My Father, My Rapist

TRIGGER WARNING: This blog contains references to childhood sexual abuse, death and dissociation. Please practice excellent self-care skills while reading.

My Mother once told me, “I bet when your Father dies, you’ll dance on his grave”. We were on the balcony of a cruise ship sliding down the coast of Alaska. Such ugly words for such a beautiful place.

I don’t know what prompted her to say that. Mom and I, we rarely spoke of my Father. For two different reasons neither of us wanted to fill the air around us with painful memories. I didn’t want to speak of the brutal eight years of sexual assaults. She didn’t want to know the atrocities that the man she chose to marry and father her children inflicted on me.

My family hoards stock in Avoidance. I’m pretty sure we own so much that we are majority shareholders. In our defense, I’m not sure anyone wants to voluntarily converse about child rape. Even my Father didn’t want to talk about it. As a perpetrator though, his silence is not forgivable.

For all of those reasons, and perhaps a small smorgasbord of others as our family is rarely lacking in copious reasons to explain thoughts and behaviors, her statement took me by surprise. I tried to read her intention with my eyes. All I saw was a 66-year-old woman holding a cigarette in her hand, blowing smoke toward the sky.

The cogs in my head began to churn, pulling out thoughts, feelings about my Dad. It was a vast database. I had never thought of his death so, as it turns out, there wasn’t much to pull together.

“I don’t think so, Mom. I don’t feel a lot of anger like that toward him,” fell out of my mind and slipped between my lips.

“I do”. That was her singular reply. Using our profuse supply of avoidance, we moved on to another topic and never spoke of my Father’s death again.

Until we did, eleven years later, this time over the phone.

“Diana called me. Your Father has pancreatic cancer. He’s not doing well. It’s very aggressive,” Mom reported. Diana was my Dad’s sister. My parents had been divorced for two decades and no longer had any contact.

It was a brief conversation, but it sent the entirety of me, mind and body, into a tail spin. Instantaneously, a thousand memories about my dad – from the sweetness of his cuddles to the brutality of his rapes, wanted to be witnessed. The cogs, that were supposed to regulate what was thought and felt by pulling out only approved content, disintegrated into dust from the pressure of everything wanting to rush forward into my consciousness.

Like many victims of years of childhood abuse, my mind realized shortly after the abuse started that it couldn’t hold all the memories of my sexual assaults. It was too much, especially for a child’s mind, to contain and still function. So, my brain created a solution. It conjured a row of little girls just like me. In turn, each was cast out from my head into real life. She had to endure the abuse and pretend to be a happy child, content with my Mother and Father’s idea of love. Once one clone was filled up with as many memories as my brain thought it could hold, it was capped, put in suspended animation and exiled to the furthest reaches of my mind. Then another little girl was brought forward, and the process began again. By the time the abuse ended there was a Chinese Terracotta Army of capped and silenced little girls in that macabre storage space.

Not every memory was stored in that way. For some reason, in some way, several of those little girls are neither lifeless nor in storage. They live in my head, fully formed younger versions of me who have shared both their memories and their pain with me over the last 40 years. They are frozen at the age when they were replace and brought back into my mind, one as young as three and the oldest on the edge of adolescence.

Calling each other sisters, they exist independent of me. As most siblings do, they scream, cry, fight and play together. On occasion they watch the world through my eyes, like portholes on the outside wall of their world.

Those little girls may be small, but they are quick. Whoever was watching when I got my Mother’s phone call spread the news of my Father’s impending death before I hung up. There was an immediate reaction from each of them.

One came charging at me, grabbing hold of my arms, “Bobbi, you have to go now. Please, please, please. Go say you’re sorry,”.

I dropped to my knees, “We’ve talked about this before. I can’t go say I’m sorry. There’s nothing to be sorry for,”

“Please,” she pleaded, “You shouldn’t have told. That was a bad thing. You need to go say sorry. Maybe he’ll love us again then,” Tears welled in her eyes. Her face twisted with pain as she begged, “Please Bobbi, please. Go say sorry. Go. Say. Sorry.”

