Healing From Torture

[Hashi]

Before writing much about this, I just wanted to ask whether there's anyone who'd like to have a discussion about it?

My focus is on healing, not what happened. So it might be talking about fear in general, but not about X, Y and Z being done to cause the fear. And hopefully it would be anything that has helped deal with the fear, or insights about it that have increased understanding. That's just an example, it doesn't have to be fear. (But fear seems to be the overwhelming issue for me.) I respectfully ask: please don't post any specific details here.

Also, I really don't want to get into definitions and whether something counts as torture. That might be a very valid thread, but it's not what I'm after here. If anyone considers their experience of sadism (or political intent) to be torture, that's good enough for me.

I realise that maybe no-one will respond, and that's OK. I just thought I'd ask the question. This isn't something that's talked about much.

 

[maddog]

Hi Hashi. I think this is something I am able to relate to, an something I am tentatively willing to talk about. Happy to take your lead?

Maddog

 

[ericaboo]

Intrigued, not sure I'm capable of discussing it, not sure if it belongs anywhere except diaries.

I wonder what Anthony would have to say, or how risky it is to go down this path in a thread.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I am willing to discuss this without going into details. I remember feeling horror and terror. It happened so many times I split it off from conscious memory. Thank you for bringing this up.

 

[ericaboo]

I like the ground rules: No need for specifics, just strategies. No need for debates over definitions, just healing.

For me the most important thing these days is mitigating my violent reactions to triggers that happen with very severe flashbacks that occur with people close to me - loved ones. I know what most of the triggers are, and I've learned to change how I react, usually, but not the severity of how I react.

1. There is a split second moment where I am able to think - I can't stop, but I can usually change what I'm going to do. I can change it into something that will have the least consequence to myself and others. Best case I can change fight to flight. Worst case I can change "bad" fight to "less bad" fight. I also am usually able to redirect the reaction from people to objects at this point. I haven't ever achieved a "freeze" option with this particular issue.

2. I had quit alcohol for 7 years, I've relapsed slightly now, but so far, I don't get $hitfaced. I believe alcohol is a huge detriment to this part of the healing process for me.

3. I also had to move into radical acceptance of responsibility. Nobody deserves my violence, no matter what they did to trigger me - I own that 100 million percent, and that is not negotiable.

4. Just because I'm a woman doesn't make it OK to aggress against men - they are not "tough enough to take it," they don't deserve it any more than a woman or child would.

5. I can request people to avoid my triggers, but I can't hold them responsible. If they can't help themselves, it's my responsibility to stay away. Some people are impulsive and are not in good control of what they do and say. That's theirs to carry, but it won't ever excuse my horrible reaction - EVER.

That's all I've got so far, but it's been saving me the risk of ending up in court, friendships, money, dignity and increasing safety of the people around me. It was hard work to get this far, which is still pretty dysfunctional, and I had to endure so many years of horrible guilt and shame to get here.

There is still a Stockholm like issue with me that I haven't in any way dealt with - I still get myself around dangerous people and am vulnerable to bad people in a big way. There is some strange attraction, perhaps to relive the past and change the outcome this time around. Not good - I'm very open to ideas from the rest of you.

And now I pass the talking stick to, well, whoever has the courage to pick it up. I hope we can stick to the rules and make this thread a success. Maybe we can ask for a sticky thread to be created up top if all goes well.

-erica

 

[Deleted member 12723]

As to the healing of it, it had many effects. I was anxious at five o'o clock every day for a few years, but as trust developed in my husband it went away. I still have problems with the ringing of the telephone. For years I screened all of my phone calls. Now I am able to just pick it up and answer it.

I do not have body image problems anymore. It just went away as I got more comfortable with my own body. I need to lose some weight, I am gaining because I quit smoking. And I am overcompensating by sucking on alot of werthers caramels.

But I digress, alot of the healing came from cutting off contact with my father. I read in a letter to my brother, that if he had it to do over, he would do the same exact things. He was a real bastard. I am being kind to him.

For years I had unreasonable fears and anxieties. I gained alot after I cut off contact with him. He was'nt able to mess with my family or my mind anymore. I just slowly healed. Now I am doing alot better. But I can be triggered by certain things, even so it does not bother me as much as it did. Now my dad died this year and I feel peace. He will not be tormenting people ever again. I do not know if this is what you were looking for. I tried to stay in the lines so to speak.

