooms, on the radio, on television, in blogs – the news is everywhere!  Everyone is talking about it, and everyone is asking everyone else if they have heard about it.

Even Farrah Fawcett’s death today will be overshadowed by the controversial Jackson’s death.

Thousands and thousands and thousands of people will feel the reverberations of the news.  It’s like a social earthquake.

While maybe not as public or as clearly visible, the death of a perpetrator can wreak havoc on a survivor’s life, also for days and months and years to come.  For trauma survivors with dissociative identity disorder, all the different parts within the internal system will feel the news with just as much shock.

Sometimes, abuse victims feel safer talking and telling about their trauma after their perpetrator dies.  I don’t know if or how that will apply to the children near the Michael Jackson situation, but it is very common with other survivors of sexual abuse.

When survivors feel intimidated by, scared of, threatened by their perpetrators, it is not unusual for those survivors to keep the secrets of their abuse tucked inside them until after their perpetrators pass away.

Survivors may do this purposefully, or their dissociative walls may simply have been strong enough to hold all that information back even without the survivor’s awareness.

Survivors with DID systems will often feel all kinds of internal changes taking place with the death of a major perpetrator.  There will be all kinds of internal movement, and shifting.  There will be an internal earthquake.

How do survivors with dissociative identity disorder experience this earthquake?

A.  Noticeable Decrease in Dissociation
Deaths of perpetrators can make dissociative walls crumble, emphasizing the point that those dissociative walls were there for safety and survival reasons in the first place.

When there is less likelihood of ongoing abuse, the need for dissociative walls is decreased significantly.  When the walls come down, the now-unblocked information reconnects back to the parts that initially dissociated it away.  Different parts of the system will be learning all kinds of new information, and experiencing new feelings.

B.   Memories of abuse, incident after incident, can come crashing through.  PTSD flashbacks and other PTSD symptoms will increase.

Why does this happen?

After the fear of dealing with their perpetrator in current day life subsides, and once the survivor feels safer, all kinds of memories can come flooding back.  Child parts or even older parts with trauma memories will come to the surface, each wanting, hoping for, needing time to talk about what happened to them.  The host of the system may feel overwhelmed by the sudden need of so many trauma-holding parts to have time to talk, and needing time to heal.  The pain attached to these parts will be intense.

C.  Increased Activity by Internal Introjects
Internal introjects may be kicked into greater action, feeling the need to replace the external perpetrator by taking a more vigorous role in the daily life of the dissociative survivor.  Some internal introjects were taught and trained to respond when the external perpetrator was no longer visible.  The internal perpetrator introject will try to carry on in the same manner, just to keep the status quo.

D.  The Emergence of New Alter Personalities
New alters may finally feel brave enough to step forward and speak about their life story, including trauma memories.  They may not have felt comfortable appearing until the perpetrator was dead and gone.

E. Increased Denial
While some parts may be happy and thrilled about the death of the perpetrator, other parts will fight that reality with all their being.  These parts with an attachment to the perpetrator will need time to explore and process their feelings, and to explain why they were so connected to the perpetrators.  Oftentimes, these are the parts that were treated kindly, and any abuse would have been framed in a more positive connotation.  These parts simply will not want to accept or believe that the external perpetrator is dead.  They will see the internal introject of the perpetrator and transfer much of their loyalty to this part.

F. Increased Pull for Self-Harm and Suicidal Activity
Many survivors will react to the death of a perpetrator with increased self-harm or suicidal activity.  The self-harm could be a physical effort of shoving back all the memories and feelings, to regain control.  It could also be an acting out of the trauma memories they are experiencing.  Sometimes survivors feel pulled to commit suicide from the need to be with their dead perpetrator.  When a survivor is experiencing these symptoms, it is imperative to work through the historical causes and beliefs that are supporting such extreme behaviors.

G. Emotional Relief
While experiencing safety from ongoing abuse of this perpetrator, the healthiest goal is for survivors to feel their sadness, their pain, their fear, their anger, etc.  So many feelings get contained away, but once it becomes ok to feel, there is a big release when those feelings can surface.  When survivors can truly allow themselves to address their fear, their anger, and grieve the loss of their perpetrator, they will be much further down the road in their emotional recovery.

All these internal events certainly cause emotional earthquakes in the lives of dissociative trauma survivors.  All of these issues can be addressed effectively in therapy, and many of these issues can be avoided by preparing ahead of time.

If you haven’t worked on breaking the bonds with your perpetrators until after they die, you will have a harder time after their death.  If you have worked on these issues ahead of time, the emotional earthquake won’t be as devastating.

