The link between child abuse and domestic violence

Last week I trundled a dolly of my books to the conference held by Sick Children’s Hospital for professionals working in the area of child abuse and domestic violence. Domestic violence? I wondered. It surprised me that these two areas were being so closely linked.

I thought about it for a moment and soon realized it made perfect sense. We all tend to restage our childhood traumas in adulthood. We parent the way our parents did, unless we consciously change. Change calls for awareness and some help in living life differently.

I remembered the sessions I had attended at the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation conference in Atlanta. The trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk described the 200% increase in boys who witnessed their mothers being beaten becoming beaters.

Dr. Martin Teicher of McLeans Hospital discussed his research on the impact of child abuse on the brain. He told us that, for boys, witnessing domestic abuse has the most disastrous results. For girls, familial sexual abuse has the highest impact on their future functioning.

Child abuse leads to repressed rage and dissociation, difficulty in establishing trusting relationships with other adults – the list goes on. All of which bring us to an increased likelihood of domestic abuse.

Where do we start? We need to work at both ends to prevent child abuse. This means identifying, educating and supervising parents where children are at risk. It also means helping the children who are suffering so that they don’t grow up to either abuse or fail to protect their own children from being abused (because they’ve learned to dissociate to avoid pain or are numbed into a state of helpless, childlike terror.)

You can change your brain!

I’m fascinated by John Ratey’s book, A User’s Guide to the Brain. Ratey tells us that it’s up to us to make the most of the brains we’re born with. Our genes and our brain do not predetermine our fate unless we allow this. We may be predisposed to anger, overeating or abuse of alcohol, but each time we overcome our particular weakness, we help change the brain. The brain has amazing plasticity, not only when we’re children but throughout our lives!

By viewing the brain as a muscle that can be weakened or strengthened, we can exercise our ability to determine who we become. Indeed, once we understand how the brain develops, we can train our brains for health, vibrancy, and longevity. Barring a physical illness, there’s no reason why we can’t stay actively engaged into our nineties (p. 17.)

In other words, use it or lose it.

All our brains have the same general features that make us human. But each of us develops an “exclusive brain suited to our particular needs” (p. 31.) This exclusive brain has been developed in response to our environment and our experiences.

In the case of early trauma, the brain develops to survive a hostile environment. This ability to adapt allowed the human species to survive warzones and extreme hunger. “The brain is a dynamic, highly sensitive system that may adapt, for better or worse, to almost any element of its environment” (p.6.)

So, what do you and I do if our brains have been shaped by early abuse? First of all, we need to be grateful for our brain’s ability to adapt and allow us to survive. Then it’s up to us to train our brains, as Ratey says, for health, vibrancy and longevity.

When I come to think of it, my own efforts at re-training my brain to feel safe and loved have centered on being physically fit, surrounding myself with caring, decent people and increasing my self esteem by being successful in my work.

Do you have some ways you realize you have changed your brain? What has worked for you to lessen the effects of early childhood trauma?

I'd like to hear from you. Please leave a comment.

EMDR? What's that?

Before I learned Eye Movement, Desensitization and Reprocessing, I had considerable success in treating victims of childhood trauma. Yet, there were always some aspects of trauma remaining. People were still triggered into panic by sounds, smells or sights which are benign in the present but propell them back into a terrifying past. This happens so fast there is no time to think about it. As well, their exaggerated startle response to any sudden noise remained.

What wasn’t known back when I was using standard therapies, is that trauma is held in the right side of the brain, the emotional side. The trauma does not have access to the left brain, the logical, cognitive side. It’s only an eighth of an inch between the two halves, but the spark can’t jump the gap, so to speak. EMDR allows the right side to connect with the left and “reprocess” the experience.

How is this done? EMDR treatment involves the bi-lateral stimulation of the brain: left side, right side by directing the eyes from side to side, tapping the hands, using headphones to send sound to the left and then to the right ear. This bi-lateral stimulation uses the brain’s natural way of dealing with upsetting emotion. Think of the rapid eye movement when someone is dreaming. Dreaming is not enough to handle the terror of trauma. The brain needs added help to clear the emotion.