I took her hands in mine, “I can’t. And it wouldn’t make a difference. Sorry won’t fix this.”

She yanked her hands out of mine and balled them up into fists, slamming them into my chest and shoulders. “I hate you! This is all your fault,” She backed away from me and turned to run before I could reach out to her. I whispered, “I’m sorry, Sweetie”. I knew she would never forgive me.

I moved to another little girl, this one sobbing so hard she was gulping for air. I sat down and gathered her in my arms, placing her in my lap. She burrowed into me. I don’t have memories of my Mother holding me like this. But I remember my Father doing it. He would come to me in the night, waking me and pulling me from under my covers into his lap. It was a sleepy, sweet feeling being held by him. I thought it was love. Now, I know differently, but this girl I’m holding doesn’t know that.

“Will he still come?’ she asked, between gulps. This small one, she was holding onto the hope that our Dad would come back and love us again. In the fairy tale in her mind he will knock on the door one day, declaring his love for us and wanting to be a part of our lives again.

“I don’t know, Baby,” I said, kissing the top of her head. She cried harder. “It’s okay,” I soothed, “Breathe. Breathe,”

She tilted her head up toward the sky and wailed “Nooooooooo!” Her chest rose and fell with a deep breath, “It’s not okay, Bobbi. He has to come. He has to.”

Another crying little girl, this one older than the other two, sat down next to me. I put my arm around her. “You ok?”

“I’m a horrible person,” she whispered.

“No, never. Why do you think that?”

She looked at me, tears running down her face. I stroked her hair gently. I remember having the haircut that is immortalized on her. It was the first time I managed to dodge my Mother’s attempts to cut my hair short. It feels surreal to hold her hair in my hand, forty-two years after having brushed that hair on my own head.

“Why do you think that, Sweetie?” I prompt again.

Her head lowers. She whispers, “I want him to die”

I pull her closer to me as her crying escalates. I know she feels so much shame. The little girl on my lap knows too. Her crying eases as she reaches over and puts her hand on her sister’s shoulder, “It’s okay. We’re going to fix everything. Bobbi will fix everything. Right?” she says looking up at me, hoping for reassurance that I can fix her and her sister’s pain.

“I don’t want Bobbi to fix it. I hate him. I want him to die,” the older girl proclaims. In a flash, her sister grabs a chunk of her hair and pulls, hard. Little limbs fly back and forth before I can get an arm between them. The littlest girl stands up, screaming at her sister “Well, I hate you! I hope you die!” before running away.

Abandoned by all the little clones of me, the remaining little girl and I sit huddled up next to each other.

“Do you hate him, Bobbi?”

I take in and blow out a deep sigh.

“Yes, I hate him. But I love him, too. I want him to come say he’s sorry and yet I live in fear that he’ll find us and hurt us again,”

“That’s a lot,” the girl said.

“Yep,” I replied, “that’s a lot.”

As the following days played out I struggled under the weight of the mass of conflicting emotions. New memories began to trickle into my mind, too. I hadn’t had new memories of my abuse for decades. But now, as my Father sat on the edge of death, they seeped in from somewhere unknown.

I remembered him coming into my room at night and waking me by licking the edge of my eyelids, right where they bloom into eyelashes. As clearly as if I am still there, I know I open my eyes and see my Father. He is smiling widely, so pleased with himself. I am confused, unsure whether I like being woken like that. But I see his happiness, and I want him to be happy. So I make myself choose happiness too, giggling at him in return. It was the beginning of my eight-year journey of sacrificing myself for his happiness.

A few days later I remembered that he had also woken me in the night by choking me, grinning wildly at me when I scrambled back into my consciousness from sleep. I was afraid and confused but chose once again to bury my feelings and adopt his.

