Can we see it ? It’s right here. Do we want to see it ? Can we look at what is unbearable for a child ? Unbearable suffering, unbearable pain, unbearable trauma. Child abuse. It’s always been here. Everywhere, every street. Just look. Notice. Seeing is everything , seeing the truth, what’s right in front of us is the start to the end of suffering. There are unspeakable things happening to children right now, suffering which is going unnoticed. I mean abuse which you couldn’t make up it’s so bad. I know child abuse unfortunately, because I’ve lived it and survived it. What I know from my own experience and what I often see and feel going on around me in this society from the organisations / institutions set up to supposedly protect children, is a complete lack of love. A lack of care. That’s where it starts. That’s where it all started for me, the origin of all the suffering was a complete lack of love or care for what happened to me as a small child. All of the abuse that happened to me wouldn’t have happened and could’ve been stopped if some adult in my life had loved and cared enough to protect me from it all. So maybe we need to start with something as powerful and simple as giving love to all those kids who are being abused right now. Let’s give love to their truth let’s love enough to put aside any feelings of discomfort and really see. Seeing is loving and not looking the other way. Abused kids have to be tiny warriors to carry on breathing after being violated and they need to be seen above all the evil that child abuse is. It’s simple just see it . See the truth and love enough to do something to stop it.
I want to dedicate this blog to all survivors of childhood abuse and trauma. I’m going to be sharing my own experience of surviving an abusive childhood , and moving beyond that to actually thriving and living a life that’s real, filled with love joy and laughter. A life based on truth despite the pain and discomfort that has brought and often brings. A life based on the truth that my abusers, the police and social services wanted to deny me and tried to take from me.
I want to talk about child abuse because I was told I shouldn’t and shown what would happen to me if I did. I survived a childhood that was more like a war zone really than a childhood. Even now with all the truth I’ve faced about it I still sometimes think how could any of that have been real. But it was. So real. In 2012 I was diagnosed with Complex PTSD which included being diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder. It took a long time for me to get a proper diagnosis. I spent years in therapy and counselling trying to work through the abuse, when I did not know I had PTSD.My life was run by my Complex PTSD and I wasn’t aware of it even though I was doing everything I could to try and help myself. Much of the truth of my childhood was stored away in my brain fractured up, like trauma is. But even though for a long time I could not meet with my PTSD eye to eye and soul to soul, it always found a way to show me it was there because it was my truth, it was me, and it needed to be free and given a voice. Trauma has such integrity it’s a wild and powerful thing and it will not be kept silent forever. After 7 years of specialised treatment I am now coming out the other side of my PTSD the person I was always meant to be. I have been returning and evolving into that person. It’s not been easy that’s an understatement. I’ve had to face, feel and transform the trauma and suffering that was inflicted on me as a kid. It’s been very painful and has taken a huge toll on my body and mind. I’ve been left with permanent damage to my body from the physical abuse I suffered. I experience chronic pain because of it, but I have some great strategies for dealing with it which I will share. I’m still breathing, I’m still laughing . I’m living a life way out beyond the abuse, I put it in the past. I got through it, with great help, and I want to share how I have achieved what I have so far. Living with Complex PTSD is a constantly evolving healing process for me, it will be for the rest of my life and that’s ok because it means I continue to move out beyond my past and become more free all the time. I’m hoping others will identify with the process and that it will help them too.
The name of my blog centres on a core question that is asked during the treatment I had for my Complex PTSD. That treatment is EMDR , eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing. This amazing therapy allowed me to travel back in time to face the traumas I endured in my childhood and free myself from them. I’m going to be talking a lot about EMDR, how it worked for me and how it has transformed my life.
When I was processing memories with EMDR I returned to the child that I was, being that child right in the centre of the memory at it’s most vivid. Reliving it all, then my therapist would ask me, What do you notice ? Quite simply this question is everything. In the eye of the storm of my live trauma a light is switched on to the whole truth. It’s a gentle question focusing in on that moment in time when the abuse was happening. It takes the trauma from the past into the present moment and gets me to relive every detail every feeling, every thought. So I notice that truth as painful as it is, but in doing so I see and feel who I really am internally as a child. A light shines on my internal processes of coping with my suffering , how complex and imaginative that is. It’s not so much about what they did to me, but how I coped on the inside, all that I was feeling and what incredible resilience I had within to do that. I feel wonder and compassion for the child I was, and seeing her and being with her in the live memory I then want and need to rescue and reclaim her from the abuse. And I can ! It is my memory , I can do with it whatever I want. I can transform this memory and set myself free to be whoever I want. My healthy mind having seen who I really was on the inside within the abuse found I could turn my abusers to dust and become a bird or a butterfly or a ladybird and fly away into the sky . Feeling freedom and belonging and oneness. No longer alone, no longer afraid.The options of how to free my child from the centre of the abuse came easily once I realised what I had been capable of to survive and what I could do with my imagination to transform each memory. Getting to see who you really were at your most vulnerable and most powerless gives you the gift of seeing and owning who you really are in the present and who you have been all along. No longer the lies of what your abusers want you to believe and feel about yourself. I got to see who I really was with EMDR and so I can become that person and no longer live their lies of me. I’m not saying I wasn’t afraid to go back into the memories. I was. Terrified! I will talk more about how I conquered this fear when I knew what was on offer for me if I faced the pain and dived in. Ofcourse this therapy is not without pain, it could be agonising and the pain went on for a long time . Again, I want to talk about what that pain was like and how I dealt with it. I journaled most of it and can share that. It was pain that was worth it though for what it gave me, because now I finally have a free and true self. In seeing who I was in the centre of the abuse I reclaimed a child who was a hero and a warrior, never a victim.
What do you notice is the question I want to pose to the organisations in our society, the police, social services and and mental health services set up to protect abused children and adult survivors, that often do not want to notice their suffering and continue to fail to protect them. These organisations and their so called caring professionals did not want to notice me, did not want to believe me, and labelled me as crazy. Because of their lack of intelligence, their lack of humanity they discriminated against me and put me in further danger of being abused. I was not believed when I needed that belief the most. I was trying to be brave and speak out to prevent the abuse of other children. There’s a lot I have to say about the manner in which the police social services and some mental health workers treated me. How I dealt with it, who I found to help me and how I see this happening to so many who are let down in the same way I was. I want to expose it in the hope it will help other survivors who may be going through the same ordeal that I did.
I was not noticed as a child who was being abused. No one bothered enough to see me, or fight to get me noticed to end the suffering I was going through. I showed all the signs of a child who was totally traumatised and shut down, but no-one did anything to protect me. My abuse has been a life sentence of trauma, but like most survivors I have not given up on becoming free and living a life that is safe with love and joy within me and around me. Because ultimately despite what my abusers did to me I knew I was not like them. I knew there was another life for me, a life where I could be real.
I know there are a lot of children out there going through what I went through and not being noticed. I know there are a lot of adult survivors who have tried to speak out about their own child abuse, desperate to be believed and in turn have been re traumatised and abused all over again by not being believed by the police and other professionals . You, like me have been caused untold suffering. I want to do something to get this suffering noticed now. Seeing, noticing , believing is the beginning of ending the suffering and pain of abuse. I believe our birth right is to live with joy and love, not fear and pain In speaking out about what I have gone through I’m hoping this might go a small way to do this. I know the truth is powerful and that’s all I have. I’m hoping it will help.
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