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- Herausgeber: Loving Healing Press
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2007
Find Your Way to Freedom Today!
If you were abused or neglected as a child, chances are that you have been your whole life, whether you are a man, a woman, or a teen. Child abuse so mangles the personality that the victim unconsciously attracts abusers throughout the life cycle. Lies about yourself were planted deep in your mind by the abuse, and you still believe them. They are crippling your life! Do you have any of these signs?
- You have symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
- You feel like a second-class citizen.
- Nobody understands: they ask, "Why can't you get over it?"
- You have escaped one abuser only to end up with another.
Until you understand exactly what the abuse did to you, you cannot get free. You can stay in therapy your whole life and never get a clue. OR you can unravel the mysteries once and for all and bring everything to light by reading Am I Bad?? Recovering from Abuse. A great resource for victims, therapists, and group work.
Therapists acclaim for Am I Bad??
"Am I Bad?? is a tour de force of the tortured landscape of child abuse and its pernicious long-term outcomes. This book is an important contribution towards the edification of victims and institutions alike."
--Sam Vaknin, PhD, author Malignant Self-Love
"This book should be compulsory reading for anyone dealing with abused children or abused adults, or adult survivors of childhood abuse."
--Robert Rich, PhD, M.A.P.S, A.A.S.H.
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AM IBAD ?
Recovering from Abuse
HEYWARD BRUCE EWART, III, PH.D.
New Horizons in Therapy Series
AM I BAD? Recovering from AbuseBook #6 in the New Horizons in Therapy SeriesCopyright © 2007 Heyward Bruce Ewart, III, Ph.D.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher.
First Edition: October 2007
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ewart, Heyward Bruce, 1943-
Am I bad ? : recovering from abuse / Heyward Bruce Ewart III. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (New horizons in therapy series; bk. #6)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-932690-33-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-932690-33-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Child abuse—United States—Case studies. 2. Family violence—United States—Case studies. I. Title.
HV6626.52.E94 2007
362.76—dc22
2007010591
Distributed by:Baker & Taylor, Ingram Book Group, New Leaf Distributing
Published by:Loving Healing Press5145 Pontiac TrailAnn Arbor, MI 48105USA
http://www.LovingHealing.com [email protected] +1 734 663 6861
L o v i n g H e a l i n g P r e s s
Coping with Physical Loss and Disability:
A Workbook by Rick Ritter, MSW
Do You Have A Loved One with Disabilities?
This workbook provides more than 50 questions and exercises designed to empower those with physical loss and disability to better understand and accept their ongoing processes of loss and recovery. The exercises in Coping with Physical Loss and Disability were distilled from ten years of clinical social work experience with clients suffering from quadriplegia, paraplegia, amputation(s), cancer, severe burns, AIDS, hepatitis, lupus, and neuro-muscular disorders arising from. Whether the physical loss arises from accidents, injury, surgery, or disease, the techniques in this new workbook are guaranteed to improve functioning and well-being.
Praise for Coping with Physical Loss and Disability
“This workbook is a very good stimulus for focusing on issues that are crucial for better coping with loss and disability.”
—Beni R. Jakob, Ph.D, Israeli Arthritis Foundation (INBAR)
“This workbook is a tremendous resource that is practical and easy to use. The author shows his connection with this material in a way from which we can all benefit.” —Geneva Reynaga-Abiko, Psy.D.,
Clinical Psychologist, Urbana-Champaign Counseling Center
“To date I have not seen another tool that can help people who have disabilities become self-aware and adjust to their new lives as well as this workbook does. This workbook can help them to see how they still have strengths ad abilities and move beyond being disabled to reestablish their self-acceptance and functionality.” —Ian Landry, MSW, RSW
“Rick Ritter is able to provide us with an insightful road map to the growth process of individuals experiencing physical loss. As clinicians we often need to provide support to those who have experienced much more loss than we ever can imagine. This workbook is a masterpiece in helping us accomplish that proficiency.” —Darlene DiGorio-Hevner, LCSW
Loving Healing Press5145 Pontiac TrailAnn Arbor, MI 48105(734)[email protected] pp — $17.95 RetailISBN-13 978-1-932690-18-7Includes biblio., resources, and index.http:/www.PhysicalLoss.comLife Skills:
Improve the Quality of Your Life with Metapsychology.
