Category: Uncategorized

What is Betrayal Trauma? Sunday Special

The term betrayal trauma was first introduced by Jennifer Freyd in 1991 at a presentation at Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute. According to Freyd “Betrayal trauma occurs when the people or institutions on which a person depends for survival significantly violate that person’s trust or well-being: Childhood physical, emotional, or sexual abuse perpetrated by a caregiver are examples of betrayal trauma”

I experienced betrayal trauma when both my parents used me in a paedophile ring and offered me to numerous men from the age of 4-18 and then when I turned 18 turned me out onto the streets of Dublin as I was too old for the men. Rejection by your parents is the ultimate betrayal trauma. They are meant to be trusted caregivers in whom children place complete trust and care.

THE AFFECTS OF BETRAYAL TRAUMA

Freyd further tells us that when trauma involves a betrayal we are less likely to be aware of what is occurring or recall the details. Why? Because when we confront the perpetrator it threatens an attachment that we feel is necessary to our survival. Those awesome survival instincts can kick in and literally erase our memory or change it to make the betrayal seem like less of a threat.  I felt like I was all these monkeys combined into one! I refused to hear or see the abuse in my childhood and definitely terrified to say anything about the things I did notice.

When our conscious mind is protecting us, and our subconscious mind is screaming that everything is not ok it can lead to some pretty severe problems. In a recent study it was shown that ~70% of wives of sex addicts could be diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Yep, the same thing that military folk come home with is what traumatized wives deal with. Lucky me, I got both! I will say, however, that my trauma from deployment was VERY minimal to the extent that I didn’t even really realize that it existed for a long time. My betrayal trauma due to abandonment has been much more in my face and in control of my life. PTSD comes with a lot of really fun symptoms including:

  • Spontaneous or cued recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive distressing memories of the traumatic events
  • Recurrent distressing dreams in which the content or affect (i.e. feeling) of the dream is related to the events
  • Flashbacks or other dissociative reactions in which the individual feels or acts as if the traumatic events are recurring
  • Intense or prolonged psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic events
  • Physiological reactions to reminders of the traumatic events
  • Persistent avoidance of distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic events or of external reminders
  • Inability to remember an important aspect of the traumatic events (not due to head injury, alcohol, or drugs)
  • Persistent and exaggerated negative beliefs or expectations about oneself, others, or the world (e.g., “I am bad,” “No one can be trusted,” “The world is completely dangerous”).
  • Persistent, distorted blame of self or others about the cause or consequences of the traumatic events
  • Persistent fear, horror, anger, guilt, or shame
  • Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
  • Feelings of detachment or estrangement from others
  • Persistent inability to experience positive emotions
  • Irritable or aggressive behavior
  • Reckless or self-destructive behavior
  • Hypervigilance
  • Exaggerated startle response
  • Problems with concentration
  • Difficulty falling or staying asleep or restless sleep

Yeah, that’s a lot. All of these symptoms can also take their toll physically. Adrenal fatigue, thyroid problems, joint and/or muscle pain, headaches, weight gain, and even more often manifest themselves when a person is suffering from trauma. “The Body Keeps The Score” is a great book to read if you are more interested in this topic. It’s WAY too much to cover here.

HOW TO HEAL FROM BETRAYAL TRAUMA

Quite frequently all these symptoms are lumped into one happy little diagnosis of anxiety and/or depression. Here pop a pill and be on your merry way! While I’m all for medication if and when you need it really healing trauma requires far more than that.

First and formost you need to get out of your isolation! That is why I have ripped the curtain off my life and decided to start sharing here.

Second, and equally important, is counseling with a qualified therapist. Finding the right therapist can be very difficult. While there are all sorts of certifications you can look for ultimately it all comes down to do they know and understand betrayal trauma. It is also really helpful if they are trained in EMDR and/or neural feedback therapy (more on those in a future post). Both of these help to integrate the mind/body connection and speed up the healing process.  Betrayal Trauma Recovery is an excellent resource for finding a good counselor. They are coaches rather than certified therapists, but they have focused their training on betrayal trauma and most are victims as well.