More days, then a new memory surfaced of my Father waking me in the night. This time, like a gleeful child, he was hovering his face a foot over my own, dripping spit from his mouth, in a long strand, into my mouth. Memory after memory of fear and confusion traded for his happiness, over and over again.

Ten days later, my sister left me a voicemail while I was teaching a class. “Maria called. It’s now 5:35pm. Dad died at 5:05pm.” I lost my breath. Never have I lived on this Earth without my Father brutalizing and haunting me. Now he is gone and I feel oddly alone, tumbling through space filled with grief, anger, relief, confusion and freedom.

While in freefall I hear explosions going off. The hidden away little girls, pressurized capsules of pain, were being shaken with the earthquake of my Father’s death. They blow open, each one of them. In the blink of an eye, my mind fills with the cacophony of eight years of brutality.

I have withdrawn into a corner of my mind, watching and listening. I don’t know how to take in this horror movie starring younger versions of myself. There’s no manual for this, no trove of articles published on the web describing how to cope with your abuser’s death.

I kick at the walls on either side of me, managing to break my corner free from the rest of the real estate in my mind. Drifting alone in the sea of my self feels safer. I can still hear the little girls screaming, crying and moaning through their pain. Periodically a memory reaches me, It jolts my body like an electrical current.

The water carries me further from the horror show. But I know there is no complete escape. My Father has marked every part of my mind as his territory – from here to the farthest distances deep in my head.

My parents were big fans of The Eagles. As my ice floe drifts, Hotel California lyrics drip from the sky. “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device…you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave”

Out of the Ether

I grew up in the ether. My parents and their parents grew up in the ether. It was a sweet, seductive haze that created the hypnotic apathy required to survive as pain free as possible. The ether anesthetized us to the truth of the brutal cruelty weaving through our family history. As long as we lived within the ether denial was possible. The brutality of mental illness, addiction and intergeneration abuse was invisible while we breathed the numbing mist around us.

Growing up in the ether, I never knew that my uncle was abusing my aunt, that my grandmother’s hospital stays were due to psychotic breaks rather than “exhaustion” or that what my father did to me in the dark of my bedroom was wrong. No one spoke of these things or acknowledged them in any way. Their long-term inhalation of the ether allowed my parents and prior generations to live their lives without actually seeing large portions of it.

Instead they carried on, wrapped in their ether induced denial, as if all was a jolly dream. We went to church, celebrated holidays and went on summer camping trips as if there was no nighttime raping or behind closed doors punches being thrown. The ether did its job, leaving us all with a smile on our faces and a story of strong family love.

I don’t know why the ether’s siren song was not as strong for me as it was the rest of my family. It worked in my childhood. I never saw my father as a rapist. I was blind to anything being “wrong”. I thought he loved me. The ether would not allow me to blame him, but it did allow me to blame myself. If anything was amiss it was because I wasn’t a good girl. In retrospect, I think that was its downfall.

As my belief that I was an utter failure as a daughter grew, the ether became stronger and heavier around me. That was the only way to keep me in numb denial. I reached adulthood and ventured out into the world. I wasn’t able to successfully master relationships or a career. I watched my family go through their days with quiet, fluid movement. Why did I struggle while they were so peaceful?

I searched my life for the source of evil, but every rabbit trail circled back around to me. The ether wouldn’t allow me to see any source of my problems other than myself and my being evil to my very core. Depression rose up to swallow me whole.

I lived in the ether with my failure and depression for years, looking for ways to rid myself of my evil nature. I wandered through the intoxicating haze, trying to find relief or absolution. But I found none. My hope that I could ever be made good gave out. I wanted to die. It seemed the only escape from a life of perpetual failure.

As I was planning my demise I stumbled across the borderlands of the ether. For the first time I realized there was an outer edge to it. It had an end!

