Life Beyond!

Support for Life Beyond

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:11:52 GMT

Today is the first day I have really gotten back into feeling ready to get this thing rolling for next year. The GREAT news is that we are going to be covered by the non profit The Compassion Movement when its papers go through later this week. The even better news is that we now have a PR firm in LA working to help us put together promotions and fund raising. She is 100% behind what we are doing and has a huge non-profit of her own to help stop domestic abuse. Then, on the day of the conference I was contacted by yet another non-profit whose mission is to help dissociative disordered individuals (and targeting specifically those with DID) with education, support and treatment. They want to help us with the conference, promotions, speaker connections and more. Our PR person is going to see if she can't get us in with Military Chaplains so that we can do, a we attempted this year, work with Vets. If you have not yet joined the Compassion Movement, you can go to http://www.compassionmovement.org to do so. Its a social network where we can share ideas and resources to help transform he wold into a compassionate place.

This weblog is sponsored by Melody Brooke and Life Beyond Seminars.

Do Psychologists Reject Scientific Evidence?

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:40:56 GMT

Nwsweeks's Sharon Begley published an article in this weeks edition slamming psychologists and therapists for not using "evidenced based" cognitive behavioral therapies. She chooses to use "public shaming" as a way to get them to heed the "science" she touts. Sharon Begley's article shows her complete lack of understanding about how research is used to promote businesses and profits. Research in the mental health field is entirely different than heart surgery research. When research is done for psychotropic drugs the pharmaceutical companies only report those that support their drug. Long term studies show that therapy (not just cognitive behavioral therapy as Begley would have us believe) is equally effective as antidepressants in the short run, and more effective in the long run. If she would take the time to do the research Begley would discover that the funding for favorable studies of Cognitive Behavioral Therapies comes from insurance companies. These are short term studies that show a quick improvement over a short amount of time. Begley's lack of awareness of this is appalling and it undoubtedly will lead clients to believe that they are not getting the best treatment. In fact, I know of NO therapists who do not use cognitive behavioral therapy in some form. Just because they are not certified in a particular brand of CBT does not mean they do not practice it. We are all trained in it in school and use it as part of the basic premise of our work. But, as studies prove, CBT alone does not resolve long term psychological problems. Insurance companies, and predator organizations like the False Memory Syndrome Foundation use these studies, and the very idea of a "task force" to dictate what kind of therapies "should" be done is anti-choice, anti-humanistic and goes against what research has proven about therapy. It is the person of the therapist that makes the largest difference in the efficacy of treatment, which is why the whole idea of "evidenced based" therapy is erroneous. Good therapy, no matter what method is used, comes from having a therapist who respects who you are and can make you feel safe enough to address the issues that are most difficult to face. They must have also have skills to help you move past them, but first and foremost they must be respectful and safe. You can't measure that by "scientific" short term research studies that eliminate anything not reflecting their own interests. The very idea that one form of therapy will work equally well for everyone in every circumstance is completely ignorant of human psychology. Obviously, Begley knows little about that.

This weblog is sponsored by Melody Brooke and Life Beyond Seminars.