__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

June 20, 2009

Believing a Lie – the Foundation of Dissociation

Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, mental health, Physical Abuse, Ritual Abuse, sexual abuse, Trauma, trauma therapist tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 12:22 pm by Kathy Broady


.

What makes it difficult for trauma survivors with dissociative identity disorder to know the truth?

How easy is it to trick someone with DID with a lie?

When are survivors lying to themselves?

When does dissociation block out information to know the difference?

When does pain, especially emotional pain, become the deciding factor in what survivors believe, regardless of truth?

When does the viciousness of perpetrators demand and create particular beliefs and realities?

Is dissociation built on lying to yourself?

.

I recently saw a situation where a DID survivor could not accept the truth.   Despite the facts that pointed to the obvious, the dissociative survivor was determined to believe what her closest confidants had said.  She trusted these loved ones completely, but these were the very people who were completely invested in hiding the secret from her.  Accepting the truth would have been far too painful, and she fought that reality with all the strength and vigor that she had.  She was angry.  She threw out rationalizations.  She projected blame onto others. She railed back through time, pulling out circumstantial evidence that could support her beliefs. She argued like a court room lawyer.  She completely protected her position with every psychological defense available to her.

And she believed the lie.

Because to not believe the lie would have been utterly and completely devastating for her.

So she couldn’t let herself go there.  Not even for a moment.

She absolutely, without question, had to deny the truth and hear only what she could stand to hear.  She had to stay true to her preferred beliefs and rationalizations.  She couldn’t risk losing everything by believing the conflicting information.  The cost of believing the truth was too high.  To believe the truth would have hurt too much, so it was necessary for her to completely refute the truth.

At first I wondered how this survivor could be so staunchly set in her beliefs, even in the face of clear and direct evidence of the contrary.  I marveled at the intensity of her denial, and felt a deep sadness for her.  I was amazed at how completely sold she was on the lie – she would have fought to the death to defend that as truth.

But then I understood.

Believing the truth would have been enormously painful for her.

She would have had to believe that her loved ones betrayed her – that they hurt her beyond comprehension.

How could she believe that?

It would have cost her too much.  To accept the betrayal would have meant she was alone.  It would have completely broken her heart. It would have meant her loved ones abused her.  It would have meant that her trust and faith in them was shattered. It would have created an emotional pain so huge that her body would have felt seared to the core.  It would have left her feeling broken on more levels than words can say.

She would have wanted to die before accepting that truth as a reality.

Yet the truth was so obvious that it seemed undeniable, so it was mind boggling to see the intensity of the denial that could prevent her from seeing the truth standing right before her eyes.

And then I realized I was seeing something stronger than denial.

I was seeing the beginning of a dissociative split.

Dissociation – complete dissociation – is an emotional protection strategy that totally and completely removes painful realities from the mind and body of the survivor.

When the pain of accepting a trauma is too huge, dissociative people split.  They get rid of the excruciatingly painful information by dissociating it.  They don’t accept it as happening to them, and they make it be gone.

They completely refute the truth even as it is happening to them, and they completely separate that painful reality from themselves, blocking it off, locking it away, keeping it as far from themselves as possible.  Thick dissociative walls keep that horrendous information away from them.  It protects them from feeling that unbearable pain.

If they don’t want to believe they were being sexually abused, or physically abused, or spiritually abused, or emotionally abused, or ritually abused, they use that same intensity to tell themselves it wasn’t happening to them.  It doesn’t belong to them.  It was happening to someone else – anyone else – just not to them.

They weren’t betrayed by their loved ones.  They weren’t hurt and destroyed by their loved ones.  That just didn’t happen.  Not to them.  And if it happened to somebody else, they didn’t want to know about it.  Not now, not ever.  That bad news had to be totally and completely separated from themselves.  It had to belong to someone that was not them.   It could NOT be happening to them.

And so they protect themselves from the heart-wrenching truth.

They need to believe the lie.  They want to believe the lie.  The lie feels better than the truth.

Believing the lie that “it didn’t happen” is the very foundation of dissociation.

As understandable as it may be, every time you split, you believed the lie that it wasn’t happening to you.

Ouch.

It still hurts.  It hurts a lot.

And yet, finding the courage to face the truth in the present is as necessary for your healing as dissociating the truth away once was necessary for your survival.

