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All Adults Are the Protectors of All Children (Don Shelby)
INTRODUCTION-SUMMARY
These are the insights of a 77-year-old victim of childhood abuse. He was not aware of the root cause which dominated his life until he was 65 years-old and ran across references to resilience and child abuse. Bill is a thoughtful, deep thinker. The following observations result from his reflection on his life.
Our institutions should pay attention. What they are doing is NOT WORKING!
The main takeaways from these personal observations are:
- Child abuse is trauma occurring when the child’s brain is forming, creating behaviors that last a lifetime.
- Mental health treatments come from experts, most of whom have NOT experienced child abuse.
- Little peer-reviewed research from the victims’ perspectives.
- There is a 5th “F” in addition to Fight, Flight, Freeze, “FAIL”
- Every child who is living in a traumatic “home” situation – abusive events, toxic environment, appears to the child to be endless – knows that at the end of every day they will have failed to protect their boundaries – physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual. Doesn’t matter if there was a specific event that day or not. The threat is always there.
- Child abuse is the root cause of many of Society’s ills.
OBSERVATIONS….
1 Powerful White Men
The reference field for rich & powerful white men has nothing to do w/ the frame of reference of the rest of us. In particular this is most true for the marginalized starting w/ women & children, BIPOC & GLBTQIA. This new awareness explained a lot about why child abuse is the biggest issue in public health & invisible to our higher ups. Maybe it’s a generalization:
2 Emergence of 5th “F”
All peer-reviewed research to date on all aspects of child abuse have been done from the perspective of “bugs in a bottle” Even THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE is done from an expertise perspective; very good caring expertise, but still from the outside in. To prove my point; a simple example: Everyone has heard of fight or flight. Most have heard of freeze or fawn. Nobody but survivors know about the 5th F; FAIL. Every child who is living in a traumatic “home” situation – abusive events, toxic environment, appears to the child to be endless – knows that @ the end of everyday they will have failed to protect their boundaries – physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual. Doesn’t matter if there was a specific event that day or not. The threat is always there. have now read that some psychiatrists have realized that the daily hammering of the self of a child in complex trauma is far more damaging longterm that a single or several sexual abuse events for aduls. Why? Child’s brain is still developing. Adult’s brain has reached maturity.
3 Bottom-Up Change Needed
Believe that the change we’re looking for & working for will be transformational not transitional, so need to let go of old top down, power-over, centrally directed change. Think transformational change will happen like Japanese snow monkeys washing their food. Since first discovered & observed; they ate their food straight up. Then some monkey on the island washed their food. Suddenly every monkey was doing it in a very brief time.
4 Blunt Force Trauma vs Child Abuse
Have submitted letters to the editor, written to the Hennepin County Commissioner in charge of all the county’s health programs, talked face-to face w/ the program director of Hennepin county’s new Brain Injury Clinic about how the focus only on blunt force brain trauma & stroke is ignoring the huge brain injuries caused by child abuse – either no reply or just blank looks. No matter; I know my role in this. I don’t know how it all fits w/ the arc of human justice, but I know it does.
5 Abused Children’s Frame of Reference Question
Does your most recent child abuse report include the stories of children, now adult survivors, who lived through traumatic childhoods? Hope it’s 50% of the report; otherwise,
If not, I believe, the research is flawed.
Analogy: at the site of a shooting, the police interview all the witnesses & dig into the events leading up to & bring experts who can nail down specifics, AND they extensively interview the victim. I haven’t seen online any peer-reviewed research that starts from the victim/survivor’s perspective. Their reference field is almost exclusively personally experiential. The reference field of everybody else, excluding experts who are survivors is based on professional experience & formal credentialed expertise.
As a survivor; I resent like hell any expert defining complex trauma from the outside only. How would they feel if I defined their professional & personal lives? I don’t think so. I’d take on any expert anywhere @ any time on this point!!
I hope your agency has not walked into that devilish blindness!
6 Bill’s Childhood Abuse
My childhood trauma would not show up in your study. I grew up in a middle class family, w/ secrets lurking around me @ every turn. My parents were links in a chain of multi-generational child abuse. They met, made me & formed an unholy unspoken alliance. My father would not criticize my mother’s incest of me, & she would not criticize my fathers emotional & physical abuse.
I’m 77 & I’m still digging around in old dirt. Still uncovering & letting go of toxic memories that have affected me all my life. How do we get @ the child abuse that never makes it to the courts? What can a child do? Who could I talk to about what was going on? Teachers aren’t trauma-informed to see the signs, & my parents stayed in denial until they died. When I confronted them 30+ years ago; they tried to get me committed! So I’m an outspoken advocate on the horrors I’ve felt as an incest & sexual abuse survivor.
