Therapeutic Commentary

Understanding the Healing Process

by CARLA WILLS-BRANDON, M.A., P.A., April 1993

FOR MOST OF THE LAST DECADE, the majority of the individuals I have worked with in my practice have been survivors of trauma. Many people regularly ask me how I am able to do the intensive work I do in my private practice, workshops, and writing without feeling depressed all the time. My consistent response to this question is, “Not only have I been personally involved in remembering the agony and terror of my own childhood, but I have also experienced the triumph of healing from such pain.” Today I am not a victim of sexual abuse, but a survivor of trauma, and I consider it a privilege to be able to help others in healing from trauma.

I hope that readers of Paperdolls will learn from April Daniels what healthy recovery from sexual trauma involves. Years ago, most people believed that if we didn’t talk about it (meaning sexual abuse), it would go away. Today we know that if we are to be emotionally, physically, and spiritually fit we must unlock the door to the past and remove the accumulated toxic waste. Only by doing this can we discover who we truly are, understand the meaning of our lives, and have an appreciation for the life we have been given.

The book will enable you to journey along the path through trauma with other brave souls who have allowed themselves to remember the pain of abuse. Paperdolls gives a clear understanding of the recovery process trauma survivors, and their family members must go through in order to become whole human beings. Though this book vividly exposes and graphically portrays enormous pain, when the final page is turned, the message you will come away with is one of hope.

Sexual abuse has far-reaching ramifications. For many years I covered up my grief about my childhood physical and sexual abuse with alcohol and food addictions. I also repeatedly attempted suicide. By the time I was in my early twenties, dysfunctional relationships, isolation, and self-hate threw me into a black hole from which I could find no escape. I saw various therapists, clergy, and psychiatrists in an attempt to understand my pain, but these helping professionals were never able to identify my problems as symptoms of childhood abuse. Instead, in response to my self-destructive behavior I was thrown out of graduate school and “treated” with a number of mood-altering prescription drugs.

My husband thought if I moved away from my family my mental health would improve. After we moved, I began to have memories about the abuse my father had inflicted on me. I also began to recognize that it had been my family’s social position that, in part, had enabled my father to abuse me and others for so many years without anyone asking any questions.

My healing process was most painful. For a period of months, I was unable to work because I was flooded with memory after memory of violation. Living during those years of remembering was a one-day-at-a-time experience, and though the pain of remembering was incredible, a small spark within me let me know that this pain and rage was necessary for my healing. For me to reclaim myself emotionally, physically, and spiritually, I knew I had to follow my own road of childhood trauma to the end.

Initially, many a trauma survivor doesn’t have conscious recall of the abusive experience. Abused children do have the emotional maturity to process such overwhelming information. So several survival responses may kick in to temporarily protect the child from the abusive experience. It is common for children to dissociate, “numb out,” or emotionally distance themselves from the abuse while it is happening. With this response, there is a false sense of security and protection. I had no conscious recall of my childhood abuse for years. Once I was in a safe place, with safe people in my life to support me, my buried memories of trauma began to surface. These normal responses to remembering the abusive experiences are called body memories and feeling memories.

Many trauma survivors will begin experiencing emotional breakdown or excessive emotions before the actual memories surface. Intense grief, rage, isolation, shame, and fear are all common feeling memories. These feeling memories can be triggered by a violent scene on television, a sexual encounter, hearing about others’ abuse, certain smells, a phone call from a family member, or reading a book like this.

Body memories can cause more confusion than feeling memories. Many abuse survivors are labeled as hypochondriacal because they seem to have a never-ending number of physical complaints. Before my memories began to surface on a conscious level, my hands would periodically freeze up. During these times, my poor hands would tingle with pain, and I had to submerge them in hot water to loosen them up. For some time I thought I was losing my mind and hid my discomfort from family and friends. Finally a memory surfaced that explained why my hands kept freezing up. I saw my father tightly holding my hands while forci ng me to engage in oral sex. Once I reclaimed this experience and experienced my feelings about it, the pain in my hands left. To this day it has never returned.

Body memories can come in the form of migraine headaches, numbness in certain parts of the body, rashes, chronic infections and colds, or unexplained nausea. Body memories can also include feeling genital stimulation for no apparent reason, numbness in the mouth and lips, rectal pain, tingling sensations on the chest, vaginal tightening, and certain forms of impotence. Like feeling memories, they can be triggered by any number of current experiences and usually surface before conscious recall of the abuse.

Every week, someone I am working with comes to the office concerned about a body or feeling memory. Once they hear this is a normal part of the healing process, they are able to carry on with the task of remembering. Not everyone will consciously have memories. Some will have outside information that they were abused, for example from a perpetrator in recovery or from an adult who is making amends for not having protected the child. It is painful for those individuals to hear about their experiences and not remember, but they can still heal.