EMDR takes advantage of the brain’s natural way of dealing with emotion. The EMDR practitioner guides the client’s eyes with her fingers, a light wand or a light bar. Sometimes the practitioner uses light tapping on the hands or knees.

Typically, clients start out very upset by the memory and end up putting the upset in the past where it belongs. Measuring the degree of upset on a scale of 0 – 10, people may start out with a 10 and end up with a 0 or 1.

Practitioners of EMDR specialize in helping clients heal from psychological trauma. They are psychotherapists with a thorough understanding of trauma and its effects on people. The eye movement described in this post is safe only in the hands of such professionals.

You can find out more on the EMDR website at www.emdr.org.

Why yoga?

Long before I knew that my “irrational” fear and anxiety were caused by child sexual abuse, I was drawn to yoga’s promise of inner calm. This was in the 1960s and '70s when most North Americans associated yoga with culturally dissonant contortions performed by skinny men in loincloths. I knew no one who practiced yoga.

As it turned out, yoga was the perfect choice for someone who had lost any sense of her own body to child abuse. I was desperate for some way of relaxing the spasms in my shoulder, neck and back muscles. In my yoga class, I was safe and separate on my own mat. There was no competition. No one was watching. For the first time in my life it was safe to concentrate on what was happening in my body. I was fascinated.

As the months went by, my muscles firmed up. I felt more energetic and even peaceful for hours at a time. I was hooked. It was possible to imagine another way of being: a way that was relaxed and joyful.

Today, there are many types of yoga available. You can choose the one you prefer. Classical hatha yoga was what I found and later taught. After class I always felt soft and loving toward the world. I also studied Iyengar yoga which the founder, B.K.S. Iyengar, designed for the western body. It is strengthening and emotionally grounding. By contrast, following a class I always felt ready to take on the world. There are many other varieties. Shop around until you find the one that suits you.

Back when I was a yoga teacher, adults did not generally go to fitness classes. People like me were attracted to yoga, people who had never been keen on sports or exercising. Maybe this is because we associated breathing heavily from physical effort with the terror we once felt.

Today there are so many types of fitness classes. The choice is infinite. But I still think yoga offers remarkable healing power to those who were traumatized as children. Yoga teaches us mindfulness, the opposite of dissociation. In yoga classes you learn how to relax your own tension and change your emotional state with your breathing. Yoga puts you into a friendly partnership with your own body. This in itself is uniquely beneficial.

Hear Mary's CKLN radio interview

Click on the headline above to download Mary's radio interview with CKLN host Stephanie Dickison about Mary's new book on healing from childhood incest Confessions of a Trauma Therapis.

How can you forget something so terrible?

I’m in Germany at the International Focusing Conference. Today I gave a workshop on traumatic memory. The theme was why it’s possible to have no memory of terrifying events.

First, I wanted the participants to be clear on the definition of “traumatic.” Often people use the term to describe a memory that is merely bad or painful. A traumatic event has to be (1)inescapable and (2)intolerable.

Our natural impulse when something threatens us is to go into a state of fight or flight. If we can’t fight and we can’t flee, we freeze or dissociate.

Normal children are capable of dissociating in order to survive. Dissociation is learned at an early age and is a highly developed skill. I tell my clients that yogis go into a cave for years to learn this skill.

What does it feel like to dissociate? Some people describe it as looking at the world through a pane of glass while feeling nothing. Others float on the ceiling and look down at what seems to be happening to somebody else. Yet another common form of dissociation involves simply leaving the body and feeling nothing.

At one time, dissociation spared us from feeling the full impact of a situation we couldn’t tolerate. Otherwise we wouldn’t be capable of this advanced mind/body control. It allowed us to participate in some parts of normal childhood, such as going to school.

In a nutshell, our brains are designed to assure the survival of our species. Dissociation deserves our respect.

Germany and child sexual abuse

I’m writing this from Germany where I’m experiencing a sort of déjà vu with regard to child sexual abuse. I’m reminded of what was happening in North America years ago when victims first started coming forward to accuse The Christian Brothers and other priests of having sexually abused the vulnerable children in their care.

Everyone I talk to here, every newspaper I see, and all the radio stations – they’re all shocked and angry about the recent charges against the Roman Catholic priests.