 

[Hashi]

Thank you so much for responding. I didn't really expect anyone to. But I think knowing we're not alone and sharing what helps is as important with this as with any other trauma.

erica, what you said really impresses me. For me, radical acceptance of reponsibility for my reactions is something I'm particularly trying to deal with. It's probably in a different way from you, but the principle is the same. I tend to attack myself, in a hundred different ways, and I also find myself feeling justified in passive aggression or poor behaviour towards other people, because (I think) they haven't been through what I have. I'm looking at your 100 million percent ownership and I'm wondering - how did you get there???? How do you do that???

As for me, something I've discovered about talking about this is that I always need to follow the vulnerability of working on it with something which will ground/soothe/strengthen/rebalance me. So that's what i'll do here.

Gizmo. I understand only too well about the horror and terror. Terror is something I've been dealing with for two years now (since recovering memories) but the horror is something that has only come up (and come up with a vengeance) quite recently. At first I wanted to work on it like the fear, to look at it, process it, understand it, and I was frustrated that I could never begin to understand it. Then when I was journalling about that I had a sudden realisation: be glad that you don't understand horror. It's really hard to put this into words, but I think fear is something I'm meant to look at and understand, but regarding the horror, there's only so much evil I can ever face. I can't try to understand horror in its entirety, because that would destroy me. I can only look at what meaning it has given to my experience.

So, I recently journalled about fear (my new best friend) and listed all the types of fear I've seen in myself so far as a result of this:

- fear of being possessed by what happened and going insane
- fear that my attackers can still reach my mind and destroy me
- fear of acknowledging how bad the experience was and letting that be real (when starting to recover memories)
- fear that there's no end this (that was the way I felt at the time about what was happening, and the way I've felt more recently, recovering one memory after another)
- fear of not surviving physically
- fear of not surviving in my mind
- fear of human evil
- fear of supernatural evil - can't explain this any more without breaking my own ground rules, except to say that it's about feeling safe spiritually. if I believe in God, that doesn't necessarily make me "safe" because I feel The Devil's just as real.

OK, enough for now and here's my soothing/strenghthening:

I've been thinking for a while how much I want a sort of "antidote to torture" and what that would be. As if I could inject a serum and the effects would be neutralised. Over and over, I've thought - the antidote is beauty. When I think about that, I realise that I dont mean natural beauty but the sublime beauty that's created in music, art, poems, writing.

Today in T we were talking about alchemy, transformation, going beyond limitations to give a different form to things. Not denial or dissociation, but acceptance and meaning. I realised that my feelings about beauty relate to this. Firstly, it's important for me to know that while I've had the unbelievable misfortune to spend time with people at one end of a spectrum of how people can behave, I'm also blessed to know that there are others who are decent and there are some at the very highest, most beautiful way to be on this earth. Secondly, I know I need to transform my experience - not transcend it, not bypass it, but accept it, go through the deep pain of it, collapse under its horror and ugliness... then change what I do with it.

 

[Hashi]

Gizmo, we've posted at the same time I think. I wanted to quote your whole post here, but that would only get me a warning ;) , and when I tried to edit it I didn't want to take anything out.

I'm still at the stage of unreasonable fears and anxieties. I'm so glad to hear about the healing you've achieved, for your sake and for mine. Thank you so much for sharing this.

 

[lrs]

It has been a while since I written on this forum.

Your story moved me. I am so sorry to hear of what you have experienced. I come up short of words in attempting to describe the evil some humans possess. Torture is the worst thing that can happen to a person. Given a choice, I would choose death over torture. Torture is part of my story.

I was a child, the perpetrator was my father. I have experienced the horror and dread of knowing what is about to happen. You never forget. It is so bad, again, I simply come up short on words that could describe what it feels like to know horrific things are about to happen, it is inevitable, and there is not one thing that can be done to stop it.

I will respect your wish that details be omitted. I'll just say, once, when I was 10 years old, I thought I was going to die. In 2003, while Dr's were trying to determine what in the hell was wrong, they did an MRI on my brain. It was determined that I had suffered a stroke many years ago. I can not prove it, but I believe it had to have been from that day. That was in 1970.

