[Book study - July 12, 2009]

The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
(Third Edition, 1994)
by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis

Part Two: The Healing Process
A Stage of Healing: Remembering

[Table of Contents]

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Green text: Quotes/Summaries from the book
Gray text: My words

This transformative work (the entire series of blog posts relating to this book) constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright law.

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The experience of remembering abuse varies greatly from survivor to survivor. Many women have always remembered their abuse. They may have minimized its importance, denied its impact on their lives, or been numb to their feelings, but they have never forgotten the events themselves.

Other survivors have selective or partial memory. They remember some occurrences but not others. Survivors sometimes remember physical or emotional abuse but not the sexual assaults. Or they may remember the context in which the abuse took place but not the specific physical events. There are also survivors who don’t remember anything about their abuse until the memories come crashing – or seeping in.

There is no right or wrong when it comes to remembering. You may have numerous memories. Or you may have just one. When you begin to remember, you might have new images every day for weeks. Or you may experience your memories in clumps – several in a matter of days, then none for months. Sometimes survivors remember one abuser or a specific kind of abuse, only to remember, years later, another abuser or a different form of abuse.

Photo by Martin Chen

If memories come to you in fragments, you may find it hard to place them in any kind of chronological order. You may not know exactly when the abuse began, how old you were, or when it stopped. The process of understanding the fragments can be like putting together a jigsaw puzzle or being a detective.

All memories may not be literal representations of what happened. Some may be symbolic or may represent an aspect of the trauma, but not be wholly accurate. Yet there is an essential emotional truth to our memories, which can tell us a lot about how the experience has affected us.

Flashbacks are memories that are so vivid that you feel as though the original experience is happening again now, rather than just being remembered. Flashbacks may be accompanied by the feelings you felt at the time, or they may be stark and detached, like watching a movie about somebody else’s life.

Flashbacks are often visual, but that can involve any of the senses. What you heard, saw, smelled, tasted, felt, or thought can return with such immediacy that you actually relive the original experience.

Sense memory: Often it is a particular touch, smell, or sound that triggers a memory. You might remember when you return to the town, the house, or the room where the abuse took place – or when you smell a certain aftershave the abuser wore.

The body remembers what the mind chooses to forget. Memories can remain stored in our bodies – in sensations, feelings, and physical responses. Even if we do not know what took place, fragments of what we suffered endure. You may be assailed by unexplained physical pain or arousal, fear, confusion or any other sensory aspect of the abuse. You may physically re-experience the terror, your body may clutch tight, or you may feel that you are suffocating and cannot breathe.

Times When Survivors Remember

Memories come up under many different circumstances, often with some event or situation setting off the process. Sometimes women remember abuse when there is sufficient safety for the memories and feelings to emerge.

On the other hand, difficult or painful times may precede remembering. You may experience a loss, such as divorce or the death of a loved one, and feel as though everything in your life is unraveling. A contemporary event that resembles the original abuse can also trigger memories. Some women, for instance, have recalled childhood abuse when they were raped or attacked in adult life.

But memories don’t always surface in such dramatic ways. While talking with a friend, one woman suddenly heard herself talking about being abused as a child for the first time. “It’s as though I always knew it,” she explained, “It’s just that I hadn’t thought about it in twenty or thirty years. Up until that moment, I’d forgotten.”

Many survivors remember their abuse once they get sober, quit drugs, or stop eating compulsively. These and other addictions can effectively numb your feelings and block any recollection of the abuse, but once you stop, the memories often surface.

Other survivors remember at key milestones such as when they become a mother or after a significant death. Also, media coverage of someone else’s sexual assault or abuse can trigger the remembering.

Guest Post

Today, I am honored to publish a guest post written by Evan Hadkins. Evan lives in Canberra, Australia, where he works in the mental health arena. He writes a fabulous blog, Wellbeing and Health, which deals with all aspects of health (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and social), with an emphasis on psychology and personal development. His current post discusses how he is becoming comfortable in his own skin — which is a topic that is very relevant to the subject matter discussed on this blog.