That’s how it began in North America. The unthinkable became thinkable. Victims of boarding schools then began disclosing their sexual abuse at the hands of teachers. Pandora’s Box got opened even more when individuals started reporting being sexually abused in their own homes.

I believe that Germany—as Canada twenty years ago—is just beginning to realize the extent of child sexual abuse in its midst

By now in North America, it’s not too difficult for most people to believe that sexual abuse happens in the slums to poor, unloved children. It’s harder to accept that middle class children of prosperous, seemingly “good” families can suffer sexual abuse at the hands of the adults who are supposed to be protecting them. Our discomfort is increased by the fact that we’re more likely to identify with these middle class victims.

Confessions of a Trauma Therapist, my memoir, tells of a middle class girl from an affluent family who seems to have everything a North American girl could want. I think that’s important. Child sexual abuse, although we might prefer to allocate it to the poor, knows no class or socio-economic boundary.

Confessions goes to Germany

As I write this, I am attending the annual International Focusing Conference in the Black Forest of Germany.

I have just given a presentation about childhood trauma. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go. I knew I planned to read from my book to illustrate how lost memories surface. And I knew I wanted them to hear about the actual breaking through of my awareness of sexual abuse at the hands of my father and grandfather.But I wasn’t prepared for how moving and moved the participants would be.

In the room there were of course Germans, then Greeks, Italians, one Palestinian, Brits, Netherlanders, French, Spanish, Belgians and many other nations represented. Most of these countries are just beginning to deal with the presence of child abuse in their societies. The recent sexual abuse charges against the Roman Catholic church here in Germany has stirred awareness of the prevalence of child sexual abuse.

After my reading, no one spoke. There was absolute silence for many minutes. I looked around the room. The eyes were closed or they sat pensively staring at a spot on the floor. I could only assume that each person was having his or her personal experience touched off by my very honest disclosures.

This was one more step in sending Confessions of A Trauma Therapist out into the world to plant whatever seeds find fertile soil. That’s what I wish for my book: to be heard and taken in by those who need to hear my message.

Today’s presentation felt like one more small step to reach out and help our world deal effectively with this crime against children.

Book launch memories of Frank

One of the most moving memories of the book launch centre around my son, Frank. From the speaker’s podium, Frank spoke of the years when he had first been helping me shape Confessions of a Trauma Therapist into a book. He said he would cry for hours over what his grandfather and great grandfather had done to his mother. I was really deeply touched. I had no idea it had been so painful for him to take in my traumatic childhood.

When he was a little guy, I experienced his childhood as a wonderful time in my own life. He was growing up protected and loved. My heart swelled to see him approach teachers and other adults without fear. He knew he was a good person and worthy of respect. The contrast with my own fearful childhood was profound.

And he knew that his very busy father would drop everything to be with him if he was in trouble. I often contemplated how different life would be for me if Harvey had been my father.

For those of us who were abused as children, watching our own grow up untraumatized helps set things right inside us. All parents vicariously reexperience their own youth through their offspring. By becoming parents, survivors of childhood trauma have the opportunity to know what “right” looks and feels like in childhood.

There is one thing that never occurred to me when I was a mother to a child. I would never have imagined that my child would grow up to be a best friend and a strong, wise support in my life.

I am so thankful for this lovely man who is still in my life.

The first book signing

I was still on a high from Wednesday evening’s amazing book launch when I walked into the scene of the annual conference of Canada’s EMDR therapists on Friday. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a trauma treatment I describe in Confessions of a Trauma Therapist.

Loaded down with cloth shopping bags of books, I made my way from the parking lot to the scene of the conference. I could hear the speaker at the morning session winding down in the large ballroom to my left. I set myself up at the table which was positioned to catch people as they left the session and settled in to sell and autograph my books. Through the impressive doors of the ballroom, I heard the microphone saying there was somebody selling books or something outside the door. She’d been asked to announce it. Wrong name, nothing about my book, not even the title or the relevance to the conference.

The participants flooded out from the morning session. Most didn’t even notice me sitting there trying to look friendly. A few stared with curiosity, then decided it was nothing that concerned them. The only books I sold and signed were to people I already knew and who intended to buy my book anyway.