The next 33 years of my life were hell.

 

[intothelight]

This is a really good thread. I found myself having a hard time reading it and wrapping my brain around it. I always referred to "it" as abuse; but in reality "it" was torture. "It" was the systematic breakdown of a person physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. "It" was domestic terrorism.

After 20 years, I found something inside of me that just would take it any more. So I fought back and fought hard. I never realized the fight would take ten additional years and involve so much collateral damage (my children); but it finally ended a little over a year ago with our abuser getting a life sentence.

I have managed to pick up the pieces over the past year. I remember what happened, but I also am grounded enough to realize it was the past and am refusing to let it have any more control over my present or future. CBT is something I practice consciously every day to battle the demons. I have also found great healing in nature, and the beauty of the world around me.

It has only been recently that I am finding my circle of friends and family widening as I am more open to meeting and learning to trust other people. I am finding and focusing on the good, especially within myself and those close to me. This is the hardest part of the recovery; allowing myself to be vulnerable, trusting, learning that I can depend upon others to do and be the good people they are.

 

[Anna]

Same as Gizmo. I went or go somewhere else in my head when there is physical or psychological pain. The mind will dissociate or separate from the body in order to survive.

 

[PTSD sufferer]

Hi All,

I am taking a break from the forum, but wanted participate in this thread as it speaks to me. I don't want to discuss the details of what happened, and I am grateful that you have outlined this as off limits. There are many issues associated with torture that I have identified in myself, but I imagine there are many more than what I have come up with. This list includes:

Feelings on top of PTSD symptoms

- insecurity and insecurity of losing the little physical security I have
- fear, shame and guilt
- fear of the unknown and subsequent obsession with learning and gathering knowledge to protect
- expecting corruption (in a hyper vigilant way not a paranoia way) leading to distrust
- pessimistic outlook about the human race (present company excluded) leading to distrust
- distrust toward people who claim power / authority positions
- lack of feelings of worthiness and value
- feelings of horror and helplessness
- isolating and introverted behaviour (as I don't trust people in general)
- alienating myself from my emotions and from human contact, and feeling alienated by others
- states of extreme despair
- feeling of responsibility to protect others from purps
- feelings of anger towards purps
- self denial of needs (let alone wants)
- not talking about what happened (I wrote it down for my T to read in dot points but I still have not found my voice to even start to describe what happened.

Physical symptoms

- dissociation and dissassociate amnesia to the point of catatonic states
- gastric problems and seizures (particularly in legs) that immobilise
- migraines / headaches that result in vomiting and light sensitivity
- possible elements of psychosis i.e delusions (neurological damage)
- other physical stuff

I guess I am not sure about over coming this beyond what is mentioned for PTSD in general - a good dose of grounding, and CBT (including EMDR).

I take extra precautions around my personal security, like learning to protect myself and my home etc. I always position myself near an exit with a clear path of escape planned out as soon as I walk into a room or park even.

I spend a lot of time talking to my brain (if anyone asks whether I am talking to myself, I usually say no I'm singing or talking to the wall). When I have a nightmare or daymare, I will go back to just before things went wrong and play out different scenarios of what I could have done to survive (a form of negative self talk I am told). Often for weeks, I'll keep trying to come up with a plan of escape from the past situation. I am never satisfied with the solution hence it isn't role playing and rather negative self talk.

I guess beyond the tools we have to manage PTSD symptoms, accepting the past is the past, and other people have ''issues'', I spend quite a bit of time actively looking for beauty and kindness in the world away from people to teach my brain to seek out positive things. There are environments I cannot enter, so I try to find another way of achieving my life goals that do not require these environments.

I cut off or protect (mental and physical protection) when I see any behaviours that are 'similar to purps'. Some personalities can be similar and triggering, and I try to separate personality from behaviour, which is not easy. But, I am always cautious either way and create distance. Usually its a look in some ones eyes that I don't trust (that's what disturbs me the most). I tend to flight rather than fight but am very good at freezing.

Managing this is a really tough question. I guessed that we need to find the answer that work for us individually. I decided to study and do training so that I would be smarter if I ever encounter this stuff again and that gave me some confidence. Although, I know there is more training I could do.

Hope some of this makes sense. Its just really hard to talk about...really, really hard.

Love PS xxoo