Tyler Perry Breaks the Silence

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:37:43 GMT

Today on CNN's homepage I read about Tyler Perry's breaking the silence on his abuse history. Here is what was on his website: "I'm tired of holding this in. I don't know what to do with it anymore, so, I've decided to give some of it away... Memories at 40: Not long ago, I was asked to speak at an engagement. I walked in and I was told that they had assigned a person to take care of me while I was there. She walked up to me, all of 5'2 " of her, and asked if I needed anything. I looked at her and started to sweat. It took me back thirty-something years to her apartment. I couldn't have been more than 10 years old when I went over to play with her son and Matchbox cars. She opened the door in skimpy lingerie. There was a man sitting on the couch, smoking. She told me that her son was in the bedroom. I was there playing with him about 20 minutes when I heard the man arguing with her. He said he was leaving and slammed the door. She came into the bedroom and told me that I had to go home. She told her son to take a bath and she locked him in the bathroom. I was at the front door trying to get out, when she came in and laid on the sofa and asked me if I wanted the key. I told her I had to go home as it was getting dark. She put the key inside of herself and told me to come get it, pulling me on top of her. Memories at 40: "What the f*#K are you reading books for?! That's bull*#*T! " "You F*#*ing jackass! You got book sense but you ain't got no mothaf*#*en common sense! You ain't sh*t and ain't never gonna be sh*t! " I heard this every day of my childhood. As my father would beat and belittle me, he played all kinds of mind games with me. He knew I loved cookies as a kid, most kids do. So he would buy them and put them on top of the fridge and when I would eat them he would beat me mercilessly. My mother was out one night, as she loved to play bingo, and my father came ome...mad at the world. He was drunk, as he was most of the time. He got the vacuum cleaner extension cord and trapped me in a room and beat me until the skin was coming off my back. To this day, I don't know what would make a person do something like that to a child. But thank God that in my mind, I left. I didn't feel it anymore, just like in PRECIOUS. How this girl would leave in her mind. I learned to use my gift, as it was my imagination that let me escape After he was done with his rant he passed out. Since my aunt lived two doors down, I ran to her. She saw me and was horrified. She loaded her 357 and went to kill him. Holding a gun to his head, her husband came and stopped her. Memories at 40: I got a call not long ago from a friend. He told me that a man that I knew from church when I was a kid had died and he didn't have any insurance. His family was trying to reach out to me to see if I would pay for his funeral. I quickly said no, but I wish I would have said yes. There is something so powerful to me in burying the man that molested me. I wish I would have dug the grave myself. Memories at 40: I was about 8 or 9 years old. I had a crush on a little girl across the street. She would come over to my house and we'd play. She was about 12 or 13. One day she stopped coming and when I asked her why, she told me that my father was touching her. I didn't believe her, so I talked her into staying one night. We were both asleep -- she was in one bed and I was in another. I opened my eyes to see my father trying to touch her and her pushing him away. I moved in my bed trying to make him think I was waking up. He looked over at me and left out of the room. Not long after that, he beat me mercilessly for something again. Another mind game set up, so I told my mother what he had done. The blood drained from her face. We left that day. We were at my Aunt's house and he came there about 1am. Not long after that we were back at home. Nothing would compare to the random, drunken, violent beatings I would receive from then until I was 19. Memories at 40: We would spend the summers in the country, with my father's adoptive mother. As a kid I was always sick. I had asthma and he hated it. He hated that I wasn't strong and virile like him. He hated that I couldn't be in the sawdust, pollen and the raw lumber like him. He hated that I liked to read and write and draw. He hated that me and my middle sister were darker-skinned than him. He didn't think he could make a dark baby. He just hated everything about me I guess. Anyway, I had to go to the doctor every Tuesday to get shots to control my allergies. When his mother found out she said, "Ain't nothing wrong with that damn boy...he just got germs on him. Stop wasting all that money. " When my mother left to visit some friends I heard what sounded like water running in a tub but it was sporadic. She came and got me out of the living room leaving my Matchbox cars on the floor. She said she was going to kill these germs on me once and for all. She gave me a bath in ammonia. Grateful at 40: I was asked recently how I made it through all of this, (half has not even been told) and my answer to that is...I know for a fact that there is a GOD. When my father would say or do those things to me, I would hear this voice inside of me say, "That's not true " or, "Don't believe that " or, "You're going to make it through this ". I didn't know at the time what "it " was, but today I surely have no doubt that "it " was GOD. That voice always gave me comfort. It allowed me to hold on. It kept me from being strung out on drugs, from dying when I wanted to commit suicide. It kept me from being a gang banger or drug dealer. Worse than all of those things put together, it kept me from being him. It brought angels to comfort me after every foul, harsh word or every welt on my legs or back GOD, only GOD. To know that the little boy that I was went through all that -- he went through and made it. Then me, as a man...I have to take on the responsibility of forgiving all of those people. I owe it to that little boy that I was and, more than that, I owe it to the man that I am Think about it, as a child we have no recourse. We have nowhere to go. We have to endure it. But as adults, we have choices. I choose to forgive with all my might. Forgiveness has been my weapon of choice. It has helped to free me. If you're having a hard time getting over something in your life, maybe you can try forgiveness too. It's not easy, but it does bring forth healing. I know that there are a lot of people out there with stories far worse than mine but you, too, can make it. To those of you who have, welcome to life. I celebrate you. We're all PRECIOUS in His sight. Tyler Perry" It brings me to tears to think about how many of have been so alone with so much pain and believing that we have nothing to give anyone because we carry mis-applied shame from our past. Tyler, thank you for speaking out. I posted on his website asking him to present at next years Life Beyond Trauma Conference. Won't you do the same?