Life Skills, by Marian K. Volkman, is the first ever self-help book based on Metapsychology techniques. Based on the work of Frank A. Gerbode, M.D., Life Skills makes use of one-on-one session work to achieve the individual's personal goals — from relieving past pain to living more fully to expanding consciousness.
• Learn handy and usually quite fast techniques to assist another person after a shock, injury or other distress.
• Learn simple methods for expanding your awareness on a daily basis.
• Gain a deeper understanding of what a relationship is, and how to strengthen and nurture it.
• Learn the components of successful communication, what causes communication to break down, and how to repair breakdowns.
• Learn an effective tool for making important life decisions.
Praise for Life Skills
“Life Skills is replete with examples, exercises, episodes from the author's life, and tips—this is a must for facilitators, clients, and anyone who seeks heightened emotional welfare—or merely to recover from a trauma. —Sam Vaknin, PhD, Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited
“Life Skills is a serious, impressive, and thoughtful work with one objective in mind: teaching how to reach one's full potential in practical, pragmatic, easy-to-follow steps that will literally change one's life.” —James W. Clifton, M.S., Ph.D.,
“Life Skills by Marian Volkman is not to be read once and then put away. It is a guide to living a full, satisfactory life, a philosophy, a challenge. If you take the trouble to do the exercises the way the author suggests, they will change your life.” —Robert Rich, Ph.D., M.A.P.S.,
“Life Skills offers a new and simple way to look at old situations and make life better for yourself and those around you.”
—Sue Phillips, Spiralthreads Book Reviews
Loving Healing Press5145 Pontiac TrailAnn Arbor, MI 48105(734)662-6864 [email protected]
180 pp — $16.95 RetailISBN-13 978-1-932690-05-7Includes biblio., resources, and index.http:/www.LifeSkillsBook.com
The New Horizons in Therapy Series
About our Series Editor, Robert Rich, Ph.D.
Robert Rich, M.Sc., Ph.D., M.A.P.S., A.A.S.H. is a highly experienced counseling psychologist. His web site www.anxietyanddepression-help.com is a storehouse of helpful information for people suffering from anxiety and depression.
Bob is also a multiple award-winning writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and a professional editor. His writing is displayed at www.bobswriting.com. You are advised not to visit him there unless you have the time to get lost for a while.
Three of his books are tools for psychological self-help: Anger and Anxiety, Personally Speaking, and Cancer: A personal challenge. Dr. Rich currently resides at Wombat Hollow in Australia.
What People Are Saying About Am I Bad?
“AM I BAD? is a tour de force of the tortured landscape of child abuse and its pernicious long-term outcomes. Numerous case studies expertly intertwine with theoretical insights to produce the equivalent of a comprehensive and unconventional treatment modality. This book is an important contribution towards the edification of victims and institutions alike.”
—Sam Vaknin, PhD, author Malignant Self-Love
“You bring out some very enlightening experiences that certainly back up your theories. Having worked in both a county mental-health clinic and an 800-bed mental health facility, I found your compassion and unique style of therapy refreshing.”
—Pam English, mental health professional
“I will recommend your book to everyone on our mailing list. I would agree that child abuse has a major influence on the development of one's personality... living in an abusive environment tends to [make a child] unable to explore or discover his or her own self.”
—Cindy, Cornell University
“This is a wonderful book. It should be compulsory reading for anyone dealing with abused children or abused adults, or adult survivors of childhood abuse: physicians, psychologists and other therapists, teachers, protective workers and so on. And the language is so clear and non-technical that it will be of enormous benefit to the survivors of trauma themselves, and even to parents who want to ensure the safety and wellbeing of their children.”
—Robert Rich, PhD
“Your materials (testing for child/domestic abuse) are great! I really hate child/domestic abuse because it is also practiced by many tribes here in Tanzania.”