He also posts articles on the website Counselling Resource, which provides information on counseling and mental health resources. Finally, he is a writer of books and a developer of personal development courses. You can learn more about his books and courses at the Living Authentically website.

Evan has written this article specifically in response to my previous post (Can’t stop talking about it). In this article, he provides us with a better understanding of why a person commonly thinks and talks obsessively about the abuse during the “emergency stage” of the healing process.

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Learning from Our Obsessions

I think we humans have a need for meaning – to draw conclusions about what we’ve experienced, to reflect on what has happened to us, to learn from past mistakes and successes. I think this is a big part of developing our sense of who we are.

We may leave a tradition that we grew up in and decide to do things differently to the way we were taught; nevertheless, we are usually shaped in some way by the tradition or our up-bringing. It often affects the meaning we attach to our history – and it can have consequences that, in some ways, can look quite funny. For example, because I decided early on that “I am unacceptable because I’m incompetent”, I wanted to do everything well.

Selflessness Forest by Martin Chen

Just like I decided I was incompetent, we all make decisions about who we are based upon the meaning we give our history. If you find that one of your decisions is a problem for you – that it seems inaccurate – you will want to re-decide. When I realized I had a problem with the idea I was incompetent, I decided again.

My temptation is to show that I have done this re-decision well – to show that I know the steps and understand them thoroughly – in short, to show that I did the re-decision competently. Likewise, a perfectionist may learn that perfectionism leads to misery and will try to undo the impact of perfectionism – systematically, thoroughly, and completely (in short, perfectly).

Sometimes we struggle to find meaning in a situation and it affects our ability to make accurate decisions about ourselves. The need to find meaning in that situation is strong. Sometimes we become frustrated with our inability to meet that need; then, our focus turns to our inability to meet the need.

For example, if we are a little thirsty, we get up and get a drink. If we are somewhere where this isn’t possible (a desert or a formal occasion, for instance), we will likely find that more and more of our attention is devoted to our inability to get a drink.

The more important it is to us to have the need met, the more our focus will be on finding a way to meet that need – and the more our focus will be on our frustration at our inability to meet the need. This is illustrated during an emergency when our attention will often focus intensely on doing just one thing – and, if we don’t know what to do during the emergency, our attention will focus on this not knowing.

However, when I am able to find meaning in a situation and my need for meaning is satisfied, a new need emerges: I may need to find ways to deal with the issue – if the issue is important enough to me to require further attention.

Let’s look at a practical application of this concept: Sometimes we struggle to find a cause for our exaggerated reactions to commonplace events. We need to understand the meaning behind the strong emotions that we feel as we are overreacting. If the meaning is not obvious to us, we can become frustrated by our inability to meet our need to understand.

For instance, sometimes I’m surprised or puzzled as to why I react so strongly to something. I have found that it can be helpful to remember what happened just before I had this feeling. It may be a stray remark from someone that I didn’t pay much attention to at the time, or it may be that what happened reminded me of some past trauma (for me, the issue triggered is usually competence).

If it was a stray remark, I may think the other person was just in a bad mood and didn’t mean to upset me – this realization may be enough to resolve the entire issue for me. If I am more upset, it may mean I need to find ways to remind myself that I don’t have to be competent to be acceptable. It may also mean finding ways to nurture myself.

It may also mean that I need to examine the decisions about who I am that I made based upon the historical events in my life. It may mean I need to revisit the meaning I have assigned to that history. Once I arrive at a better understanding of my decisions, I may find I need to re-decide.

Sometimes the process of finding the meaning in reactions, decisions or historical events can be very challenging and very frustrating. When the need for meaning is not being met and our frustration increases, then more and more of our attention may focus on this need. In psychotherapy, this is sometimes called “unfinished business”.