Oh well, live and learn. It’s the sort of experience that keeps us humble.

I was the smartest of the dumb bunnies

Childhood trauma is cumulative. You start out being traumatized by the original abuse. Then, each stage of life piles on more bad experiences. As a child, I couldn’t clear my head to think. This excerpt from Confessions of a Trauma Therapist describes my life in grade three.

Grade three was the year the class was divided into two. Smart kids got to do grade four work, skipping a grade. Dumb kids sat in separate rows doing grade three stuff. I was held back with the dumb kids.

I dreaded telling my parents. Standing in front of them that evening, I looked for a way to soften the blow.

“Well,” I assured them, “I’m the smartest of the dumb bunnies.”

My father howled with laughter, doubled over, smoker’s cough erupting, breathless with the hilarity of it. That was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Smartest of the dumb bunnies! Ha, ha, ha!

My mother shared his amusement, albeit less raucously.

As for me, I just slunk away, relieved they weren’t mad at me. Nobody ever asked me how I felt. I don’t remember my parents ever mentioning it again.

My friends went on with the smart kids and I stayed behind. By the time I got to high school, I was already older and feeling more sophisticated than my classmates especially the late-maturing boys. When I was sixteen, I tried to makeup for the lag by choosing an older boyfriend. His interest in me may have soothed one part of my battered ego, but the fact that I couldn’t say no to his sexual urges made me feel even worse about myself.

Travelling around with my father

Here is an excerpt from Confessions of a Trauma Therapist describing my camping trips and visits to cottage country with my father.

I was aware and at the same time I wasn’t aware that my father’s frequent stops to open the trunk of the car were making him more and more drunk. He kept a red metal Coke cooler there with a block of ice and glass bottles of Coke. He would drink a bit from the bottle, pour in a belt of rye and continue sipping and driving until the next stop.

The more he drank, the more my head fuzzed over. That’s how my brain protected me from being terrified of the danger I was in, driving with this drunken protector. In fact, I was angry with the people along the way who snickered at his slurred speech and wobbly gait. It never occurred to me to be mad at him. I realize now that those amused stares from passersby threatened to pry open my reality: that I was with a man who was not a proper guardian for a child.

I remember being embarrassed by his attempts to impress the blonde waitress at the soda counter in the Port Carling drug store. I wanted to explain to her that my father was really a very nice man. And when we stayed overnight at the cottage of one of my mother’s friends, I resented her wanting to take care of me. Her solicitous attention made it clear she considered my father an unsuitable caregiver for a seven-year-old child.

When Father came marching home

Here is another excerpt from my book about father-daughter incest.

In 1945 when I was seven, the war ended and the men came home. What a strange time for the world. It was an era of post-traumatic stress disorders from the horrors of war. And for many it was a time of marital stress from too many years of living separate lives.

I don’t know how my parents’ marriage would have been different if it hadn’t been interrupted by the war. And I don’t know if my father would have relied less on rye and Coke to face his world. He had always been a party boy, but after the war he was seldom sober.

Each time he returned home during the war years I had initially been scared of him. He was huge. He could lift me up with one hand. Mostly I remember his smell. It was different from anyone else’s: a nose-tingling blend of the rough khaki wool of his scratchy uniform, the whisky on his breath and the ever-present Export A in his mouth.

Once he had been with us for a day or two, my shyness faded and I delighted in climbing into his giant lap.

When he returned home for good I experienced a strange mixture of fear and intense love. I wanted to be with him as much as possible. The most important thing in my young life was keeping Daddy happy.

Many years later, I learned he had another woman in England and that my role in the family, as my mother saw it, was to keep him home with us in Canada.

I grew up believing I was very fortunate to be my father’s companion. I thought I was lucky to go off camping with him, just the two of us.

I was a poster child for PTSD

What’s your image of a child who’s living with sexual abuse? When you can’t run and you can’t flee, you freeze. It’s what all mammals do. Would you have recognized my frozen state?

My parents thought I was a very calm child.

“Mary Kay’s not afraid of anything,” they would boast.