At first I was angry that my family had never told me that the ether had an end. Then, anger was supplanted by curiosity. I stood at the edge for months, watching people live in clear, clean air. There was a clarity to life outside of the ether, things were not made fuzzy by the numbing haze. People were animated, rather than restrained. I saw more emotion in those few months than I had all of my previous years. Was that a good thing? I wasn’t sure. I’d never lived with that kind of a vibrant emotional life.

As I stood watching, my depression continued to grow. In fact, observing life outside the ether seemed to magnify it at an alarming rate. I felt like the ether was suffocating me. Every day was a struggle just to breath. The air on the other side of the misty haze seemed so clear. But in the ether, I felt like I was trying to suck air through mud.

I reached a crisis point. Breathing in the ether became impossible. I was a fish flopping and fighting on dry ground, its gills furiously seeking water to draw in. Staying in the ether meant death. But life outside of it was a terrifying unknown. Do I stay and die? Do I go and hope to survive in a new, mysterious existence?

Desperate for air I flung myself out of the ether, into the clean air. Lying on the ground, catching my breath, I felt memories begin to pour into my brain. My ears were overwhelmed with the arrival of a thousand different screams, moans and cries of terror. The taste of bile and blood filled my mouth. My entire body throbbed with pain.

The price of breathing clear air was a clarity of vision. I no longer had the gift of denial. Instead, I saw the whole horrible truth of my life and the lives of my family.

It took me months to even be able to stand up under the weight of the truth, to soothe the pain enough to be able to draw a breath without feeling like I was setting my lungs afire. I was no longer numb. But I was free.

Sometimes the pain was overwhelming. I tried to go back into the ether several times in order to staunch my bleeding wounds. But I had too much truth in me now. The ether wouldn’t numb me anymore.

I’ve tried to go back into the ether and convince my family of the truth. But they cannot see it when they’re living in the haze that clouds their vision and dulls their perception. I can’t lure them out of the ether. They see my bleeding wounds and can’t begin to understand why I would choose to live with pain rather than existing in the blessed peace of the ether.

I can’t deny that there is excruciating pain outside of the ether. The pain is the price of living with the truth. Now, I feel the pain of knowing about my abuse, the pain of my abuser’s betrayal of my love and trust and the pain of knowing my family has chosen the ether over me. But I also feel joy, peace and relief. I now understand that I’m not evil and the abuse was not a punishment for who I am, or who I am not.

So I stand out here and help other survivors who make the choice to step out of the ether. It’s a very painful thing at first, to see the truth. It’s a blinding white light to people used to living in darkness. Some are unable to tolerate the pain and return to the ether. But they often have to resort to numbing drugs or alcohol to quiet the truth that bucks against the ether.

The rest of my family still lives in the ether. Sometimes I stand on the edges of the mist and watch them. They carry on as usual. Without me, as if I never existed. The ether has swallowed their memory of me. I, though, will never forget them and the sweet scent of an ether filled life.

Surviving the Firestorm of the Duggar Family News

My inbox has been overflowing with messages from so many survivors who are in deep pain from being triggered by Thursdays news that Josh Duggar molested five minor girls back in 2002 and 2003. We, like the five little girls in the Duggar case, weren't protected when we were young. Even if we reported our abuse, like the girls did, some of us were still not protected. Or worse yet, we were punished for giving voice to our abuse. All of those things tell us we weren't worth protecting. We carried that message into our childhood and it has colored many years of our adulthood. I want all of you who are triggered by this case to know you ARE worthy and you are not alone. There are many of you who are here for you and with you.

Trauma and the Brain

Few things push my figurative button more than someone telling me, or one of my clients, to “just get over” the trauma we have experienced in our lives.  Some people cannot understand why those of us who have lived through prolonged periods of trauma cannot just shake it off and move on. They seem determined to judge us as deficient for not being able to do so. We are malingerers, lazy or manipulative. We want attention or enjoy the victim role. They cannot grasp how it is that we still suffer from the aftereffects of our traumatic past.