Unfinished business is the collection of events in our past that we find ourselves going back to again and again. We may feel we should have done or said something, anything – or we should have said or done something differently. It might also be that we don’t understand why someone did something. We turn this event over and over in our minds.

The way to finish the unfinished business is to find its meaning for us. This is usually far more than just intellectual understanding. When, through therapy with a very skilled psychotherapist, I discovered that my decision had been, “I’m unacceptable because I’m incompetent”, I went into a kind of shock or hibernation; I barely spoke for three days. (I was fortunate that the situation I was in allowed this, and the people around me were understanding enough to not try to ‘fix me’.)

Gradually, over the following weeks and months, I understood more and more what this decision had meant for me and how I lived my life. (This occurred two decades ago now; to appreciate fully what this decision had meant for me took a couple of years or so.) With this new understanding, I could begin exploring other ways to live, and to find out what interested me and how I really wanted to live. My obsession with competence decreased and rarely bothers me anymore.

The months following the discovery of my early decision were a time of suffering for me – especially the days immediately after the discovery when I was in shock. It was a difficult time. However, the suffering was worthwhile because I came out on the other side with my need for meaning having been met.

This need for meaning is important, I think, even if suffering is part of the process of finding it. Friedrich Nietzsche said that, “If we know the why, we can bear with almost any how”. Viktor Frankl explored the more positive side – noting that what helped prisoners survive prisoner of war camps wasn’t so much youth and fitness as having a meaning to live for. (Frankl wrote a wonderful book about this called “Man’s Search for Meaning”.)

When we have something very traumatic in our past, it can be very difficult to finish that unfinished business. Often, the hardest situations to bring to completeness are those situations in which people who were close to us have hurt us – especially if we were young at the time. In those instances, we often have very intense feelings all mixed up together.

Remembering these events can bring the feelings flooding back – and this is awful. (We learned how to ignore or suppress these feelings for good reason – they were so awful to feel.) We may well feel like a child again, and like a child experiencing trauma (and who wants to feel like that?!)

Because we are not able to find the meaning behind these historical events, and because we are having trouble making decisions about who we are based upon the meaning of our history, we become frustrated. Our focus on our inability to find meaning and to make decisions becomes obsessive.

However, there is hope. We can gradually understand what this child needed and meet these needs now. We can come to understand what the past trauma meant. If we don’t have supportive and understanding people around us then we may need to do this in small steps. Allowing ourselves to feel the full impact of the emotion can feel very scary. It has helped me to know that I can feel a little of the emotion, become comfortable with it, and then feel a little more of it.

Our obsessions give us good information on where our needs aren’t being met. In this sense, our obsessions are entirely healthy. Over time, our need for meaning is met and our obsessive thinking and talking about the abuse will diminish. This allows us to move on to a new way of living.

Do you feel obsessive about some things? Have obsessions been a part of your life? Has your focus been on a person or subject or some area of interest? Was it a happy time? Difficult? Mixed? I’d like to hear about your experience with obsessions.

[Book study - July 11, 2009]

The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
(Third Edition, 1994)
by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis

Part Two: The Healing Process
A Stage of Healing: The Emergency Stage

[Table of Contents]

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Green text: Quotes/Summaries from the book
Gray text: My words

This transformative work (the entire series of blog posts relating to this book) constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright law.

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Many women go through a period when sexual abuse is literally all they can think about. You may find yourself talking about it obsessively with anyone who will listen. Your life may become full of practical crises, which totally overwhelm you. You may find yourself having flashbacks uncontrollably, crying all day long, or unable to go to work. You may dream about your abuser and be afraid to sleep.

Tainun County, Taiwan by Martin Chen

Total obsession with sexual abuse is more likely during this stage if you’ve forgotten your abuse [as a child] and then remembered [as an adult].

