So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialized, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it gives you the opportunity to define your own reality. You can say: This did happen to me. It was that bad. It was the fault & responsibility of the adult. I was—and am—innocent.” The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass & Laura Davis
I opened my louvres and looked at Comfort, walking in the heavy rain, crying bitterly. I heard mom saying, Anywhere you want to go, you can, but don't come back again to this house. Comfort was beautiful, but her stealing attributes brought reproach on her and painted her beauty with dark impressions. I looked at her, walking barefooted on the muddy ground congested with rain water.
In the 1980s, research on post traumatic stress disorder in Vietnam veterans was regarded as important, noble, and useful. When the same researchers looked at the same problem in children who had been sexually abused, a tremendous controversy ensued a controversy that persists to this day. There were those who disputed the extent and severity of the sexual abuse that had been uncovered.
With emotional abuse, the insults, insinuations, criticism, and accusations slowly eat away at the victim’s self-esteem until he or she is incapable of judging a situation realistically. He or she may begin to believe that there is something wrong with them or even fear they are losing their mind. They have become so beaten down emotionally that they blame themselves for the abuse.
Somehow it felt familiar, an old story retold, the claws in my shoulder, my arms twisted behind my back, the drag down the street, Will assisting my father and thinking how much fun it was to hunt someone down. I knew it all. Each snarled command was a line from an old but faithless song. “Pipe down! I’m not going to hurt you! I just want to talk to you! This is for your own good!
Cheryl's growing awareness of her emotional difficulties was leading her to research multiple personality. As she had learned more about dissociation, she realised just how severe the abuse had been and how much she had been hurt. Her mind had dissociated to assure survival during the abuse by her father and it had been forced to dissociate by various researchers in government programmes.
Being a victim is supposed to set you free; it acquits you of any agency, any sense of responsibility to the person who did you harm. It's not your fault, they say. Leave him, they say. Nobody ever tells you what to do if leaving isn't an option.They just call you stupid. A dumb bitch.Sympathy is only meted out if you follow all ofsociety's rules for how a victim is supposed to behave.
When he removed his robes, you could see the hundreds of scars and bruises that shamelessly decorated his body. Huge black bruises, long scars that came from sword lacerations and whips and new wounds that bled fresh red blood.The Dragonboy's father had no idea his son suffered. That's because the boy never told.From The Binding, a story from the upcoming tenth update of Dragons and Cicadas
When I deny the seriousness of my abuse I agree with my abuser and those who wouldn't acknowledge it. When I am in denial, I have the tendency to minimize my abuse, believe the lies others have said, as well as deny it ever happened. It is important for me to remember as much detail as I can so I can trust my own perceptions of what really happened and not depend on the validations from others.
I've told you, there's no point keeping those. They're not tax-deductible,' my dad thundered.'I think you'll find they are,' raged my mum like some sort of feral animal (a badger with TB perhaps).'They're not. You only get VAT back on lunches outside of a 50-mile radius from your place of residence. You effing bitch,' he seemed to add, with his eyes, I imagined.
And could you, from a place of love, actually stand up and, use force, to give someone back, the suffering, they were trying to put on you? Would I do it? Maybe it would even be, an act of fierce compassion, as Enso Roshi sometimes talked about, to not take it any more. To not cow down, anymore. To let my father know, the tyrant, the aggressor, that if he hits me, I’m going to hit back, and hard.
The central attitudes driving the Drill Sergeant are:I need to control your every move or you will do it wrong.I know the exact way that everything should be done.You shouldn’t have anyone else — or any thing else — in your life besides me.I am going to watch you like a hawk to keep you from developing strength or independence.I love you more than anyone in the world, but you disgust me. (!!)
I have learned that I will not change the world, Jesus will do that. I can however, change the world for one person. I can change the world for fourteen little girls and for four hundred schoolchildren and for a sick and dying grandmother and for a malnourished, neglected, abused five-year old. And if one persons sees the love of Christ in me, it is worth every minute. In fact, it is worth spending my life for.
I want everyone that has been abused by someone in their childhood to know that you can get past it. Having DID is not the end of the world; it's the beginning of your new life. DID allows the victim of exceptional abuse the ability to “forget” the abuse and continue living. Without it, I may have gone crazy as a teen and spent my life in a as a teen and spent my life in a psychiatric hospital.
The National Security Agency’s capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A. could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.