Third, become  a learn it all. No one is ever going to care as much about your healing as you do. Knowledge is power and you need all the power you can get to escape the pit that you find yourself in while dealing with these issues. For dealing with your own insecurities adn regaining your individuality and muchness anything by Brene Brown is pure gold. I’m currently working through “The Gifts of Imperfection” book via the art journaling class.

Fourth is some solid self-care and self-love work. Self-Care is NOT selfish! You matter. You are important. You can not give to others what you don’t have for yourself. Your capacity to love others, including and even especially your own family, is limited by your ability to love yourself. If you struggle with this I would encourage you to find ten minutes every day where you can just do something you love. Take a walk, do some art, sing in the shower, just do whatever makes you happy.

“Sorry, Bear With Me – I’m Still Getting Used to Being Treated Like A Human Being!”

After decades of constant attacks for little to no reason by everyone around me it became what I expected from people.As a child I thought that the only common denominator was me, hundreds of attacks by dozens of people and they couldn’t all be wrong? Right?It led me to believe that I just be doing something wrong to warrant this behaviour – logically it had to be my fault.

Once when I was 8 my sister went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and flushed the toilet: This terrible transgression was punished by my father who made me and my sister drink gone off whole milk, so off it was chunky – to this day the smell of whole milk makes me nauseas.

Then we were made to stay up all night, every time we started to fall asleep he hit us and say “You asked for this”I came to the rationalisation that I didn’t deserve to be allowed to go to the bathroom at night, that disturbing my father’s sleep would get me beaten so from that day forth I would stay in bed for hours unable to sleep because I needed to pee – just to avoid the danger.

I did not see it as unreasonable behaviour because I was taught from a young age that if children didn’t do anything wrong they wouldn’t be punished, as I’ve explained before on my blog it was ingrained in me from a young age that even an unfair and unreasonable rule must be obeyed by a child.

So when abused I looked to a default within my behaviour which was the cause of the outcome – injury. The slightest error was enough, let me give a different example:When I was 5 I got beaten by my father for eating 2 pieces of his father’s day chocolate bar I remember being thrown around the living room, into the sofa and into the mantlepiece, slapped punched and screamed at – I remember bleeding from my head and reeling from the attack I just went to bed.

Many years ago I brought the incident up with a friend I explained how my father had made all us kids sit on the stairs until someone confessed and being coerced into it by being told “Your his favourite, he’ll go easier on you” by one of my siblings.I told my friend about the beating. Instead of leaving the story there I added “But it was Galaxy chocolate and that is a superior chocolate” as if this completely justified my father’s actions. After a moment my friend replied “Oh well that makes it alright then! I was just thinking how disgusting it is to beat a 5 year old over a piece of poor quality chocolate but it was nice chocolate so that makes it alright – if it had been like Dairy Milk THAT would be a total overreaction!”

He said it so sarcastically that for the first time that ever I thought that even if I had taken the chocolate no adult should ever behave the way he did – it was actually the first time it occurred to me that HE was in the wrong, not me!

That happened to me when I was 5 and I didn’t tell anyone until my 20s and so for at least 15 years I believed that this attack was my fault, my wrongdoing – karma punishing me for thinking about taking the chocolate.

(You know something weird? Even though didn’t take the chocolate, I remember seeing it and wanting to take some but I was too scared to and I thought it was stealing but to this day I feel guilty that I NEARLY did like it makes me a bad person)

What I’m getting at is for years so many minor things were worth more to others that my safety and wellbeing that when someone does show me a kindness or doesn’t attack me for a small mistake it’s really weird… I remember on my first job making a small mistake which someone pointed out and for a second I actually thought they were going to dive across the table and hit m -, they didn’t (obviously) but the point is that this is what naturally occurs to me.I’m not used to being treated like my comfort, safety, thoughts or feelings matter. Practically this means that I can act oddly in social situations, sometimes it’s just a look of confusion other times I may seem suspicious, overly aggressive or guarded.