There are so many reasons why. Explaining all of the ways trauma disrupts and destroys lives is a whole blog series in and of itself. The most effective information I’ve ever shared with those who doubt the negative and long lasting impact of trauma is how that experience permanently changes the way the brain functions.

When we encounter a life threatening situation our body reacts by pouring chemicals into our blood stream. These chemicals, such as adrenalin, are steroids. They increase our capacity to succeed with the fight or flight necessary to preserve our life. They increase our strength, allow us to mentally focus on the situation to the exclusion of other environmental stimuli, increase our pain tolerance, and give us the emotional stamina to endure horrible conditions without “falling apart”.

These chemicals are extremely helpful in situations when our survival is at risk. But our bodies are not meant to be flooded with them long term. To the contrary, in large amounts over long periods of time they are toxic to our bodies.

Prolonged exposure to life threatening situations, such as abuse or involvement in a war, keep our brain bathed in a constant flow of steroids. As a result of chronic exposure to these chemicals the way we processes information is permanently altered. The alteration is so significant that it can be difficult to tell the brain of someone with a traumatic brain injury from someone who has undergone prolonged trauma. This is significant! It tells us that trauma causes brain damage. Permanent brain damage.

Our brain structure changes in three ways: some areas get enlarged, some structures shrink and some processes deteriorate. Our amygdala, which plays a critical role in emotional regulation and processing, becomes larger. As it grows in size it increases the control it has over the rest of the brain. Emotions, rather than logic or reason, gain greater and greater ground in determining our actions.

The hippocampus, which facilitates learning and memory, and the prefrontal cortex involved with cognitive processing, become both smaller and less effective. Prolonged exposure to the chemicals trauma calls forth forever destroys the neural capacity of these two brain structures. We lose our ability to reason and process new information logically.

A third element of brain functioning that is damaged is the capacity to process those chemicals that prevent or cause depression and anxiety. Our neurotransmitters lose the ability to absorb, produce and re-uptake substances such as norepinephrine and serotonin. Without the capacity to optimize the balance of those chemicals we develop mood and anxiety disorders. Medications can help an individual correct some of these imbalances. But it is not a cure. In fact, nothing can cure or reverse any of these changes. They are permanent.

Think for a moment about how those two brain structure changes combine to effect an individual. They are vulnerable to severe, prolonged depression and anxiety. They lose abilities to reason and are, instead, ruled by their emotions. That is a powerfully negative change in brain function.

To help understand the impact of these changes let’s walk through a life experience and examine how those without a background of trauma respond versus those who have experienced trauma will respond. For this purpose let’s consider an individual whose car breaks down on the freeway. This is a stressful situation for anyone, but for trauma survivors it explodes into an experience that feels like their very life is at stake.

A non-trauma survivor would feel stressed, but would likely focus on getting their car off the freeway and to a place where it can be repaired. They would feel anxious and upset but those emotions would not rule the way the decisions they make in the moment. After they and the car are dealt with then they feel and deal with their emotions. But even then their reaction would be reasonable and understandable.

A trauma survivor though would be overwhelmed by their emotions the second the car stops functioning. Their emotions will rule their behavior and thought process, to the point that they may be incapable of handling the necessary process of removing their vehicle and themselves from the unsafe situation. It may take the intervention of another person to resolve their emotional reaction and deal with the removal of the car from the freeway. They will, as some of us may describe, overreact. Their response will be extreme to those observing or hearing about the situation

Those are two very different reactions to a scenario which most of us will experience at some time in our lives. But the way a trauma survivor responds has nothing to do with weak character, being “too sensitive” or any other personal flaw. It’s the way their brain functions. Period.

Can the brain damage be reversed? No. With professional help can a trauma survivor learn ways to cope better with the damage? Yes. But there is no quick fix. It takes a prolonged period of rehabilitation, something our mental health system doesn’t like to provide.

