Monsters, the Spectre of Childhood Abuse...and Hope.
As therapists, we are honored to bear witness to the internal, often highly traumatic life stories and subjective experiences of patients, many of which sadly prove over and over again that demons and monsters in human form do exist. There is often an unholy alliance between the evil acts of a perpetrator, and the intentional silence of the family in choosing not to tend to the unimaginable, wordless terror of their own children upon whom such evil is enacted upon. Silence here is far from golden, and the triad of seeing, speaking and hearing no evil only amplifies the child’s trauma. This is the “terror without solution” an abused child faces: if they cannot turn to their parents or immediate family, who then can they turn to, and what are they implicitly learning about the world and others? What are they concluding about themselves? The conclusions thus reached are often tragic ones.
This is a piece of art from one of my patients, who is well on their road to recovery and earned resilience. This patient wanted me to share this on my Blog, as a means to further acknowledge the reality of childhood trauma, and the reality that superficial appearances are often just that: superficial and ultimately deceiving. The gold-plated and silver-lined turd is still at heart, a turd. Imagine for a moment carrying the emotions and terrifying memories within yourself, alone and with no-one to share with and connect to. The subsequent sense of disconnect and alienation can have equally detrimental effects on the survivor's psyche. Of course, we may find it difficult indeed to tolerate the distress of the trauma survivor. I admit I suffer vicarious nightmares at times myself (along with other physical and emotional reactions) on hearing such stories. But, we must try, and the effort itself will be felt as validation, and this already can act as a corrective emotional experience. This is true potential alchemy at work.
In this piece, the patient was intentionally fed beliefs that she was there for one purpose: to feed the sadistic sexual appetite of a predatory Adult. Religious themes were instrumentally misused to justify the abuse. The family was alerted, but CHOSE to do nothing and to invalidate the experience of their child/sibling altogether, in order to maintain their high standing reputation. Leonard Shengold many years ago wrote about 'Soul Murder' as a tragic consequence of relational trauma. More contemporarily, psychiatrist Michael Stone talks about suicides resulting from trauma perpetrated by an intentional other is in fact, Soul Murder and the perpetrator in fact, a Murderer of Souls.
My plea to all of us, is to cultivate awareness of any ‘smaller’ examples of when we do this, and to modify our behaviors accordingly. This is because as with good deeds leading over time to positive outcomes, small, ‘mild’ acts of invalidation and humiliation can and over time can have highly toxic cumulative effects on the developing child (and adult).
Remember, there is no shame whatsoever in seeking help. Contact Lifeline. Consult Beyond Blue. See your GP for further avenues of help. Talk to family and friends: the ones you can trust. And we as a collective need to meaningfully and compassionately respond. To not actively try and do so is to feed the Monster that is dormant within all of us; one that needs to remain starved.
As a colleague and a survivor of sexual abuse herself once told me: "We need to show survivors that they are not the monster. That the monster isn’t under the bed. That the monster is the abuser as is every single person who turns the other way. Abusers are hit and run drivers without a rear-view mirror. It's the survivor who is forced to get back up and get out of the road; it's hard but man, is it ever freeing."
What follows below is a drawing from the same patient. In my eyes it is a beautiful depiction of Hope, and Self-Earned Resilience.