I can’t help it and you can’t fix it so when an inevitable uncomfortable moment occurs, don’t bother trying to comfort me, no need to try and calm me, just leave it, leave me alone.

You cannot undo the decades of my life where I’ve learnt to expect abuse, it takes time, care, patience and dedication to help someone overcome even 1 traumatic event and let’s be honest you don’t have any of these requirements to actually help so do the next best thing – ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen, sweep it under the rug so I can at least maintain some dignity.

Sunday Special

I write a piece every week but I’ve decided that on Sunday I’m going to give a voice to someone other than myself a fellow survivor with a story to tell.

Today is shout out to a close friend of mine whose compassionate actions deserve recognition.

What SHOULD you do? 

Most of us come into contact with people acting unreasonably in public in some way at some time in our lives, when this unreasonable behaviour is towards a child it never ceases to surprise me how little people are willing to do to help protect that child I’ve heard all the excuses – “There not my kid” “It’s not my business” “Maybe they’ve been acting up and the parent has just snapped” (like that makes it ok!)

And recently I was speaking with a friend who said to me “What should you do then?” and that’s a really good question most of us don’t see how our involvement can help or what that involvement should be.

Be assured that getting involved directly is very rarely a constructive, productive way to help usually the best way to help is to “Observe and Report” take a step back and take notes, as many details as you can, when, where, for how long, descriptive details that can help authorities track the incident. I told my friend this and recently she put it into use!

My friend was in public and she watched a father abuse his toddler, slapping him and kicking the back of his legs – the way she handled this situation was just perfect!

  • She first observed – she      noticed that the man was with a group of adults so did not approach which      would have been incredibly dangerous and may have caused the situation to      escalate putting herself in danger and potentially further endangering the      child. She watched from a safe distance and quietly followed these people      trying to obtain better information      to give the police. She took note of the street and descriptive details of      the people involved. She saw them go into an address and noted it.
  • She then called the police      giving all the details she had noted during this time plus the address      they all went in to. She formally reported it to the correct authority –      that child was in immediate danger and while you can call social services      the lack of funding and large case load can mean they cannot get involved      as quickly as is needed. When you have an immediate concern for someone’s      safety always call the police.
  • Most importantly she took the      time needed to do the right thing, she could’ve easily been disapproving      and gone back to her day, shrugged      it off as “someone else’s job” and “not my business”      but she showed a level of compassion and concern towards a vulnerable      person in need of a good Samaritan. She took the time needed to do as much      as she could to help that 3/4 year old child. She treated that child like      her own, the way you would want someone to protect your      child/grandchild/niece/nephew.

What’s great is that not that long ago I was sat with this friend who asked me what she should do when she sees child abuse in public and she LISTENED.

We had been exchanging some public abuse situations that we had seen and been involved in and she was stating she didn’t feel comfortable confronting people. It’s so rarely a good idea to directly confront someone it can escalate the situation to a point where more violence occurs it can even cause more abuse towards the child later when you can’t do anything.

You need to assess the situation take the time, the date, the exact location, the physical description of those involved, if you can do so safely take a photo or a video, try NOT to get noticed so you can freely observe these situations and get as many details as possible.

You can do this, you can change your attitude, learn how to help and you can make this world a safer place for all – you could even save someone’s life.

The Emotional Equivalent of Cardboard

When I was young my mother told me never to listen to emotions as they were irrational and illogical. My mother believed that getting upset didn’t help so it was always better to keep your cool than to have an emotional episode.

My mum would mock our emotional behaviour, if we reacted in any way that showed emotion she would throw a tantrum and say “This is all I saw when you said/did that”

I remember this time my father was beating my siblings and me, I was 7 and he’d punched me in the face a few times  (I had been the last one he’d beaten) all my siblings were crying – but I was unable, I knew it would help if I cried as he would usually stop hitting us when we were sobbing, but I just couldn’t cry –  I felt completely numb, mentally, emotionally and physically and I remember thinking “I need to cry” so tried to fake it, I licked my fingers and rubbed them on my face in the hopes that it looked like tears I hid my face and made whining noises and it seemed to work.

