THE END OF "AMNESIA"

 

What are my stages of traumatic lifting?

 

August 20xx. I speak to my attending physician. She sends me to see a psychologist who hears and believes what I tell her about my violence, but who reads my future for me based on my astrological sign.

 

I have the possibility of finding work I have a diploma and I found another group, another "sect" to which to belong: I studied and graduated from a different "method", used in certain schools and very popular.

 

So I can flee and finally get out of the Catholic sect in which I grew up. I begin to hear and recognize in myself that I am a victim of domestic violence. My children are 3 and 6 years old. I know that my ex-husband and his family's next step is to kill me mentally. I am exhausted psychologically and physically.

 

Evidence shouts in me. If I stay I die. I have to go. I have to flee. My life and that of my daughters depends on it. And I do not go into the great void, some of my landmarks (living in a closed group and who claims to have THE truth and supporting each other) may continue. I remain in a certain form of "known ground".

 

Another evidence: after having left it I am beset by the traumatic memory so as not to die I must find psychic help, support. But I have to find someone recognized as "serious" so not a psychologist like the one I saw first. No fortune teller.

 

October 20xx First meeting with a psychiatrist. Horror and institutional violence. He does not speak. Freudian training. First violence. Attacked by my traumatic ascent, alone, victim of violence at work, victim of harassment by my ex husband ... completely isolated and alone. I rock and make a suicide attempt.

Again I have to go, run away. Far !

 

January 20xx Leak in a country bordering on France. The harassment of my ex ex. I am looking for another shrink but my situation is so precarious that its role comes down to social assistance and financially I can no longer see it. To stem the upsurges of traumatic memory I put myself in a relationship with men who perpetuate a certain form of conjugal and sexual violence. That pretty much keeps me going. My traumatic memory is controlled in some way.

 

July 20xx My brother commits suicide. An emergency I have to find support or I will die too! A traumatic memory lock breaks.

 

I am very alone. I need to find someone, support. Friendly meeting with an unhealthy woman who offers to help me. I fall into the trap. I reproduce a known pattern: a person's hold on me. The harassment of my ex ex.

 

September 20xx I'm looking for psychological help again. 2nd institutional violence. A Freudian psychiatrist again.

 

I put myself in danger with two meetings with guys on the internet.

My ex-husband is there and he gets alternate custody. I still have to flee for my daughters and I to survive. My daughters are 4 and 7 years old.

 

August 20xx I'm leaving to live with one of these guys with my children.

He belongs to a group too. A group united in its professional branch. Not a sect. I am starting to distance myself from known sectarian functioning, but belonging to a group remains important. I am reassured. I'm leaving on familiar ground. I am not alone.

This man is "violent" without being too much. My traumatic memory can therefore be contained.

 

September I continue to seek psychological help. A new Freudian psychiatrist. 3rd institutional violence.

 

In parallel I am looking for another professional. I find my shrink. The catch. She does EMDR and is a psychologist. I inquire on the internet: a care that is debating for the Mivilude institution which helped me to make recognize the sectarian drifts of the community and in which I trust. One of the first organizations to have fully recognized part of what I experienced.

In addition, my ex-husband, on the advice of a member of a sect he rubs shoulders with, wants my children to go to a shrink who also practices EMDR. I am suspicious.

Another problem: the color of my shrink's eyes is a trigger for certain parties who see in this a reminder of the wife of the sect guru who was an actress in my trauma and see in it a sign of threat and danger.

I test for several years in small touches. Can I trust?

 

In parallel I continue to be mistreated by the Freudian psychiatrist.

 

20xx My father dies of cancer. Second lock and not least of my traumatic memory jumps. The law of silence is no more. My father is dead.

 

My traumatic memory explodes. At the same time I am looking for answers and criminal help. I divorce (8 years of fierce battles), the church recognizes the nullity of my marriage, the community is recognized to sectarian drift and loses its canonical recognition. My struggle is not only personal, it is also societal.

 

20xx I finally stop following the psychiatrist and start to trust my psychologist but an event will make me back off. She tries to help me leave the man with whom I am who has become more violent (We replay each other's scenes from our past without realizing it, we "reactivate our mutual traumas") In a very intentional but too violent way and too fast for me and my traumatic memories. I am too isolated, financially I cannot get out of it. My therapist is present but is not a social worker, a friend, a family or a group. The jump is too steep. Too explosive traumatic memory. I risk my life, alone, I feel like I'm going to explode, to die so the pain is excruciating. And I allow patterns of workplace violence to reproduce without being able to detach myself from them. I am the ideal, vulnerable prey.

 

I lose a little confidence in her and resume my search for a "professional" psychiatrist. There is one but this one is in the process of retraining, she is just starting to have notions of trauma and is not sufficiently trained to deal with complex trauma like mine. 4th institutional violence.

 

There follows a great internal battle of 2 years to accept my traumatic memory and learn to trust my shrink and understand and explain myself, dissect my needs, my mode of operation and adapt to the rhythm of my lifting d 'amnesia.

 

The road to rebuilding a trauma survivor is long and tortuous. It goes through 3 steps forward and 6 steps back. It is very fragile. Certain small slots should not be missed.

 

We, the survivors, spend our lives looking for help, someone who will help us renew the inner dialogue and reunite us, to understand each other.

 

We have to find the right balance between advancing and releasing traumatic memory and the need to breathe and being able to feel nothing and to suffer from this memory, to be in "known territory", to reproduce what has always relieved us. Find new operating modes and automatisms and use the operation that has always been developed.

 

This balance is constantly evolving and is dependent on all the messages returned by the survivor's daily life. Friends who move away because hearing my word is too painful for them. A judge who does not legally protect. A social worker who doesn't want to hear anything. A dentist or a gynecologist who participate in institutional violence by their ignorance of the mechanisms of trauma ... and all the financial and precarious problems caused by this cowardice and ignorance of trauma by the institutions which will participate in the perpetuation of the feeling of insecurity , loneliness and abandonment of the survivor.

 

We talk, we say ... constantly. But in 99% of cases our word is refused.

 

But everything can also change with a simple glance, a benevolent listening.

It is this hope, this relentless quest that keeps us alive. Hope one day to be heard.