__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

June 13, 2009

Body Memories – The Body Remembering

Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, One Life to Live, sexual abuse, therapy, Trauma, trauma therapist tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 1:58 pm by Kathy Broady


In the television show “One Life To Live” — Bess tried to rescue Jessica one more time by taking baby Chloe and going on the run.  Their secret had gotten out — baby Chloe belonged to someone else and the dear little one was not Jessica’s baby at all.

Tess was angry with Bess for trying this last stunt.  Every time Bess looked in the mirror, she would see Tess’s angry face making comments to her.  Tess had plenty to say — she was not at all impressed with Bess.

Meanwhile, Jessica was tucked way down inside.  She had no awareness that she had driven hundreds of miles away from her home.  She didn’t know she was in trouble or that she was about to lose her baby.  She wasn’t aware of much of anything.

Despite Tess’s protests, Bess was determined to do what she defined as protection of Jessica.  It was Bess’s mastermind plan to switch the babies so that Jessica would never know that her own baby had died at birth.  She was determined to never let Jessica feel the pain of having lost her baby.  She really believed she was helping by hiding out of town.

But they were found.  Their safe person, Broady, found them.  (That’s quite an appropriate name for the safe person, don’t you think?!!!) :)

With the secret out, Bess had no other option but to let Jessica remember the truth of what had happened.  Bess did not know if Jessica was strong enough to handle the emotional pain, but there was no more blocking out the reality or dissociating away the truth.   Jessica was going to remember.

And Jessica did remember.

Painfully, reliving minute by minute, even having body memories of giving birth to her child, Jessica remembered detail after detail of the incident that had previously been totally dissociated from her awareness.  For months, Bess had completely held those memories from Jessica, but the dissociative walls between the two of them were no longer necessary.  Bess was letting Jess remember.

Jessica remembered going into labor, birthing the child, and seeing that her child had been stillborn.  She recalled the plan of switching her baby for another newly born baby, and she knew that she had to return baby Chloe to her rightful mother.

Jessica was addressing her pain.   She was remembering in an emotional and physical way.  She felt the labor pains, and recalled the birth of her baby as if it was happening all over again.  She felt the emotional agony of losing her child.  She remembered all that had been dissociated from her awareness.

And she was strong enough to handle the pain. And by doing so, she will be able to heal.

The writers of “One Life to Live” provided a fairly accurate portrayal of this process, for sexual abuse survivors with dissociative identity disorder even if it was fast-forwarded in typical soap opera fashion.  But for a television show, they did pretty good.

In real life, body memories are a common occurrence for trauma survivors.

For most survivors, the body memories are much more involved, and occur as a much longer process.  They will happen more frequently, and not come in such a neat package.  But the point is, the body will remember the trauma, and the body will feel the same physical sensations all over again as it “tells the story” of what happened.

Body memories are the body’s way of remembering, storing, and telling the trauma.  The survivor’s mind may have blocked out the pain and created dissociative walls around the traumatic experience, but the physical body itself can remember the trauma through cellular memory.

Sometimes survivors experience the body memories separately from intellectual understanding or emotional remembrance of what happened during the trauma.  Dissociative survivors will feel intense body pain and have no idea why they are hurting.  When the body remembers the traumatic incident at a different time from when the mind remembers the incident, it can feel very crazy making.  The therapeutic goal is to put the various pieces together so that the survivor can work through, process, and heal from the memory as a whole.

The body feels the trauma in much the same as in the original incident and the various physical attitudes occur as if the trauma was happening all over again.  The physical pain, shaking, trembling, jerking, physical reactions, intensity, and various body responses happen in a similar fashion as in the original trauma.

For most sexual abuse survivors, body memories will also involve feelings of pleasure or physical response.  This creates a particularly difficult emotional dilemma for the survivors, as it is difficult to reconcile the pleasure responses that occurred during the middle of an abusive event.  But the body, being a biological entity, cannot distinguish safe touch from abuse, and if stimulated correctly, it will naturally respond.  Survivors often feel a great deal of shame about this reality, and will need to discuss this situation in their therapy.

Body memories are an important piece of the healing work.  The body can say a lot about the incidents of abuse, and it really is impossible to re-create a body memory when there was no memory in the first place.

Because of that, body memories are often helpful in breaking through the denial layers of dissociation.  The body may remember moments of the abuse that were too emotionally difficult for the survivors to manage, but by truly listening to their bodies, survivors can learn a great deal about their histories.

What is your body saying to you?

What does your body remember that your mind refuses to think about?

What does your body remember that you don’t want to hear?

What will it take for you to listen to your body?  Your body was there for the abuse too.  Maybe it knows more than you think it does.

__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

Next page

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,253 other followers