I was 7 years old, I had a broken nose, I had been thrown around like a rag doll and made to watch the violence my siblings had to endure yet I was totally incapable of crying about it. All I could here was my mother’s voice in my head saying “How would crying about it help?” “How does getting upset fix this problem?”

You know why he beat us? Because one of the curtains fell down in one of the bedrooms and he blamed us – it fell because it wasn’t nailed into the wall but stuck to the wall with Poly Filler. Afterwards we were sent to our room and told that if we tried to come out he’d kill us – we were kept there for 2 days without food, water or use of a bathroom in almost total silence except from a few whispers. We were just too scared to talk (my sister protected me she rationed us a cup of water and emptied a draw for us to use as a toilet, which we then would throw out the window she was very practical for 9/10 years old) I’ve never discussed this with my siblings as adults – we just avoid the subject and pretend it wasn’t that bad because we’re conditioned that way.

To this day I can’t express my emotions verbally, the only physical expression I make is when I cut myself or overdose these are the only ways I can express myself,. Because after being silent for so long you forget you have a voice and when you do realise, like I have, that you do have a voice you don’t know how to use it.

It’s why I write this because I can express myself in the written word far better than in any other context. This may be a good thing in some ways but it’s hard to apply it in real life, it’s not easy to  have to write a strongly worded letter to some total stranger who upset you, or stop in mid conversation to write down what you actually mean and don’t even get me started on the shit show that is any kind of therapy!

I’ve never lost my temper, I’ve never screamed at anyone, I’ve never even had a heated argument in the few decades I’ve been alive I’ve never done anything that could seen as aggressive or violent I am always calm and rational even in the face of terror I can’t lose control. I would dearly love to scream and yell and make a fuss but I don’t know how.

My mother would mock any expression of emotions and my father would beat you for them and so it was for my entire childhood, even some of my adulthood.

I’m scared of confrontation I worry that bringing up any kind of grievance to someone might result in violence which brings me to an important message – with me and people like me, you won’t know you’ve hurt us, we’ll swallow it and most likely deal with it in an dangerous way, even if you directly asked we’d be so scared we couldn’t tell you.

I’m not saying you have to walk on eggshells around everyone but this would be a better world for all of us if everyone thought about the impact that their words and actions have on people. I wish people would take a leaf out of my book and at the end of every day think “Did I do the right thing today?”

My “Sweet” 16th

My 16th birthday was not like most as it also happened to be my wedding day! My mother had been trying to get me married off since I was 13, luckily and somewhat surprisingly for me most men were turned off when they found out my age.

Yet all good things must come to an end and when I was 15 my mother’s 5th husband found me a suitor who happened to be a follower of the same cult as us, my mother thought it best for legal purposes to wait until I was 16 to have the wedding, so I spent my 16th birthday getting ready to be wed, I didn’t have a wedding dress or a party, no rings were exchanged, no vows – nothing.

I spent the day cooking and cleaning so that when my husband arrived with his friends they could eat I served them while my mother packed my bags ready to send me off to live with a complete stranger. My mother didn’t meet him before we married and even refused to when asked she knew almost nothing about him but his first name and that he lived in London – that’s it!

My mother argues to this day that this was my ‘choice’ that the only thing she is guilty of was trusting her husband! This was not my choice, I am gay and she knew it. I was lead to believe that once I had sex with my husband that I’d like it and that would be the end of my attraction to the same sex, that the religious bond would make me closer to God and that this was all part of my religious life – it was my duty to get married and have lots of babies! I was young and I sadly believed this bull.

To explain to you how young I really was the only thing that excited me about moving in with him was that I would be able to go to Madam Tussauds – something I had wanted to do for years. I believed I was old enough and smart enough to get married, mainly because I had been told I was rather than because I actually thought that.

