Too often, trauma survivors keep their bad days hidden because they’re worried about what people will think, even though the bad days are when you need help the most.
I have definitely done this due to hurtful things people said to me in the past after confiding my PTSD in the wrong people.
I’ve been told I need to let my sexual abuse go…that I have control over my thoughts, so if I’m reliving the trauma it’s because I want to or that I’m seeking attention /sympathy. I’ve been told I’m crazy, too dark, or just plain hopeless.
Find people who will work to understand you and love you through your bad days.
Forewarning: This book is intended for the brokenhearted person stumbling through life looking for meaning — trying to end their pain. It is a tough read by all measures. If you have been through trauma, take good care while reading it. It will open wounds.
The audiobook will be available in about two weeks.
From the book A Prisoner by No Crime of My Own,
Chapter 9 – Trains, Planes & Automobiles
“Let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. Start there.”
– Cheryl Strayed from Tiny Beautiful Things
My brother had moved to Hawaii to run from illicit-drug complications at home and began working for Hawaiian air. Richard was a brick mason and belonged to an international union that had an office on Oahu. We decided to move our family to Hawaii and rent a place with my brother. After a very short year, we returned to the mainland and moved into a small town in Washington.
My oldest daughter, Brit, was in kindergarten and my little one, Brooke, was just three. I was a stay-at-home home in those days – the best job I’ve ever had. My girls were opposite in nature but close. Their thick dark blonde hair, beautiful skin, and striking eyes showed sisterhood.
One night, we had a party at a friend’s house and Richard left to run to the store. The girls and I went home because he still hadn’t returned by nightfall. About 4 or 5am, he came home.
The next day, I received a call from an angry husband, screaming on the phone, “Your husband did coke with my wife last night. I need to talk to him – now!”
Richard took the phone from my ear and hung up. I was devastated. I was just like my mom in the sense that this was now my family. He was my husband. I didn’t want to share him. I wanted him to be devoted to our family. But this was my normal by now, still too broken to leave.
I tried to write whenever I could. When Brooke was a baby, I had a vision of this book. On the cover was a woman wearing a prison-issued dress sitting on a concrete floor. One window cast a shadow on her downtrodden appearance. The title of the book was, A Prisoner by No Crime of My Own.
When I see people who had a decent childhood (and I mean, even sub-par) or relationships with literally anyone in their extended family, or support from family with their children, etc etc etc. Sometimes I feel a rage boil up. It feels like it is bursting flames, like a windstorm spreading in all directions.
I immediately judge myself and then feel shame for feeling this way. I try to coach myself out of these thoughts…or scold myself. But more and more, I’m trying to listen, to dig, to get curious.
And often, I see a pretty simple message: an empty place, a place that feels loveless and unloved. A place so dark and cold that I don’t want to remember or visit anymore. I lived through horrible horrible things and sometimes I just want to forget. But it’s never that simple. There is no forgetting…our bodies will always find a way to remind us.
Then, I can see, that I need to care about this pain, that I accept and love this grieving place.
Offering a compassionate and clear attention to my vulnerability has connected me with a vastness of being that could include my pain.
Question — If you could attack anything, what would you attack?
In my first marriage, my wusband cheated over and over and over. I never wanted to be anger with the women he cheated with. My contract was with him. I wanted to attack him.
My father got away with murder. I never wanted to be anger at the police for not being able to intervene more, I was anger at my father.
My mother has never stood for me, never protected or loved me. She has feigned for the audiences of life and for her own control that she wants to help, but I know its nonsense. Help comes through admission. Period! I don’t charge other abusive, controlling woman with who my mother is. There was a time I wanted to attack them all. But, I mostly want to attack her.
What is my point with all this?
Find the real source of your pain, your agony. So often in life we project our anger and attack things that have nothing to do with the real source.
Ask yourself who it is that you are most angry with.
You don’t have to fear anger just use it appropriately and apply it accurately.
How many times does history have to repeat itself before we learn that values matter? Families matter. Moral courage matters. Honor and integrity matter. Not only for individual happiness and prosperity, but for the good and strengthening of society.
Which fails us first…The family or society? Too many parents become distracted by all that society is offering, and they fail to focus time and instruction toward their children. Children, having no guidance because of absent parents, become swayed by what society is offering, and the cycle continues, but compounds with each new generation.
Now add trauma to this mix. It’s a recipe for utter and total annihilation. Most children never recover. With nobody to catch them when they fall, they turn to outside sources to sooth their pain – drugs, sex, addictions of every kind.