This weblog is sponsored by Melody Brooke and Life Beyond Seminars.

The Conference was so good, it was great

Hi Ho Silver — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:41:38 GMT

This is the first chance I have had to write on this site since the conference ended. Oh my gosh, it was so good, it really was great. I know exactly the right people were there and the right speakers were also there.

This morning I was exhausted. I had to deal with such pain last night and went to bed with my heart throbbing with pain. I had a very troubled sleep, but going and attending the program set for today helped. The people who attended were so cool, and the programs were just what I needed. I know I have gained some friends which will last a lifetime. I feel energized, peaceful and happy. Now I am going to find some amazing Texan food and then I am going to hit my bed, filled with peace. Silver

This weblog is sponsored by Melody Brooke and Life Beyond Seminars.

12 Tips for Reducing Shame

Kathy Broady — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 04:16:11 GMT

One of the hardest areas of healing work in trauma disorders is dealing with shame.

For many survivors of sexual abuse, healing work involves learning about a lot of intense memories that leave them feeling a great deal of shame, humiliation, and embarrassment. These are difficult emotions to process, and the memory material is typically very overwhelming.

Some survivors feel immersed in shame from the very beginning of their abuse. They are appalled at what is happening for them and hate every minute of it, even if they can't get away from the predators. With every incident that happens, they feel worse, and worse, and worse. The more degraded the survivors are during the abuse, the greater shame they feel.

Shame can become all consuming. It drowns any feelings of self worth and erodes at self-esteem. It leads to self-injury, increased dissociation, suicidal thoughts, suicidal behavior, depression, PTSD, anxiety, addictions, etc. Shame, at its most intense, can destroy lives.

Survivors will internalize the harsh destructive words of their abusers, and if they hear those messages with enough repetition and intensity, they will believe the negativity as truth.

For the host alters of the dissociative systems, there could be nothing further from the truth than hearing what the other alters in the system are saying about abuse. The fronting, daily-life dealing alters are typically not at all aware of the depths of the abuse, and the horrors expressed by the parts much further behind them does not feel real.

However, the alter parts hidden deeper in the dissociative system often have a very different experience than the front alters. Dissociative walls and consistent amnesia keep their two worlds apart from each other.

Sometimes the abuse-laden parts have become so entrenched in their abusive worlds and so blocked from any kind of participation in the outside world that they do not understand the extremity of the worlds they know. For dissociative survivors who have been sold into sex slavery or prostitution or pornography, this dynamic can be all too true.

System parts that are taught by their perpetrators to feel pride in being used as sex slaves know that to be their world, their truth, their reality. They own that pride, and do not think twice about it being a difficult or questionable lifestyle. They have been encouraged to handle the pain, they learn to believe they like the pain, pain becomes associated with pleasure, and they have a sense of accomplishment for completing various sexual tasks, no matter how extreme.

These alters strive to make accomplishments in that world. They may feel quite successful at their "jobs" and have few feelings of shame.

Reclaiming those parts from their abusive worlds means that these parts will eventually connect with the horror and shame that they pushed away years ago. The parts that have been sexually passed around from person to person to person will start realizing how much that trauma actually affected them. What once gave them pride, will lead to painful agony, shame, and distress. They will realize how much they have been hurt.

However, once they realize they are being abused (or have been abused), they can make decisions to stop the abuse.

They can work with their therapists and the host parts of their system to get away from the abusers, inside and out. This is done through internal system work, freeing each part from the ways they have been trapped in their memories. (Remember, people with DID tend to keep internalized realities, dynamic re-enactments of the abuse with introjects of abusers in what feels like the current day timeframe.) This work can also happen in freeing the dissociative person from a real-life, current day abuser.