I spent the day rushed off my feet and barely had time to think so it really only hit me when I went upstairs to rest and found my mother packing a big pink suitcase with all my things when she asked me to help panic set in and I just knelt down and watched her as I was too scared to pack my things. After a couple of minutes I asked her to speak to him and to let me know what she thought of him but she said “no” as she was not comfortable with social situations!

To really understand what was expected of me in my marriage it should be noted that the gifts I received from my mother before the wedding were a set of pots and pans and lingerie! I remember her packing the lingerie saying things like “Oh he’s going to love this” and “Are you excited?” “Hopefully you’ll get pregnant quickly!”

After the meal my new husband dragged my suitcase to the door without saying a word until a friend of his, who was also our driver, tried to say ‘hello’ to me he aggressively said “Don’t talk to my wife” and my mother who saw this whispered to me “aww isn’t he protective” so I got in the car and we started travelling to London about an hour into the journey I got a text from my mum which said “I don’t know where you live now, send me your address when you know it!” up until them I had been completely numb and I hadn’t absorbed the situation until I received this text. It was this that made me feel truly alone and suddenly vulnerable, I realised that no one in this situation could help me and that there was nothing I could do about it – I was totally powerless.

He spent most of his time abusing me he would tell me I was ugly and fat and that I was lucky he was willing to marry me, he kept me locked in his studio flat while he went to work and when he came home he would have sex with me, I used to just lie there and try to keep my mind occupied by listing my top 10 favourite films, actors, actresses, songs, female singer, male singers – pretty much anything and everything so that I didn’t have to think about what was going on, I just disengaged.

It wasn’t long until I started getting sick, I was losing weight, becoming faint and pale and one day I managed to convince my mother to let me come back home for a hospital appointment – so as not arouse suspicion with the authorities and of course my husband came with me and the sex continued – much to my mother’s delight.

Then one night I awoke to find him on top of me I asked him to get off and he said “10 more minutes” I watched the clock and waited for 10 minutes then asked again, again the response was “10 more minutes” and again I watched the clock and waited – this carried on for nearly 2 hours. He had me pinned under his weight and even though I was crying it did nothing to stop him, in fact at one point he actually started licking the tears off my face. When he was done I kicked him, ran into the bathroom and locked the door I stayed in there for as long as I could waiting for him to fall asleep then when I felt the coast was clear I went downstairs and just sat in the living room for the rest of the night waiting for my mother to wake up so I could tell her what happened.

I truly believed she’d rise to my defence and protect me, I though she would save me – she did not instead she told me I was “mistaken” and later that day bought me some lube.

Shockingly I feel into a deep depression which culminated in an argument in which I yelled out “HE RAPED ME!” finally she believed me but told me off for not explaining it better at the time.I could go on and on about how she wouldn’t let me call the police and how I was forced to have an exorcism at one point but this is already too long and probably too upsetting. I know that there is no satisfactory conclusion to this ordeal it would be nice to tell you that it all worked out in the end but it didn’t. Sometimes you can’t fix something it just stays broken.

Just know this sometimes its necessary for me to be given the opportunity to express something like this, to get it off my chest and hope that you do gain something from it even if it is just “Holy Shit!”.

Sleep! Part 1

I cannot remember a time I slept well, but it has become especially worse over the last decade (12 years in fact) I haven’t slept the night through since I was a teenager – I once had a friend who said I was such a light sleeper that “A fly could fart in your bedroom and wake you up” but now my sleep is interrupted with nightmares, flashbacks and a near constant state of anxiety, you can’t properly rest when your stressed and I have never not been stressed.

As a child I was on the alert all the time, I never knew when the abuse would hit so I would sit quietly and wait trying to mentally prepare for whatever may come my way, it’s like being in a perpetual state of paralysing fear, you’ll never know who or what it will be.

My anxiety was at it’s worst with my father, as a child when he was around I couldn’t sleep I was so scared that every night I would be sick, I remember once at 8 years old being sick in the toilet and my father was naked, rubbing my back he said “Is it because of me?” I knew if I said yes I’d be beaten, I was smart enough to say “No”. It had been the middle of the night and even though I was ill and tired I was never off guard.