Disconnection is the name of the game. Where parents put their own needs above their children’s needs. When society values progress and capital above all else. When we ignore the huge underbelly of childhood sexual abuse….we will never heal.
What does deity stand for? It is any supernatural being worshipped as controlling some part of the world or some aspect of life or who is the personification of a force.
A personification of a force?
This sounds like a description of every abuser I have known. They play God in the life of their victims. No wonder it is so hard to break the cycle of abuse.
But, supernatural?
To the abused, they seem to have a supernatural quality. They have a way of knowing, their control insidious, their deception is from another world.
Why do I care?
The only way to unweave the patterns of abuse is to understand them. The disguises they wear. The manipulation they bring. We cannot fall prey to their habitual patterns. The undoing of these patterns is what sets us free.
I am a Christian. I believe in the eternal son of God. I do not, however, believe in much of the Christianese approach to healing for the brokenhearted. The clichés religious people throw around about forgiving and forgetting. Let’s not talk about such things. Keep that shit in the closet and on and on their rhetoric goes. Be a good Christian and keep your brokenness covered up.
The God I know speaks out loud and He encourages me too, also. The only deity I submit to is His authority. I like that. It has kept me free.
Trauma is not just “in your head”. It leaves a real, physical imprint on your body, jarring your memory storage processes and changing your brain.
How many of you have nightmares or anxiety dreams related to your trauma? Remember : PTSD nightmares aren’t always exact replays of the event. Sometimes they replay the emotions you felt during the event, such as fear, helplessness, and sadness.
Some researchers think nightmares may be an intense expression of the body working through traumatic experiences, so intense that the nightmare causes the sleeper to wake up. Nightmares may also represent a breakdown in the body’s ability to process trauma.
Consequently, poor sleep affects all aspects of your life. From your mood (causing irritability and stress) to increased arousal caused by the anxiety. This ends up being a vicious cycle that ends up continuing to affect your sleep and adds to your PTSD symptoms.
I feel so wiped out emotionally after a nightmares. And it’s proven that people experience real, bodily effects after traumatic dreams. Emotions and stress experienced in dreams can have very real emotional and physiological consequences… which again, can intensify symptoms.
But just like memories, the dreams that they can help produce are best talked about, written down, discussed in therapy and investigated. Doing this, makes the intangible, tangible and allows us to get support and work through these horrible nighttime woes.
Tears have streamed down my face as I’ve been offered let down after let down in life.
Example: My oldest daughter is hit in the face by her father. The police come and arrest him. During the interview, she tells the police officer and later child protective services that her father sexually abused her.
Outcome: No charges were ever brought. He stayed one night in jail for hitting her. Case over.
Example: Under no hypnosis at any time, I recall the detail of witnessing a murder. I build a case using my own money. I hire an PI to help me. I put together a notebook for what I’ve found and bring it to the police. They open a case and investigate.
Outcome: No charges or closure. Case closed based on a statement my mother made in 1968 securing an alibi for my father today.
Sometimes, I have wanted to rage! Cry! Scream. Instead, I internalize, shut down, and walk around believing that life holds no justice.
There were years when I just couldn’t control my anger. I used self-harm to shut it down but it came seeping out of my pours. I was pissed off at a world that didn’t, and still doesn’t, listen to most victims.
Using spoken and written words has helped me relieve some of the suffering. I’ve been asked why my book is so graphic in detailing the abuse. I can assure you it took courage to write that detail, damning my efforts to deny my past, but I had to. The story could only be told from the perspective of full truth. Every time I’d read a book on healing, I wanted the whole story — not a story told through a third-party counselor. I wanted to read a story that would make my pain easier. I wanted to read a book that sifted through the bullshit and told the honest, painful experience.
I couldn’t find that book, so I wrote it. Grab your copy today and walk with on the journey of healing. My prayer is that you will find yourself and your whole story through my words.
Warning: This book is not attended as a light read. It will trigger you and my prayer is that those triggers will lead you further into healing.
Some of the patterns of treating ourselves unkindly start early on, in our homes, from the very people who are meant to keep us safe and feeling loved.
When I was a teen, after my father left, I picked up where he had left off. Didn’t even skip a beat really.
When your abuser is hyper critical of you, you become overly critical of yourself.
When they neglect you, you learn to neglect yourself.
When they abandon you, you learn to abandon yourself.
When they treat you hatefully, you learn to hate yourself.
Soon, abuse becomes second nature. Sometimes it even feels better than the happier alternative.
These patterns are hard, but not impossible, to reprogram. Once you see that what was told you about yourself was a lie, the healing becomes easier.