—Filemoni Tenu, Muhimbili University, Tanzania
“I have found that almost two thirds of the women that I have interviewed present a long history of abuse as the main etiology of their depression. I will translate your tests and use them in my practice.”
—Ricardo Villamizar, Clinical Psychologist, Marin General Hospital, Ecuador
“For many years as an independent midwife, I had the opportunity to identify and acknowledge women's past and current experience of abuse. Pregnancy is a ‘raw’ open time when many memories, feelings surface, whether the woman wants them to or not. I have personally observed that it is an opportunity to begin/ continue a healing process.”
—Jill Demilew, Kings Healthcare Trust, London
“I am currently working on a USAID-funded Women's Health and Family Welfare Project in Indonesia. We are very interested in using your tests on child abuse and domestic violence and will translate them.”
—Harriet Beazley, Ph.D., Women's Health & Family Welfare Project, Indonesia
“It is, indeed, kind of you to make available your inventories for measuring domestic violence against both women and children. I am a Health Social Scientist from India and will conduct some reliability studies here.”
—Hemant Kulkami, M.D.
“I have frequent contact with both elementary school age children and with unwed mothers, many of whom I suspect were sexually abused as children. I am sure your work will be helpful.”
—Barbara Franks-Morra, R.N, M.F.A.
Contents
Foreword by Rev. Lawrence Stevenson
Introduction
Chapter 1 – Disintegration of Life
Larry – Growing up Abused
The Statistical Evidence
A New Developmental Model
Chapter 2 – A New Developmental Model: The Recovering of Self
Survival Needs
The Sense of Becoming
Power and Self-Esteem
Chapter 3 – The Lies Implanted by Abuse
Sexual Abuse
Sexual abuse of boys
The Bottom Line of Any Type of Abuse
Secrecy
Test for Concealed Child Abuse
Epidemic Proportions of Abuse
Chapter 4 – Physical Abuse
Head Injury
Shaken Baby Syndrome
Abdominal Injuries
Scourging
Punching and Other Violence
A Brother and Sister
Chapter 5 – Terrorizing
The Bedwetting Boy
Adolescent Cases
Death of a Terrorist
Chapter 6 – Parentification
Debbie: 20 year-old Anorexic
Children of Alcoholics
Sexual Harrassment
Chapter 7 – School Abuse
Insult as Control
Misdiagnosis of Behavior
Covering It Up
Researching Neglect
Chapter 8 – Neglect and Rejection
Rejection
Chapter 9 – Domestic Abuse
Signs of the Abuser
Why Women Stay
Consequences of Staying
Brain Damage Symptoms
Domestic Violence Inventory
Chapter 10 – A Man's Account
Chapter 11 – Treatment Considerations of Child Abuse
Chapter 12 – Treatment Considerations of Domestic Abuse
Borderline Personality Disorder
Group Therapy
Chapter 13 – Special Populations
Cultural Deprivation
Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Chapter 14 – The Dangerous Student
Student Critical Symptoms Questionnaire
Substance Abuse Test for Resistant Students or Employees
Chapter 15 – Workplace Violence
Test for Potentially Dangerous Employees
Victims in the Truest Sense
Chapter 16 – The Falsely Accused: Victims in the Truest Sense
Defense Interrogatories for False Accusers
About the Author
Index
Psychometric Instruments
Test for Concealed Child Abuse
Domestic Violence Inventory
Student Critical Symptoms Questionnaire
Substance Abuse Test for Resistant Students or Employees
Test for Potentially Dangerous Employees
Defense Interrogatories for False Accusers
To: Mom, Caroline M. Ewart,who left this life July 2, 2006.and to my children: Melissa, Stephanie, Kristen,Jennifer, Alexandra, and Rebecca
Foreword
Somewhere in the world today sits a woman in a hospital emergency room with her head hung low; body posture in a slumped, negative position; she is probably bleeding from an uncommon place on her body; a rape kit is being prepared by the nursing staff and a criminal offense report is being filled out by a police officer. From this description you already know this woman has been sexually assaulted.