Thing is when you’re used to being attacked on all sides all the time it’s hard to tell when your safe, as an adult I have really struggled with this.

I remember getting my first job and making a mistake someone pointed it out and all I could think was “Oh my god he’s going to hit me” like a typo would make my superiors fly into a rage and attack me!

Most people have heard of ”Fight of Flight’ where in response to danger you either fight back or run away but it’s different for survivors of abuse, especially child abuse because whether you fight back or not it rarely has an impact on the abuse – you learn again and again how utterly powerless you are and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

Sleep is supposed to be a time of rest and it’s when any normal human is at their most vulnerable and I know that which is why I can’t sleep.

Now no one is attacking me I should feel safe, but I don’t, because I’ve never been safe before and I’m having to convince my mind that no one will hurt me, that it’s not some long elaborate trick meant to hurt me, this is all new to me.

I cannot let go mentally and my mind races with awful memories all day every day so how I can get anything done is a total mystery to me, I’m exhausted I’m too tired to have the mental fortitude needed to start healing my mind, there are 1000’s of hours of sleep I haven’t had and being forced into ‘constant threat mode’ all the time gives me total blackouts, where time doesn’t exist once I went to bed and woke up 3 days later with pierced ears! I have no memory of doing it, no memory of what happened in that 3 days, basically I’m short-circuiting all over the place. 

This total lack of sleep means my brain doesn’t work as well as it should, I’ve learnt to adapt in many ways, I can go an entire week without a wink of sleep and still manage to get by, but sleep is important you need sleep to heal the mind to give your conscious self time off without it your brain can’t work as clearly and your mental health suffers, there aren’t many people with mental health problems who sleep well, remember that as I’m so tired I may forget it!

Not Worthless but Worth-Less

Believe it or not there is a difference, for me what ever the object, I’m worth less than it, I can think of no better example than an incident that happened to me recently;

I was going out, I walked through the hall to the front door, there’s a step down and I lost my footing and fell, it was just one step and while I hit the floor but didn’t think much of it until I noticed blood I looked myself over to find the injury, my right foot was bleeding, it was just pouring and panic set in.It wasn’t the injury that concerned me but the mess it was making, everything that was readily available to cover up the injury was brilliantly white and I thought ‘Can’t use that, I’ll ruin it, blood is so hard to wash out of whites’

I found some napkins and used them so I could walk back into the living room and get the first aid kit as I limped through the hallway 3 drops of blood fell onto the hallway carpet, I was horrified and scared, I’d ruined the carpet, I felt awful.To me those 3 drops of blood were my fault, it was wrong and careless of me, all I could do was apologise to the homeowners for the mess caused.

My injury while painful and in need of urgent medical attention it was not more important than a small piece of carpet because as a human being I’m worth less than most other things.

Try and let that sink in, mull it over, think about what could drive a human being to believe that their safety and well-being is worth less than a small piece of carpet. What would it take for you to feel that way? Can you imagine what it would take for you too feel so small that you expect to be met with aggression over concern or kindness?

Think about the message I was sent: a little 7 year old girl who had been punched repeatedly in the face and afterwards told off with words like “LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!” and “Maybe if you weren’t so naughty daddy wouldn’t have to hit you”I was so little and so scared that once while being thrown down the stair I wet myself, when my father noticed I was punished further for staining the carpet – can you imagine the impact that had on me? Ask yourself what message I was being given, over and over and over again.

When I was very very young my mother told me that violence only counted as violence if the punishment was avoidable she said essentially if you’re a child and you get beaten for wearing shoes on the carpet this is only unfair if the child didn’t know not to, if that was a rule in the house then the child could avoid it and then it would be discipline – not abuse.

When so many people treat you like that, whose to say they’re wrong? My childhood was filled with people who abused me in some way and the only thing that kept me from despair was believing that it was my fault – at least then I had a chance to fix it or stop it, if I could only work out the pattern!