I’ve also chosen to write a survivor’s commentary on THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE by Bessel Van Der Kolk. As good as that book is; it doesn’t go deep enough & wide enough about what a survivor experiences. That’s not too surprising because the vast majority are not childhood trauma survivors. (Did an online search of peer-reviewed research. Didn’t find a single research project written from the survivor’s perspective. The other half of the sky. Now realize more than ever; how one’s field of reference sculpts one’s view of the truth. A final comment on what I see is the gap b/w expertise & experience regarding research & treatment of complex trauma. In children that is toxic abusive events in a toxic environment that to the child seems endless.
You’ve heard of fight or flight; probably heard of freeze or fawn. Bet you haven’t heard about FAIL, & that’s the most devastating daily assault on a child’s soul. FAIL is the certain feeling @ the end of everyday that you will have failed to defend your boundaries – physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual. Whether there was an actual event that day or not; the threat was always there & there was no place to hide. We, as a society have finally admitted that a stroke or blunt force trauma can injure the brain. We are still not ready to admit that the day-after-day-after day abuse by your primary caregivers is much more devastating than any single traumatic event.
7 Child Abuse: An Ignored Root Cause
Not sure I can write an 800-page essay on this topic. What I am doing is writing up a piece for R.A.I.N. Homes (the non-profit I work with to transition the recently released) to get to their retained CD-MI program for all R.A.I.N. participants) to advocate for them becoming the first counseling entity in MN to include Traumatic Brain Injury-Complex Trauma (TBI/CPXT) questions in their intake interview process.
NOBODY is doing this. I believe that without it; all our CD MI counseling/treatment programs are focused on ghosts & not reality, symptoms & not causes. Years ago; I called the national office of AA & told them of my experience & knowledge. She said, we only deal in alcoholic issues here. That’s nuts!
If HUD & HEW in 2009 said being unhoused is a traumatic condition (no safe place, 24 hour threat field); & child abuse is the Number One health issue in public health & we have research to prove that child abuse can cause all kinds of permanent damage to the developing minds of children & without diagnosis, counseling, therapy, medications, support groups the adult survivors of CPXT have triggers & irrational behaviors locked up inside them that won’t go away & that will have major effects on their lives: I believe that structural racism, sexism, Christianism, scientism, elitism & paternalism are the result of benign neglect of the child abuse problem.
8 Bill’s Additions After Reading the above DRAFT
I’ve read; CPXT separates, distorts & deprives a child of a “normal” frame of reference.
Believe that’s true. Also believe that’s true for adult survivors. My experience; like walking
through a carnival funhouse full of mirrors. In CPXT, as a child or an adult; how do you know
you don’t have the accustomed frame of reference? You say, see or hear things the same as
everybody else; but too often you misinterpret “their” meaning & you don’t know why or how
to make it stop. They hear the music. They know the language, & YOU DON’T! Urges me
to wonder how much of our criminal justice, public school & healthcare systems are gummed
up because of failures to communicate among providers, patients, parents, inmates, students
. . .
On the devastating yet invisible impact of the 5th “F” . . . in childhood trauma & adult survivors:
A black hole starts to form in your soul. Every day it grows a little more. It sucks at your hope.
It gnaws at your self-worth until it is transformed into self-hate. In the darkest reaches of that
desperately dark nothingness; resilience has nothing to do w/ RESILIENCE. This is barebones
day-to-day survival. Why not just give up & die, or let the warm invitation of insanity take over?
No more pain. No more struggle; just rest, let go. Nobody cares. No one will know. Some of us
prisoners of consciousness survive to adulthood. We’re the lucky ones. So many of our sisters
& brothers die or go insane. They reach the end of their survival-ness & expire. Have some ideas
as to why I made it: Conceived with the image of a little candle burning inside my chest under my
heart. Always been there; my last stop before giving up. Always burning tranquilly. in my 40’s, I know it is my manifestation of Spirit; before during and after my life. After life; my greatest gift. Plain stubbornness. I just have always known I would never give up on myself. Unreasonable hope. Always felt tomorrow could be better. Another gift. Where did that come from? Never talked this out with fellow CPXT survivors; yet believe there’d be about 80% compatibility. Maybe I’ll get the chance someday? I think we “all” are afraid of our shadow side. For me; that selfish little prick inside that nobody is supposed to see. I’m wondering whether my fear of the 5th “F” is the ultimate source of energy for all my cravings? Thoughts? bb
#childabuse,#incest,#childhoodtrauma,#adultsurvivor,#kidsatrisk,#kara,#bodykeepsthescore