What the description doesn't tell you is the mindset of this woman. Being a former police officer, my experience, after countless numbers of these types of instances, is that this victim's mindset is “This is my fault.” No matter the age, education, background or circumstance, when the police report is written and the questioning begins, the victim will blame herself for being assaulted.
In his book: AM I BAD? Recovering from Abuse Dr. Heyward Ewart brilliantly brings this type of thinking to light, stating “Every child blames herself for the abuse or neglect she has suffered. The message, deeply internalized, navigates the individual throughout life.” Experience also tells me that this is not the first time she has suffered this type of abuse, at the hands of what I like to call a “domestic terrorist”.
Domestic in relationship, known or unknown to the victim, this type of terrorist is not hiding in caves, carrying grenade launchers down city streets or flying planes into buildings; no, this terrorist is convincing the innocence in a child or the grace in a woman that she is to blame for being abused, thereby holding the child or the woman hostage in her own mind!
This type of mindset ultimately leads the victim to self-destructive behaviors, not the commonplace self-destruction that we see daily, but the kind that puts limitations in the mind of the victim. The result leaves her mentally seeking relationships with those who would be abusers. Dr. Ewart, being right on point, makes this perfectly clear when he states, “The abused little girl becomes the abused adolescent, who becomes an abused adult. Just as water seeks its own level, so an abused person seeks relationships and a lifestyle that are no better than what she believes she deserves.”
Am I Bad? Recovering from Abuse is masterfully written, with questions, answers, case studies and strong, clear facts. This book should not just sit on the bookshelves of psychologists and counselors. It should be open on the desk and readily available to draw from its wealth of knowledge that the author has penned, not just for us in the field but for everyone who will ever come in contact with those who have been abused and need to understand that it is not your fault!!
Rev. Lawrence Stevenson, Founder/CEONational Agendawww.nationalagenda.netAuthor, From the Inside out: A Look Into Teen Violence and Rebellion.
Introduction
Child abuse and domestic violence are a dual pandemic. They are often linked, for the first can lead to the second, in my experience. Many professionals are surprised at this observation, but I have attempted to show the connection in this volume. An abused child becomes prone to abuse in adulthood. Although both subjects have been extensively studied, much of the literature deals only with a description of each. Rarely are they discussed together. Moreover, existing documentation tends only to describe in general how horrible child abuse is, both in degree and in frequency, and how hopeless the struggle of society is to stop domestic violence from continuing to skyrocket. Stopping domestic violence altogether has received little scholarly attention.
The literature is thus replete with accounts of what is happening in our culture, but little has been written about why. One of the most important factors in domestic violence has been overlooked in research and in practice; that is, the treatment of the affliction. Too often, shelters provide a haven for a time, but when the victim is released, she either returns to the same abuser or seeks out a worse one. Not only is the cycle not broken, but the victim becomes even more vulnerable.
The purpose of this book is not to provide treatment techniques, although some principles are mentioned, but to furnish from real-life case histories a penetrating and hopefully unforgettable look at what causes domestic violence: child abuse. Vivid understanding of the cause must precede the development of effective treatment. Further, the intent is to show many other consequences of child abuse, most importantly a distorted sense of self, which greatly limits the chances of a fulfilling life. Child abuse implants false messages about who one is. It is most difficult to live a successful life that is based on lies.
When clinicians and others with the power to produce change really see what child abuse does, the adult ramifications of this phenomenon can be treated with permanent success.
Pretty little Amy, only nine years old, was playing near her inner-city home when a stranger raped her in full view of her young friends. Worse than the assault was her father's condemnation that placed full blame on her for letting it happen, and the onset of rejection. His words, “It's your own fault,” formed an unceremonious branding of the child as a “less-than” that would be confirmed by periodic acts of sexual assaults against her as time went on. Each subsequent violation of her personhood was committed by people who were supposed to love her, not by strangers.