So let’s abandon the “just get over it” way we judge trauma survivors. Instead, let’s provide them with compassion and understanding. And most of all, let’s get them the help they need to cope with life after brain damage. They deserve the best possible chance to live a happy, productive life. Let’s leave the judgment behind and, in its place, offer hope and healing to people who have already suffered so much.

Breaking Cycles: I Wanted to be Worth It

This is a post I have carried inside me for years. But I haven’t had the courage to transfer it from my heart to paper because that somehow makes it real. Inside myself, in that place where magic still exists, I believe that as long as a pain or hurt isn’t spoken aloud then I can continue to harbor hope that one single, powerful breath of disbelief can blow every atom of its presence away…far, far away to a place where it will never touch me again. 

It is time though, to make it real. Because I can’t heal the pain unless I acknowledge it exists. And somewhere out there is someone who harbors the same hurt. They need to see this, to read it and know they are not alone.  And somewhere out there is a parent who needs to break the cycle of abuse in their life. My story, my account, my pain might be the thing that encourages them to say, “My child is worth it. I am worth it.”

Although, technically, my abuse started at age three, it set its roots into the earth many generations before my birth. My family has a lengthy heritage of horrible family dysfunction; alcoholism, drug addiction, spousal and child abuse of every shape and form, infidelity, the fathering of children with one woman while married to another, and even an involuntary commitment to a mental institution by a grandfather tired of his ever demanding wife. And the mental illness, oh the mental illness that ravaged my predecessors as far back as our family history has been recorded.

By the time I came screaming into the world the stage was set for my story, and it was not a pretty one. But it was the only story my family seemed able to tell, given their own histories. I get it. I do. I understand that they were horribly handicapped by their own abusive upbringing in combination with their mental illnesses. They simply didn’t have the skill to break the cycle. They did their best. I know that. I long ago forgave them their transgressions.

Yet as a child in those days and nights when I pleaded with God and the world to stop the pain, to make me good enough not to warrant to be hurt anymore, and I got no response I drew the conclusion that I was not be rescued because I was not worth it. I grew up owning the belief that the cycle of abuse would not stop in my family because I wasn’t good enough. No matter how hard I tried to be a good girl, a good student, and a good family member I could not earn my freedom from the abuse. Because I wasn’t worth it. I got the bushel of hell I got because I deserved it. Period.

As an adult I’ve worked hard to change the cycle of abuse my family handed down to me. Intellectually, I knew it had to stop, if not for myself then for my son. I worked hard to learn ways of coping with pain than inflicting it on another. I schooled myself in compassion, empathy and healthy relationship skills. And I waited to have children until I knew my family’s pain would not visit another generation.

I walked that long, arduous journey alone, over hot coals and through endless deserts. And I broke the cycle, damn it! The abuse stopped with me. My son will never endure a moment of pain at the hands of an abuser within his family. I cannot completely protect him from all those in the world who might do him harm, but I have inoculated him the best I can with education and open discussion.

But that flame of pain inside me that represents my not being worth saving from my childhood abuse still fiercely burns inside me. As many survivors do, I chose to enter relationships with men remarkably like my abuser. It was what I was familiar with, what I felt I deserved. Their treatment of me relit that internal flame every time it threatened to blow out. Instead it burnt higher, the flames licking at my mind, my vision, and my grasp on my personal truth. I want to extinguish it. But it isn’t as simple as licking my fingertips and feeling the flame sizzle to its death between my thumb and forefinger. Because things we learn like that as children not only create their own energy, but become tattooed on our hearts. Scrubbing the words away is painful, HARD work. Extinguishing the flame takes what feels like endless amounts of strength, wisdom and courage.

But I’ve taken the first step. I’ve said it aloud. I’ve acknowledge that the flame of unworthiness still burns and the tattoo of “You Aren’t Good Enough to Save” makes my heart ache every damn minute of every damn day. For all of you who endured abuse like I did and feel that flame and tattoo within you: you aren’t alone. And to those mothers and fathers who grew up in abuse and see the potential for a repeat with their own children: you were worth it, you should have been saved; and you CAN do the hard work to save your own children as they are so very worth it. 