The emergency stage is not something you choose, yet it must be ridden through to the other side. It cannot be ignored. As one survivor aptly remarked, “It’s like learning a new word. Within days you start seeing it in everything you read, and you never saw it before in your life.”

The important thing to remember is that the emergency stage is a natural part of the healing process and will come to an end. The nature of the crisis is that it is all you can see. But there will be a time when you will not think, eat, and dream sexual abuse twenty-four hours a day.

Suggestions to survive the emergency stage:

- Don’t hurt or try to kill yourself
- Know that you’re not going crazy
- Find people you can talk to
- Get skilled professional support
- Get support from other survivors
- Allow yourself to obsess
- Do as many nice things for yourself as possible
- Drop what isn’t essential in your life
- Create a safe area in your home
- Watch your intake of drugs and alcohol
- Get out of abusive situations
- Sit tight and ride out the storm
- Remind yourself that you’re brave
- Remember to breath
- Develop a belief in something greater than yourself
- This too shall pass

[Book study - July 10, 2009]

The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
(Third Edition, 1994)
by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis

Part Two: The Healing Process
A Stage of Healing: The Decision to Heal

[Table of Contents]

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Green text: Quotes/Summaries from the book
Gray text: My words

This transformative work (the entire series of blog posts relating to this book) constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright law.

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“If you enter into healing, be prepared to lose everything. Healing is a ravaging force to which nothing seems sacred or inviolate. As my original pain releases itself in healing, it rips to shreds the structures and foundations I built in weakness and ignorance. Ironically and unjustly, only I can pay the price of having lived a lie. I am experiencing the bizarre miracle of reincarnating, more lucidly than at birth, in the same lifetime.”
- Ely Fuller

Deciding to heal, making your own growth and recovery a priority, sets in motion a healing force that will bring to your life a richness and depth you never dreamed possible.

The Red Ball by Martin Chen

While it is always worth it, healing is rarely easy. Choosing to work on abuse-related issues will raise questions you never planned to ask and will give answers you didn’t expect. Once you commit yourself, your life won’t be the same.

Often the decision to heal wreaks havoc with marriages and intimate relationships. It can be hard to function, to go to work, to study, to think, to smile, to perform. It can even be hard to sleep, to eat, or simply to stop crying.

Sometimes the early stages of healing are so filled with crisis that women have a hard time accepting the fact that they made a choice at all.

Deciding to actively heal is terrifying because it means opening up to hope. For many survivors, hope has brought only disappointment.

As one survivor put it, “I know now that every time I accept my past and respect where I am in the present, I am giving myself a future.”

Spotlight on a Great Blog

I have been perusing many therapy and mental health related blogs over the past few months and have found quite a number that I really like and have added to my blogroll.

Some of those blogs are of exceptional value to me — I feel compelled to call attention to them, as is the case with the blog I’m highlighting in this post. You may ask, “What qualifies as exceptional value?” Well, I value the following:

1) An overall focus on healing and moving forward — that doesn’t necessarily mean there is an absence of negative material; but rather, that it is balanced with solution-oriented insights;

2) Originality — while links to and reuse of enlightening material is good, original content is even better;

3) Relevancy — the majority of the posts are related to therapy and the therapeutic process;

4) Level of activity — the author(s) keeps the material fresh.

So, here is one blog that I feel qualifies as “highly valuable”:

Letting Go: Recovery in the Sunlight

The blog’s “about” page tells us a bit about the author (Mary) and her blog: “A private journal of recovery documenting how it feels to be newly sober and very, very grateful for each day of sobriety. I am a 45+ woman, a sometime political activist and a professional writer who lives in the Overberg region of South Africa.”

I have found her writing to be profoundly honest and insightful. She provides new ways of looking at tough times. She also encourages us to really appreciate the blessings we already have in our rich lives.

Even if you are not personally dealing with substance abuse, I believe you can draw tremendous inspiration from her blog. If you are so inclined, I encourage you to swing by her blog and enjoy!