Little did they realize that at the slightest hint of danger I jumped inside myself where nothing could get to me and where I wouldn’t even know what was happening. Of course I didn’t squeal or tremble. I was frozen. Somehow their parental eyes did not recognize the signs of trauma.

I still have a photograph of myself at about seven years of age, shopping in Toronto with my mother and sister. In the forties when not everyone owned a camera, street photographers made a living snapping pictures of passersby. Once they developed the pictures they mailed them to their subjects. My mother must have agreed to pay because there we are, my mother, my sister and I walking along Bloor Street. In the picture my mother and sister are striding along, oblivious to the photographer’s presence. My mother is wearing a tall hat that no doubt is meant to add stature to her five feet. Two fox skins, complete with little heads, hang around her neck to her waist, their glassy eyes staring at the sidewalk.

As for me I am the poster child of post traumatic stress disorder. My neck is pulled down into my torso. My left hand is making its way to my frightened face. My eyes are wide with terror, expecting something awful to happen. The photographer has caught me at the very moment I am disappearing inside myself.

Less than one week until book launch

As we get close to the launch of my book Confessions of a Trauma Therapist, I can hardly believe what an interesting and stimulating evening it’s going to be. The universe is certainly cooperating! Imagine having Judy Steed as MC (Judy Steed published Our Little Secret about sexual abuse in Canada), Michele Landsberg telling us some of her journey as a journalist and Sylvia Fraser speaking about her history as one of the first to write about her own incest.

Michele Landsberg wrote for The Toronto Star in the days when she was a lone voice exposing sexual violence against women and children.

Sylvia Fraser is another amazing pioneer. Imagine publishing her book My Father’s House in 1987 when society was still in total denial about the sexual abuse of children.

My husband Dr. Harvey Armstrong recognized and began treating child sexual abuse when he was a psychiatric resident at The Hincks Treatment Centre long before anyone was aware that child sexual abuse was endemic in our society.

The great irony is that even though Harvey was an expert, he didn’t recognize that his own wife suffered a dissociative disorder and post traumatic stress disorder. Harvey will speak about his experience.

It’s going to be quite a celebration of how far we’ve come in stemming the flood of child abuse.

Three days until launch day

It’s three days until my book launch for Confessions of a Trauma Therapist: A Memoir of Healing and Transformation.

Talk about telling the world! In it, I tell everything about how I recovered my lost childhood memories of incest.

Let me tell you, it’s much easier to tell the world than to tell one’s own family.

Of course, I had to alert my family to the fact that I was publishing a book about having been sexually abused by my father and his father, our dignified old grandfather.

I sent the letter to my sister, her children and their children, the youngest of whom is 19. In it, I tried to explain why I was revealing such unsavory family secrets.

I said: “I have written the book with the goal of encouraging other survivors of child sexual abuse. I want to help professionals and anyone else wanting to understand the victim’s struggles with trauma-based shame and betrayal.”

“This letter will stir some strong feelings in you. I want to hear from you when you’re ready.”

More in the next post about the fallout from my letter.

Anticipation of April 28 Confessions book launch

The book launch for my memoir Confessions of a Trauma Therapist is coming soon. It’s strange that I don’t feel anxious. I’m excited and happy, but not nervous. In fact, as I told a friend it’s like the wonderful feeling of falling in love and having a baby all at the same time. It’s as if I’m riding a huge cosmic wave. I’m just the conduit, or something. I’m fortunate enough to be bringing to all those who want to hear about child abuse my knowledge and experience. I know I have an abundance of information about healing and transforming the invisible wounds of childhood trauma into strength and positive energy.

Today I went to Women’s College Hospital to check out the auditorium. Judy Steed, my good friend and the master of ceremonies at the book launch, went with me. There are many, many details to sort out.

Where do the refreshments go and when do we have them set out? Where is the best place for the books to be sold? What’s the best place for our guest speakers, Michele Landsberg and Sylvia Fraser to sit? Where should Judy and I sit?

It’s a winding route from the front door to the auditorium, so we’ll need signs along the way. The Women Recovering From Abuse Programme will be celebrated for their amazing work with women recovering from trauma. We’ll ask participants to donate as they feel able to this worthy programme.

$5 of each book sold will also go to support WRAP.

The evening is truly a celebration of how far we have come in exposing and healing child abuse.