This is my first step. For myself, and most of all, for that precious little girl who cried out for saving decades ago and received no answer other than more pain. You were worthy then, sweet child, and you are still worthy now.

Survivors are the Best Recovery Guides for Other Survivors

In 1935 Bill W. and the other founders of Alcoholics Anonymous created a revolutionary new recovery model that relies on peers to provide “mutual aid”. They believed that the best way for individuals to achieve and maintain sobriety was for alcoholics to help one another. Utilizing sponsors, peer led meetings and the 12 Steps, Alcoholics Anonymous became both a popular and effective method for treating alcohol addiction.

This model for the treatment of addictions has not changed much in the eighty years since Bill helped found Alcoholics Anonymous.  It has stood the test of time so well that now there are groups following the same model for not only other addictions but for the family members of addicts. Sponsors, peer led meetings and the 12 Steps are the foundation for every one of these programs.

Even when the addict is referred to treatment within the mental health community you will find that most providers in that arena are former addicts themselves. It is commonly accepted that the best professional to help an addict is another addict who has reached and is maintaining their sobriety. Why? Because they understand the nuances of an addict’s thinking and behavior. Their experience is invaluable when it comes to helping other addicts. Further, addicts in treatment have a greater level of trust in and respect for the individual helping them when they know he or she has stood where they are now standing.

As both a trauma survivor and a Therapist/Trauma Recovery Coach I think the Alcoholics Anonymous model has enormous utility in the arena of trauma recovery. As I have previously discussed, when survivors regularly access and participate in supportive and encouraging communities of other survivors their recovery is not only quicker but of greater quality. When an individual continues involvement in the community to the level that they mentor other survivors they can reach the final stage of Trauma Response of Advocacy, a level of recovery made possible only by advocating for their peers.

When those communities are operated by their peers, survivors new to recovery instantly feel hope and understanding. They see living examples that feeling better is possible. Due to the pervasive shame that results from trauma, survivors often live a life of isolation. Coming into a community led by their peers feels safer than coming into a community led by non-survivors because it is clearly known that everyone there has felt and dealt with the deep shame of trauma.

Outside of peer led meetings there is a huge benefit for helping professionals that work with survivors being survivors themselves. When treatment providers have gone through and maintained their recovery a deep connection is facilitated between them and their clients. That connection is not always possible when a survivor knows their provider hasn’t endured what they have, and still are, going through. The shared bond of survivorship facilitates a level of trust that is essential for recovery from a victimization with a central theme of betrayal of trust. Simply put, there is tremendous power when a survivor hears their helping professional say “I understand” and knows that they truly do. Shame fades in the face of that level of understanding.

Is it mandatory that helping professionals who treat survivors be survivors themselves? No, there are always exceptions. Individuals who are not trauma survivors can develop the level of empathy and understanding that is needed to successfully treat survivors. But overall, it is of substantial benefit to survivors that their treatment professionals are also their peers in recovery. The depth of understanding, trust, and connection that a survivor can make with another survivor facilitates such a higher level of recovery that to ignore this benefit to survivors is not only foolish, but irresponsible. Safe and supportive peer led communities and helping professionals who are themselves survivors are an essential part of any recovery program.

The Power of Community in Trauma Recovery

I’ve been working with childhood and adult sexual assault survivors since I graduated with my Master’s Degree 17 years ago. My personal recovery journey, as survivor of childhood abuse, began about 6 years before that. All of my experience, both personally and professionally, has helped me to identify the single most damaging after effect of sexual assault: shame. Shame is corrosive; eroding the self-worth and self-confidence of those that carry it. The longer someone lugs shame around the more damage it does, eventually leaving the holder feeling like their substance has been eaten away, leaving pain in its place.