Once survivors feel more distance between themselves and the abuse, they can begin to heal from the barrage of shame-inducing, horrific traumas that happened. They can gradually begin to understand what things belong to the perpetrators vs. which things are truly about them. They can begin to develop a separation between themselves and the world of sexual abuse.

Healing from that internalized sense of badness is a big part of the therapy work. As survivors learn they are truly victims of crimes, and that they are not to blame, they can begin to let go of the sense of shame that has surrounded their lives for years.

As survivors remove the overwhelming trauma from their lives, they can then, in turn, fill their lives with positive activities from their own unique preferences. They can begin to feel better about their lives. They can feel healthy pride in what they are doing, and feel pleased in their accomplishments. They can replace the feelings of deep dark shame with a sense of happiness and self-worth.

Overcoming shame is not easy. It is hard, grueling, intense emotional work.

The intensity of the shame felt by a trauma survivor can be a type of emotional barometer for the amount of healing work that needs to happen. The more that shame overwhelms the survivor, the more healing work is still needed. As the depth of this shame lightens, the more the survivors have progressed in their healing journey.

1. As a trauma survivor, know and understand that you are not a bad person.
2. Come to terms with how the abuse was not your fault.
3. Be brave enough to look honestly at the trauma that happened in your life.
4. Find the strength you need to get away from your abusers.
5. Work hard to be safe and to end any and all abusive relationships in the current day.
6. Realize that you will be able to build a happy life that you are proud to have.
7. Believe that you don't have to let your shame destroy you.
8. Recognize the perpetrators for what they are - nasty violent sex offender criminals.
9. Let the perpetrators keep the responsibility for their own behavior. Don't take on what belongs to them.
10. Do your healing work - process your trauma, grieve the way it has affected your life.
11. As you heal, be willing to let the resolved issues settle into the past.
12. Fill your life with activities and people that you genuinely like.

__________

By:

Kathy Broady LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com

This weblog is sponsored by Melody Brooke and Life Beyond Seminars.

Chris Brown's Black Out Victim Thinking

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:42:43 GMT

Dissociation affects us in so many ways. Chris says he doesn't recall hitting Rhianna. He says he reads what happened and struggles to recognize that it is him that did those things. I wish more people understood that dissociation is not just some freak thing that happens to "sick" people. Its something that we ALL do. But its when our brain gets into victim thinking that we are most likely to lose it. We feel trapped, unable to move, powerless and our brain full of victim thoughts focused only upon our own survival in the moment. Our brain narrows down our awareness and all we can see is our own wounding. Literally we are trapped in a fight for our survival. Awareness of our own actions and the impact they have is lost in our attempt to survive the moment. This is what happened to Chris Brown. Its what happens in the case of all attacks of this kind. Their primal brain takes over and none of their higher brain functioning is in charge. It happens to all of us to a lessor degree when we find ourselves yelling at someone we love, or acting in ways we don't recognize. That is what victim thinking does. It throws us into this primal, out of control place. And, when we have been traumatized in our past, we are more "trigger" sensitive to things that send us into this kind of reactivity. Our old brain is on edge constantly and armed for survival against future perceived threats. I don't know what triggered Chris's primitive brain into taking over that night, I only know that because of his past experience as an actual victim, his brain was hardwired to victim thinking. Without intervention it can happen to any of us.

This weblog is sponsored by Melody Brooke and Life Beyond Seminars.