By the time she entered her teen years, the original Amy was gone. There remained the form of a maturing female who knew no power of her own except for the ability to gain attention and meet survival needs through the sexual use of her body. So she sold it in order to exist. When she discovered that crack cocaine worked miraculously to lift her away from the anguish of nonexistence, she became a loyal slave to it.
She was only in her late teens when her body would no longer bring enough money for both living and crack. So she sold her body for crack only. She came down with pneumonia, and while in the hospital she was diagnosed with AIDS. It was found that that she had carried the virus for a very long time. She estimated that she might have infected more than 150 men. Even while she was hospitalized, with oxygen at her nose and, a feeding tube in her throat, and intravenous lines in her veins, she continued to accept the clients who came to her hospital room for their usual service. She lived almost two years after the first hospitalization, but because her lifestyle remained unchanged, she was dead by 24.
Larry – Growing up Abused
Larry was neglected in foster homes from birth to age 2, when the real trouble began. His adoptive father hated him. He was yelled at, beaten, thrown out to agencies, brought back, cursed, ignored, insulted, and belittled until he was farmed out permanently to a boys’ home in his early teens. His adoptive mother, living in terror that her husband might kill both of them, kept her mouth shut and even remained living with the man long after the boy had grown up.
To this day, the young man has told no-one but his therapist that when he was four he used to wake up from nightmares about something hard and slimy under his blanket. When he awoke and felt the mattress, he wondered where the substance came from and what it was.
All of his life, he was tormented by his uncertain sexual identity. Even as this book was being written, he wondered whether he was bi-sexual or homosexual. But there is one thing he knows for sure: He is gay, and in his mind, it's his rightful punishment.
Love of money has been called the root of all kinds of evil. But child abuse is a root that runs deeper, spreads farther, and holds a specific, predictable consequence: the loss of personhood and often of life itself.
While AIDS is only one example, it is a recurring demonstration of abuse leading to a deadly disease. When a mind is set off course, the body follows.
In 2004, I presented a continuing education class on domestic violence for a medical center in Jacksonville, Florida. I began my remarks with this statement “Domestic violence begins at age four.” Abuse at the hands of a partner in early adulthood does not arise out of a vacuum merely by the poor choice of a mate. Rather, maltreatment from this stage on is very often the natural outcome of a type of “brainwashing” that begins early and receives reinforcement many times through the years.
It is during the early years that humans acquire their first ideas about who they are, and, unfortunately, they believe these falsehoods for the rest of their lives. Victims are initiated into a pattern of abuse, including self abuse, not in adulthood, but in childhood. As a matter of fact, every one of us comes into adulthood with a second-hand opinion of who we are.
When a little child is called brilliant, stupid, beautiful, ugly, hopeless, helpless, good, bad, a blessing or a curse, the child has no choice but to accept these assertions as “gospel”. What other source of information does he have? He can absorb only the information available to him.
These messages are communicated just as well or better by what is unsaid. The glances, the pauses, the scowls, the smiles, the visual forces, speak indelibly, although without sound. The child's self-definition derives from these impressions. They are permanent; like initials carved in the bark of a young tree that only enlarge as the tree grows.
You may have wondered by now why an example of male abuse has been included in our opening case histories, when little girls are abused, especially sexually, far more often. The reason is that the effects are the same. Female sexual abuse is far more prevalent. A press release by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (1996), revealed that girls are sexually abused three times more often than boys but that boys have a greater risk of emotional neglect and serious injury. According to the same source, abuse and neglect cases rose from 1.4 million in 1986 to nearly 3 million in 1993. The number of seriously injured nearly quadrupled from 143 thousand to 570 thousand in the same time period. I am using the pronoun “he” only as common practice in describing child development.
When the child reaches adolescence, having mastered the lessons about who he is, he is driven to experiment. His concept of self may not work in the peer group, so various trial personalities and their accompanying behavior must be rotated until one works. Not to fit in means annihilation, not just rejection, and today the consequences can mean physical attacks as well. Clothes with the wrong label might literally be torn from his back.