Many survivors end up in therapy, some directly after their sexual assault and others only after they’ve become addicted to drugs, alcohol or food in an effort to numb their feelings or become debilitated by a mental illness like depression or PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). While individual therapy is helpful in many ways, it lacks in its capacity to deal with the ever destructive shame a survivor feels.

Why doesn’t individual therapy help in a significant way with the burden of shame? Because the emotion is so powerful it cannot be combatted by one person telling the survivor: “It wasn’t your fault. You have nothing to be ashamed of.” That technique is akin to handing a starving man a grape and saying “There you go! Better now?” No, he’s not better. He’s still starving. That one grape cannot stave off starvation. It lacks the power to do so. But 20 grapes? Now that is a good start! And 20 almonds? Even better! Now the starving man is really on his way, especially if people continue to come and bring him food.  Soon he’ll be sufficiently recovered to help feed other starving individuals.

So what is shame’s Kryptonite? What has the power to combat a survivor’s shame? Community! A group of survivors who will come alongside a peer to provide support, encouragement, acknowledgement and knowledge. Community is the single most effective method of dissolving a survivor’s shame that I have encountered in my personal and professional experience.

But, ironically, community is not often used in the treatment of survivors of sexual assault. It’s effectively used in the treatment of eating disorders, grief, anger and relationship difficulties. For addictions it’s considered the gold standard of treatment. But for survivors it’s seen as too difficult and even too dangerous.

Within the mental health community trauma survivors are often categorized as unstable and prone to decompensation. Group therapy is perceived as triggering and risky. The only environment where I’ve seen group therapy with survivors attempted is in an inpatient psychiatric ward.

But when a group approach to healing is the best way to address the worst part of recovery, it has to be tried. Many survivors suffer for decades with the affect effects of their trauma. Hundreds die by suicide every year because their pain is too great. So some of us decided to try to create community, because it simply has to be attempted. The costs in terms of suffering are too steep not to try.

Early last year a virtual community of childhood sexual abuse survivors was created. It was started by a peer advocate, Rachel Thompson. And I’m proud to say I’ve been a part of it, as both a peer and a professional. It has been a game changer. We have come together, primarily as peers, to provide support, share our experiences, and celebrate our successes. In doing so each of us has experienced a marked decrease in our shame. Many of us, for the first time, have come out of our isolated life and engaged in active social interaction. Why? Because we feel safe, accepted, and understood in ways we never have been while interacting with non-survivors.

The impact was so remarkable we moved into another, less private setting: Twitter.  For seven months now Rachel, and I have been hosting a Twitter Chat for survivors every Tuesday night with the help of Life Coach Athena Moberg. It’s been another game changer. Every week we gather on Twitter as a community and exchange between 300 and 450 tweets in support and encouragement of one another. That equates to about 6 tweets a minute! It’s a huge outpouring of individuals providing peer to peer healing power.

As we’ve had success we’ve also been targeted with complaints. But they haven’t come from within our community, they have come from without from mental health professionals stating we are taking too large a risk with too sensitive of a population. While we have heard them raising a racket we have not allowed them to dissuade us from moving forward. They aren’t offering an alternative. As Brene Brown states, they aren’t down her in the arena trying to create a solution. So we’re keeping on. We are not reckless or ignorant. We’ve addressed safety issues from the start.

Currently we’re starting other private community groups online. We’re also going to begin offering weekly Google Hangouts for survivors. In the future we’re considering offering private drop in groups, much like virtual Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. We are going to provide the option of community to every survivor we can in service to their recovery.

As we go forward we are determined to redefine the model of Trauma Recovery. Community, the single most effective counterattack for shame, is vital. Do we have the concept perfected? Absolutely not. But we’re working on it. We stand steadfast in the middle of the arena, willing to take fire on behalf of every survivor and their right to live a productive, happy life free of shame.