After I had broken my denial about my own abuse, I raged off and on for five years. I was angry with the offenders who hurt me, with God for not stopping it, and with the adults who didn’t protect me. I experienced waves of grief and pain. The loss of my innocence and youth, the feelings of abandonment by all I had faith in, and the grief of never having felt protected and safe were very intense. During this time I needed support, healthy guidance in processing my strong emotions, and validation of my reality, not shame and condemnation. Usually survivors’ feelings of betrayal, rage, and grief eventually begin to surface. Though these emotions are very necessary for healing, many professionals attempting to assist the abuse survivor tend to see them as indications of severe mental illness. It is important to understand that this phase of the healing process is not only normal but important. If this phase of recovery is skipped or not fully completed, healing is impossible.

In this book, April conveyed a number of body and feeling memories she experienced during the process of remembering. For some readers, these experiences may be unsettling. If you begin to feel overwhelmed with emotion or body feeling, take some time away from this book. If you are a survivor of trauma, it is probable that you will be triggered by the scenes of abuse described here. If you have not identified yourself as an abuse survivor and find extreme difficulty in reading this book, you might want to consider the possibility that there just might be some buried trauma in your past.

Those of you reading this book who are not abuse survivors may have reactions that range from sadness for the survivors to outrage against the perpetrators. It is important that you, too, take steps to process the emotions you experience. Support groups or safe family members and friends can provide aid and assistance by just listening.

The authors also share their frustration in attempting to find support from their church in holding their perpetrators accountable. Unfortunately, this scenario is a very common one. Over the years, I have worked with many individuals who have been sexually abused by clergy. The pain for these survivors has been incredible. They not only suffer abuse at the hands of a powerful person, but they also suffer the spiritual abuse of being abandoned by their church.

Whether they’re abused by a clergy person or another adult, children tend to see God as an accomplice to the sexual trauma, thinking God must approve of their abuse or think they deserve it because they’re bad. Consequently, many abused children become atheists or religious addicts in their adulthood. The atheist refuses to accept the concept of God, while the religious addict attempts to win God over with excessive religious activity.

An important stage of the healing involves forgiveness of self. Most trauma survivors feel responsible for the abuse. A number of survivors feel shame about how they have acted out in dysfunctional ways as a result of being abused. Survivors must recognize that they are not responsible for the abuse itself but are responsible for healing from the abuse. Today I am not ashamed that I am an abuse survivor, nor do I feel responsible for my abuse in any way. What I am responsible for is my continuing recovery.

Forgiveness of the perpetrator isn’t the goal of the healing process. True recovery involves admitting all that happened; experiencing all our feelings; taking responsibility for our actions; and healing emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

Paperdolls should be required reading for clergy, helping professionals, teachers, and parents. The authors present the stages of healing necessary for recovering from childhood sexual abuse in detail. Both the professional and lay reader learn about body memories, feeling memories, flashbacks, and the grief process the survivor must go through in order to heal.

Peace be with you as you travel your own healing process.

THE EVENTS CHRONICLED by these two authors are straightforward accounts of one of society’s most pervasive and disturbing problems: the sexual abuse of children. Shattered lives, fragmented families and dysfunctional adults are the all-too-often consequences. Abuse of children by a parent, with its blatant betrayal of trust, is even more traumatizing than rape of a child by a stranger. Because we tend to avoid and deny those things that are distressing to us, sexual abuse of children has been recognized only in recent years as a fact of life. Even today, many people are still unable to accept the reality of its existence. As a therapist for three of the children described in this book, I can verify the accuracy of their horrific experiences.
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— Paul  L. Whitehead, M.D. (Senior)
January 1992

THIS BOOK WILL BE HARD to read. It is the heart wrenching story of incest and child sexual abuse. All of us involved in its publication, authors, editors, and therapists, have struggled with finding that place where the overwhelming devastation of the child’s experience can be accurately portrayed without assaulting the reader.

I can promise this: you will come to understand that underneath the painful, tormenting theme of abuse and betrayal, there is love and courage.

Incest and child abuse is a soul-ripping reality endured by thousands of our children on a daily basis. We are, even now, unprepared to recognize it, name it, and rid ourselves of its brutal agony.

As her therapist, I was fortunate to be a part of the healing of one of these women, but I marvel still at the resilience of the human soul, of April Daniel’s soul. She and the other children in this book suffered the ultimate betrayal of trust and innocence that was their birthright. Their child’s bodies, minds, and spirits were violated, and they will forever carry the inner scar. Fortunately, they are recovering from their traumas and will one day be capable of sharing in loving, committed relationships.

We must all bear the burden of helping to heal and, better yet, prevent the cataclysmic wound of child sexual abuse. It is my sincere belief that by sharing their stories with you, April Daniels and Carol Scott will have helped remove one more critical layer of the denial system that keeps our children in peril.
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–Karen Fisher, L.C.S.W.
January 1992