In adulthood, the urgency to meet life on its own terms; that is, deal with the challenges of living, becomes more pressing, with countless choices to be made. One's identity, or a solid sense of who one is, determines the direction of these choices. But this idea of “self” is no more than a chance configuration. It is formed by combining the second-hand opinions received in childhood with the results of adolescent experimentation. Victims enter adult life with the greatest possible handicap: believing they know who they are and being wrong, or, alternatively, having no idea whatsoever. Either case requires dependence on someone else.
While child abuse might harshly be stated as “raping the personality”, even children reared in fairly normal homes still suffer a “molestation” of their identity through the communication of false information about themselves. The messages can even be seemingly positive. I have met nearly-retarded people who were told all of their lives that they were brilliant, and the result was a life of endless frustration as they attempted to achieve goals that were impossible for them. And worse, they left unattended very great possibilities in other realms that would have paid off with great enrichment.
But the tragedies I have seen over 20 years of practice mostly result from destructive, even malicious, assertions about the child's nature on the part of parents, teachers, siblings, and other influential members of the early social circle. This “programming” has cheated them out of a fulfilling life that could have fostered the greatest joy of all: being and celebrating their own self. Indeed, for those who are spiritual, blossoming into the fullness of one's being, with the hidden talents, gifts, and abilities thoroughly explored, is the highest honor to one's Creator, however that divine entity may be defined. It might even be argued that such is the highest form of praise. One victim proclaimed:
For the first time in my life, I have been given the greatest sense of freedom: to know that the career I have chosen, that of a dedicated mother and wife, reflects the real ‘me’ and therefore is honorable, is a huge joy. I don't have to listen to the old messages, that I'm no good, that I'm bad.
I have spent my whole life feeling like a worthless piece of sh—. No matter how hard I tried, my father and step-mother would always put me down. I could do nothing to make them happy, to accept me. I could not make them give me the affection and feeling of worth I need so badly.
I'm not to blame for their inabilities as parents. I'm learning that I didn't cause their unhappiness, that the messages I was given as a child were false.
I have always believed bad things happened because I was a bad girl, that I was unworthy to have a mother, that it was my fault that a neighbor molested me—my fault because I was the one who went into his house.
I have let people abuse me verbally and physically because I believed that is what I deserved. Today, I'm learning I don't deserve to be treated that way. I am finding myself, my true self!
There is hope for people like me, and I believe if doctors become aware of what child abuse does, people like me can recover instead of being misdiagnosed, institutionalized, given improper medications, and ending up suicidal.
The Statistical Evidence
As far back as 1997, 41 states reported that nearly 1,000 children were known by child protective agencies to have died as a result of abuse or neglect in each state reporting. These agencies further estimated reports of physical abuse at the 3-million mark nationwide, but admit that a high but unknown percentage of cases are never reported. (U.S. Dept. Health and Human Services, 1997).
Recent statistics are even more staggering, as illustrated by one single state, South Carolina. The website Childwelfare.com, hosted by Duncan Lindsey, indicates a child population of 1,009,641, with 11,246 of these children abused in 2002 alone. (This is a national site, where your own state can be examined.) Nationally, this source reports the highest percentage of abuse to occur in the 0 to 3 age group (16%), followed by 4 to 7 (13.7 %), then, 8 to 11 (11.9%), 12 to 15 (10.6%), and 16 to 17 (6.0%).
But as serious as these abuses are, they do not match the greatest damage: the message that abuse implants in the child permanently.
Another patient reports:
I used to have images cross my mind, then quickly dismiss them. I had no reason to believe anything like sexual abuse had happened to me. After all, no-one in my family had said anything tragic had happened to me or my family when I was four years old.
My pain escalated in adulthood until I was brave enough to consider that something had happened and gave myself permission to explore the idea. I was like a computer unable to proceed until the sequence was right. I've learned to pay attention to these images—that is, flashbacks—sometimes visual, sometimes almost being audible, all packed with feelings.
My molestation was filled with emotional messages which I have believed for 43 years. My assailant was my “true love”. “Don't tell anyone. They won't like you,” he said. These messages were recalled only by my being in a group. While others were sharing, little pieces of my own life started to come together.