Jaycee Dugard's Alter Ego's Victim Thinking

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:19:03 GMT

Jaycee Dugard's captors face 29 charges. Jaycee faces a lifetime of sorting through the horrors of her captivity. Apparently the Garrido's referred to Jaycee as "Alyssa" and never let her out of their sight. Jaycee had one child at 14, and another at 18, a result of two out of undoubtedly hundreds of rapes. She lived with this man as her captor, but also experienced him as her primary adult companion for 18 years. In order to survive living with this man, her brain kicked into a series of survival instincts. One of which was to develop a kind of bond with the very man responsible for her imprisonment. To do this, and to accomplish it thoroughly enough for her captor to not just kill her, and for Jaycee to avoid losing her sanity, Jaycee most certainly had to adapt to her new identity as "Alyssa". As victims of this type of abuse, all of us will develop a certain type of victim thinking. She had to think of this man as one would a parent, a husband, or another significant caregiver in her life. He was, after all, all she had. Her attachment to him was an adaptive victim thinking that led to her surviving an ordeal she might not otherwise have survived. I hope her counselors, family, and others around her are aware of how this kind of victim thinking influences our behaviors and our personality. Not unlike Patty Hearst, Jaycee had to become "Alyssa" and bond with Garrido in order to survive the ordeal. But instead of brandishing guns as Patty Hearst did, she brandished religious literature. Jaycee became what her captors needed her to be in order to survive. So what now will become of "Alyssa"? Will Jaycee abandon her and berate her for having feelings for a man who was responsible for stealing 18 years (and more) of her life? Or will she be empathetic to the young girl who did what she had to do to survive? I can only hope that whoever is around Jaycee is wise enough to recognize the phenomena and help her through it.

This weblog is sponsored by Melody Brooke and Life Beyond Seminars.

Chris Brown's Victim Thinking

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:43:55 GMT

Chris Brown was charged yesterday and CNN managed to get their hands on his Probation Report which indicated he had a history of violent outbursts. Everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon that he is a bad guy that has been acting badly for a long time. Of course, no one can look at the photos of Rhianna and not feel badly about what happened to her. Certainly no one deserves to be "beaten up" as she was by Chris and I would never condone such behavior. But without looking at what was underneath the behavior we are not helping anyone. Chris was sent to "anger therapy" and forbidden to get close to his love, Rhiana, for the next five years. The Judge seriously asked to have him do "labor" for his public service rather than other forms, clearly wanting to "punish" his behavior. What is missing is any kind of awareness of the cyclic patterns that drive this kind of violence. When Chris was growing up he witnessed his mother being beaten and swore, through his child's view of the world, that he would "never" do that to a woman. Yet here he is, tried and convicted. Why? Why does someone who is determined not to act in such a violent way, become a perpetrator? Simply because he doesn't know how to manage it when he is stuck in Victim thinking. Victim thinking means that he feels so helpless and out of control that he honestly thinks and feels as if HE were the victim. In other words, he felt out of control, threatened, and powerless. Any of us, when we feel trapped like that will do whatever we can to regain a sense of control. But if we have, stuck in our unconscious, a mechanism that gives us immediate release from those feelings; we will act on it. In this case, Chris has a pattern locked in his brain that gives him an out. That of course was the violence he saw perpetrated on his mother. His young brain saw that violence as a way out of feeling trapped and out of control. Then,as an adult, when faced with those feelings his automatic reactions took over and Rhiana suffered. When we are stuck in our own righteous indignation at his violent outburst, we too, remain in the victim thinking. We are, like him, attempting to find resolution in control. We ask the police and the judicial system to act as the big man to regain control over this out of control person so that we can feel in control again. Punitive actions as a response to his punitive actions, are what we have been programmed to believe is the correct action. Now I'm not saying he or anyone else should be allowed to run amok. I am saying we need to rethink how we think about and respond to all such acts of violence and instead of reflexively lashing out in a self protective fashion; practice compassion. What do you think? Comment below if you agree, or if you think punitive reactions are appropriate in some cases. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

This weblog is sponsored by Melody Brooke and Life Beyond Seminars.