Daydreaming and dissociating to survive childhood incest

Victims of child sexual abuse often survive through daydreaming and dissociating. The second chapter of Confessions of a Trauma Therapist is titled “My Life Goes On Without Me.”

It starts like this:

I daydreamed my way through grade two, the year my father came home from war for good. Most of the time I imagined being the queen of the fairies. The plots varied, but had one prevailing theme. I was the beautiful, dearly loved queen who had the power to find answers to everyone’s pain. (Does that sound like the origins of a psychotherapist?)

At home I played a game over and over. I lined up my huge collection of dolls and stuffed animals. They became my pupils. I was the teacher, scolding and punishing them for being so stupid. I yelled at them and shook them as hard as I could. Nobody clued into my rage, although my mother did find my behaviour puzzling since I was never strapped or yelled at in school.

………………

“Mary Kay’s always daydreaming,” my mother often mused. It was just something I did – part of my personality – and it wasn’t a good character trait. It was something I needed to change. But I couldn’t.

I had no idea why my head fogged over and my body went numb every time I needed to think. I just knew I couldn’t shake my head clear to focus on long division or memorizing verses from the Bible.

The hidden signs of abuse – excerpt 1

How can you tell a child is being sexually abused? Child abuse takes place in secret. Are there signs? Can we, as adults, spot these children?

Here’s a quote from the beginning of my book, Confessions of a Trauma Therapist:

Looking at me during my childhood years you would have seen a spoiled rich kid always smiling and never causing any trouble. On the inside, life was different. Under a placid exterior I existed in a wet grey fog, never quite sure of what was happening around me.

Would you have realized I was dissociated? After all, unlike Precious I didn’t live in a slum. My family was affluent. They were respectable, professional people. My grandfather who sexually abused me was a proper, distinguished lawyer.

Anyone seeing Grandpa and me together in his downstairs library where leather-bound books lined the walls, would have found the scene charming. As a little girl I spent many hours a day with Grandpa while he was reading or playing Solitaire on his pedestal table. In my attempt to join him, although I had not yet learned to read, I would haul a huge tome off the shelf and pretend to be studying it.

Every once in a while I would ask him the meaning of some nonsense word of many syllables. Grandpa would observe me in all seriousness.

“How do you spell it, Mary Kay?”

I would list off a string of my favourite alphabet letters, and a serious discussion would ensue before Grandpa returned to reading his books.

Once a week, Grandpa and I took a slow walk to the library – the old man with his fedora, walking cane and an armful of books, and the little girl with the long blonde curly hair and a big bow tied at the back of her short dress. It must have been a touching sight. Grandpa always took out four new books a week.

Certainly in those days there was no one to tell because back then nobody “knew” that child sexual abuse even existed.

The terror of telling

When I knew Confessions of a Trauma Therapist, my story of suffering from incest, was about to be published, I had to alert my family members.

Most of them had no idea I’d been sexually abused as a child by my father and grandfather.

It’s always hard to tell these terrible secrets, and it’s hardest to tell your own family because you’re telling them about their family too. I screwed up my courage and wrote them all a letter.

Waiting to hear from them after I mailed the letter was agony.

First to respond was my sister who had known – and dismissed - my questionable memories of child sexual abuse. She was kind and expressed sadness for my suffering. (which I interpreted as feeling sorry for my suffering, whether or not anything had actually happened.)

Next came a really loving response from a nephew and his wife. Their concern was for me. Of course it had never occurred to them that I had spent much of my life fearful and depressed as a result of childhood trauma. Survivors are so good at looking good!

The next nephew also expressed his surprise that his strong, competent aunt could ever have suffered. He promised to get back to me when he had time to absorb this new view of Aunt Mary. I’ve not heard from him since.

One of his two daughters sent me a loving and compassionate email. I was touched by her sincerity and caring for her great aunt.

Another nephew can’t bear to talk with me about it. It’s too painful. Maybe it touches on some of his own childhood wounds.

My own son has known about my history of incest for over twenty years. He’s been a sympathetic, intelligent companion in my healing.

I wonder – can anyone but a person who suffered the betrayal of child abuse – ever understand how scary it is to tell?