It has been a lot of painstaking emotional pain to discover all this, but it's been worth it, to be able to proceed with my life. Now, at 43, I am finally rid of the garbage and reasonably happy.
When my molester almost got caught, he abandoned me, and left me feeling false guilt, that it was my fault. To make matters worse, I was a victim of a dysfunctional, negative, and abusive family that fed on my weakness. I was the oldest of seven children and was told how to feel, how not to feel, so I believed I had no right to my own feelings. That apparently made it harder to discover what I do feel and to trust those feelings as cues to my recovery. I couldn't do anything fast enough or well enough to meet their approval, adding to my distress.
The weather even had an affect on me. The sun casting a certain shadow triggered deep emotional feelings of fear, sadness, and aloneness. The same with certain sounds and music. I am learning to pay attention to these things, to recognize them and deal with them and get healthy.
Too few professionals are up to date on what they need to know about the devastation of child abuse. The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC), an organization I highly value and depend upon. conducted a survey of professional needs (APSAC, 1994).
There is simply not enough competent help for abuse victims. Interdisciplinary people working in the field cited as the most difficult aspects of their work, “heavy workload, low pay, public laws and policies that impede my work, and lack of communication with interdisciplinary colleagues.”
One woman believes she would not have survived if she had not found our therapy group. A psychiatric nurse as well as a survivor of child and domestic abuse, she says our understanding and treatment go far beyond what is now being offered in the field at large.
They have given me an understanding of the trauma, so that I can live with it, on a daily basis. Healing of trauma takes time, understanding, encouragement, and compassion that few professionals are willing or able to give, in my experience. My doctor has been gifted in this field. He has saved my life and given me a sense of peace within that I have searched for in a therapist for years. The ideas he presents make sense and give people hope that they can overcome the trauma that has been inflicted on them.
APSAC reports that child protective agencies nationally were able to investigate only 28 percent of cases in which children were harmed by maltreatment in 1993, compared with 44 percent in 1986. An anonymous, inner-city teacher, writing in the Society's booklet, “Connecting with Kids,” reports,
I see a lot of this kind of thing [child abuse], but D was one of the most troubling kids I'd seen. At seven years of age, he was fatalistic, foul-mouthed, and jumpy. He was hypervigilant—he seemed scared all the time, and he was utterly unable to concentrate. You'd see a flash of sweetness in him now and then, but mostly he was too on-guard for that.
The day he came in with a welt on his cheek, I decided it was time to call child protective services. The caseworker hooked up with the police to do a home visit, where they found total chaos—filth, rotating boyfriends, violence among the adults, violence in the neighborhood. Both the mom and several of her boyfriends had been in and out of prison. Mom had dealt some drugs. Years ago, people would have said that D was a “troublemaker”—now we say he's a kid suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of violence in his home and neighborhood. (APSAC Advisor).
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)is one of the more easily definable outcomes of child abuse. Most severely victimized children, in my experience, can be accurately diagnosed for PTSD. Not until adulthood, when life stresses compound, do they eventually seek treatment; that is, those few who do. As for the children, they are often diagnosed with hyperactivity, attention-deficit disorder.
Traumatized people often abuse alcohol and other drugs. They are found everywhere at Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Current estimates of the number of female incest survivors in A.A. range from 40 to 80 percent. Similarly, about an equal percentage of men in these groups have survived some sort of physical abuse as children, according to many studies. (A.A. World Services, New York 1998). Nearly 100 percent of these victims have never been treated. Those who relapse the most—or completely give up—tend to be those who have been through the worst nightmares that life has to offer children.
The public at large seems to blame the male homosexual for the AIDS epidemic. However, the group spreading the disease most rapidly today consists of intravenous drug abusers. Many of them, perhaps easily the majority, were pointed toward the needle not by the peer group but by the abuse in childhood. Perhaps some make it all the way to elementary school before their true selves are mangled. But one thing is sure in my experience: Rarely does a substance abuser know who he is.