I know that I created this mental prison where everything is my fault and I deserve nothing as an individual or as a human being I did so to help justify my abuse and honestly things haven’t changed enough for me to stop this conditioning. Yes I get treated better now but that’s only because I’m alone, when I’m around people I fall back into my conditioning.

I had a friend who said “Sympathy is seeing someone fall into a pit and standing there showing you understand how they must feel and Empathy is seeing someone fall into a pit and then falling in yourself to stand beside them and experience what they’re experiencing, but only the Sympathetic person is in a place to help the person in the pit”

I don’t know if it’s true or accurate – more than likely it’s an excuse used to stop there from being emotional intimacy between people a reason stay detached. See I’m in the pit and I know no matter how hard I try I can’t get out and I know I likely never will but it would be great to have company, even if it’s temporary. Could you take a few minutes to imagine my life as a child, the fear, the loneliness and the pain.

I can’t read this the way you read it, it’s not new information to me its just something I’m reminded of regularly, so it may come across as a lecture, it may seem condescending to ask such a simple question but I don’t mean to be I would just really appreciate it if you could give it a few minutes thought, join me in the pit for a bit.

An introduction to ‘Nothing’ and ‘No One’

As a survivor of physical, sexual, mental and emotional child abuse I’m used to being manipulated into silence but I never expected that when I left I would yet again be required by society to keep the silence.

It’s a social rule – it’s impolite or incorrect to express something so abnormal, so unusual – the embarrassment you get when you share ‘too much’ so you keep quiet, the more you do this the more it becomes second nature to hide away the ugly things people don’t want to see.

When you are entirely made up of ugly things it envelops you, you become invisible I don’t mean a type of magical invisibility, it’s not a superpower it’s like you don’t exist in anyone’s thoughts, you’ve tried so hard and so long to make yourself socially acceptable, erasing things that people don’t want to see that you disappear, what’s left is barely a shell of a person, practically hollow, emotionless, thoughtless.

I am one of millions of invisible survivors whose life is too ‘upsetting’, too ‘horrific’ too much to be allowed to openly explain or own.

The likelihood is there is someone you know like this, it may even be you, a bit like an extra on a movie set, it’s like a person-shaped nothing, practically unnoticeable to society in every way.

When you go through abuse a lot of time and attention is paid to not telling others about it, most of it was literally “Don’t tell so-and-so I did such-and-such” but there’s also gas-lighting, manipulation and grooming where your lead to believe that it’s your decision, that you chose to do it;

I remember at 10 years old a 16/17 year old boy asking me if I wanted to have sex with him, he told me it would be fun and it would “prove I was more mature” so I said yes, he raped me behind a caravan in a car park in the middle of the night  – for more than a decade I didn’t believe I was raped by him (on that occasion) because I said “Yes” it took months of a very patient therapist to explain to me that I was conned into it and that complying isn’t the same thing as consent, and to say the very least a 10 year old can’t consent to sex.

This one incident out of thousands and thousands is consuming me, pulsing through my veins and screaming through ever pore of my body, yet I remain silent for fear that you hearing it, merely reading it will cause you distress, I was always told I would be “spreading the misery” so I fell into silence for so long I’ve forgotten how to speak it, to express it verbally, burying my trauma made me a No One so incapable I have Nothing to offer I have no use and no purpose – my very existence is questionable.

Yet like most invisible people I don’t want to be invisible, I’m not looking for anything more than acknowledgement of who I am, I want the freedom to be able to speak openly without fear of giving ‘too much information’ and making people uncomfortable.

More than this I want to be understood I didn’t have a normal childhood and that affects me now as an adult so I’m going to try my best to help you understand me, I hope you learn some of the things I learned through my life and if you can get me you can get all of us and then maybe we can all use this understanding to help ourselves and others.

Maybe one day I won’t be no one and nothing, but something and someone.

If you follow me on this there will be moments that will sicken you, distress you and may stay with you, if so I want you to know I’m not trying to upset you, it’s part of a reality I live every day and moving on is so hard. So be warned this may not be pretty but I will do my best to be informative more than shocking.