My parts did what ever it took to save me

Hi Ho Silver — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:41:34 GMT

I have allowed myself to wallow long enough. So I am going to take just the tiniest baby steps now, to get back to my positive way of thinking. They have to be very tiny because I am very tender. Heck, it hurts to be where I am, so I am just going to have to struggle to my feet once again and take charge, so I can get to feeling better because where I have been this week hurts something awful. Isn't there a Oriental Proverb about, "If you fall seven times, get up 8 times". This kind of thinking is what has gotten me so far in my healing. I still need to use it, probably will always have to think in the positive so I can have the best life I can have. So much of my life has been wasted by abuse I received when I was young. Certainly I have not been able to be in joy as a result of it. I think I have figured out I am feeling the feelings my parts held for me all these years. These are the feelings of little kids and they are just fragments of what I should have felt if my Me's had not come in to save me. I have so much pain inside just from these bits of feelings, I can't imagine what it would have been like if I had to feel all the pain, see every incidence of abuse from so many people, every day, all thru the day. I know I would have died. No one could have experienced all that and survived. Funny, I always wanted someone to come and save me so many times as a child. No one ever did. I was blind to how my parts each worked to help me in whatever way they could so keep me alive. How very humbling. I am awed and so thankful I had my parts save me from what must have been impossible situations for a cute little girl to be in. I will be forever thankful to them. Today after I write this, I am going to sit with myself and listen or feel how it was for me back then. Then I will hug myself at long last and cry. Every tear washes away another piece of memory, I bet I will fill a bucket tonight. It's time to wash away the bits of memories that are left. My gosh, smile for me, I am washing away most of the gravel of the past abuse out of me, at long last. It has been hard but well worth it. Oh yeah, I am worth it all. I will see you at the conference. Smiling at you, Silver

This weblog is sponsored by Melody Brooke and Life Beyond Seminars.

Partners have a different role than therapists

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:11:15 GMT

Partner’s have an important role in reframing their partner’s past and changing the distortions a young brain used to survive. Partner’s are often there when a Survivor is overwhelmed by their reactions. Only partner’s can provide the new context necessary to change the old, distorted views. This may seem like a daunting, self less, and unforgiving chore. It may be daunting, but it should also be a bit selfish and forgiveness is the point! It is important that you NOT be perfect. This is good since most of us aren’t. Perfection, or at least the belief that doing something better would have changed the outcome, is the enemy. Young brains are constantly trying to see everything in the world as the result of their behavior. It is the only thing they can control. So, when the world hurts to much to bear, the only solution is to be better. It is most important that you are compassionate. You aren’t there to solve their problems for them! Compassion is caring about how they feel. I have this theory that it isn’t the pain of what happened that leaves the horrible scars and overwhelming reactions. It’s that no one seemed to care. You care and they need desperately to know it. I can’t tell you how to use your grown up, adult mind to help them. That’s for the professionals and their special training. Analyzing and dissecting their memories probably won’t help, either. The emotions and thoughts that swirl around traumatic events don’t seem to work right with our grown up brain. It’s like having to load Windows 3.0 to run software programs from the early 90’s. Have you noticed how you can put a laptop to “sleep” and it only takes a few seconds for it to wake up. It is much faster than restarting the computer. That’s because it saved all the memories to a big file on the hard drive. Everything is stored and ready to relaunch just by reading in the file. Traumatic memories, alters, or whatever name you want to use are kind of like that. They are a snapshot of the important parts of your system just before it overloaded and had (in more computer jargon) a core dump. Except that the incredible human brain is thousands of computers all running at once. Those old programs from way back when are still running and sending out alerts. To work with them, you need to work in their environment, in that old operating system from their youth. This is particularly true (warning, more computer jargon) when they go into a kernel panic. (That is the Unix technical term for when the core operating system can’t make sense of the inputs. It’s lost its context and just gives up.)

This weblog is sponsored by Melody Brooke and Life Beyond Seminars.

Why is it so hard to make the most of life?

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:44:20 GMT

I'm always amazed when I look back at all of the opportunities I've let slip through my fingers. Why didn't I know that was mine for the living. I have high self-esteem. I know that when I apply myself and keep a clear vision, I will succeed. Yet... That's what I know consciously. There is a part of me that must not be so sure, that gets worked up when life doesn't match it's experience. There is some thought process floating around in my head that HAD TO BELIEVE some wrong idea. It was the only way it could make sense of the world. Humans thrive on understanding what is going on around them. We really don't like surprises. We NEED TO KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT. These distortions kept me sane and alive a long time ago. Now they keep me trapped and frustrated. But not so much anymore. That's what the life beyond conference is about, getting beyond those distortions. I can't wait!

This weblog is sponsored by Melody Brooke and Life Beyond Seminars.