Could I Re-Write My Childhood?

Published June 25, 2017 by Nan Mykel

I guess I have been holding back some of my resentment. I’m in a nice normal poetry group on the outside and they love to laugh at my funny lines. This isn’t a therapy group–far from it. It’s a nice civilized friendly group, and I sure can’t let the cat (me) out of the bag there.

On my WordPress blog, I hold back a little. Although an incest survivor, I’m a clinical psychologist and have had oodles of good therapy, and I guess I don’t want other survivors to think I’m typical of an almost “cured” survivor. After all the work and insight and research I’ve been through, if I’m still messed up what does that say to other survivors who maybe haven’t even begun therapy? I don’t want to turn out to be the rotten tomato others strive for. I certainly should model a healthy adjustment, at 81! If I let the cat out of the bag that maybe victims won’t ever be completely “cured,” might that not discourage them? I’ve done enough harm in my life to not want to be responsible for discouraging others. And it’s true I do hate complaining blogs. Hand-wringing doesn’t do it for me. I’m not aware of many alternatives at the present moment.

It does seem unfortunate that it doesn’t occur to abused and neglected children that there’s something wrong with their parents, not them. But the books tell us that children have to believe in their parents, because their very lives depend on their care. I’m having a fantasy now of something as popular as the Bobbsey Twins series, in which young readers are taught to observe and diagnose their parents’ behavior. I even thought about trying to re-write some scenes from my childhood, such as when I was sent home from school sick and my mother angrily told me not to bother her. A that point I didn’t expect anything else, but I can pretend now her being concerned and feeling my forehead and asking how I felt, etc.

The hell of it is that even if we don’t sexually or physically or verbally abuse our own children, there is something intangible missing in our own parenting. If we didn’t experience it we don’t have it. So there, I’VE SHOT MY WAD FOR TONIGHT. And now I realize I should have written “I” instead of “we” in those last sentences.

MY AUTHOR’S NOTE

Published June 8, 2017 by Nan Mykel

I look in the mirror and see a strangely content woman losing her femininity to the neutering of old age. I’m not sure why I cover the gray. Perhaps I want to be seen as someone still to be reckoned with–but was I ever? The antidepressant is helping not only to keep me centered but also to bank the fires of desire.

If I were still sexually desirable would I so easily reject my sexuality? Well, yes, I suppose. I began rejecting sexuality even while still married, although then it was the experience of being valued only for sex that I could not tolerate, since it echoed my feelings that I had nothing to offer another person except sex. I never integrated sexuality into my self. I can think, create, listen well, empathize, write, draw, analyze, and have a sense of humor, but still struggle with the belief that I have little to offer a partner. And with that limitation the experience of romance and intimacy is not available to me.

There are many lessons already learned and incorporated. I am not sarcastic, I am not bitter. I do not “bad mouth” others. I no longer play Pitiful Pearl and Wooden Leg games. And since becoming an adult I have never used any power advantage to hurt others.

And I am not special, although I still struggle with this. During many years of “keeping the secret” and believing that I had wielded great magnetic power destructively, I did feel special–especially destructive, especially wicked, especially confused in the head. I still feel different from others. It’s a weird mix of feelings, debased and inflated, and is a flip-flop many survivors have come to know well.

Like many others, I am haunted not only by my father but by my response to him. Problems with perspective and judgment have always dogged my steps, in addition to the fallout of feeling shame. Although I rationally know better, in my eternal reality I stole my father from my mother. I am the other woman in her life. I am his partner in crime.

So at this point in time and probably until the end of my time, I am a survivor but not a victim….Instead of trying to change in an effort to be acceptable to others, I have come to embrace myself, with all my limitations and strengths. (At least that’s what I’m aiming for). As someone once said, “I’m not okay, you’re not okay, and that’s okay.”

SAFETY FOR US SURVIVORS

Published May 31, 2017 by Nan Mykel

I would like everyone to be safe, but sometimes survivors who have been abused need to be especially cautious, because of a tendency to expect abuse and not watch out for it. This may be especially true for incest survivors.

Right now, look around yourself and check that you are physically, emotionally, and interpersonally safe. If you are not safe, problem-solve. Where does the danger lie and what can you do about it? Then do it. Remember, denial is the bugaboo. Safety concerns might include birth control, protection from STDS, abuse of substances, illegal activities such as shoplifting and DUI’s, an unsafe living arrangement, acquaintances that have a toxic effect on you, impulsive behaviors–yours and theirs–frequenting unsafe places, etc.

Many survivors find themselves in unsafe relationships which they do not see as abusive because of their past. Ask yourself if you are being respected, listened to, and free of physical and emotional abuse. (Emotional abuse includes being called abusive names). All of us incest survivors were trapped in the abuse earlier, for which we were not responsible. We are responsible now if we allow ourselves to be further abused in any way.

Wise Words of Roland C. Summit

Published April 6, 2017 by Nan Mykel

From”Hidden Victims, Hidden Pain: Societal Avoidance of Child Sexual Abuse,” in Lasting Effects of Child Sexual Abuse,” p. 57, Gail Wyatt and Gloria Powell eds.

There is a sad, self-preserving irony about a world that cannot see its own cruelty filled with victims who can’t give voice to their pain. After 125 years of discarded enlightenment, we still act as if victims are freaks and as if it is a virtue to be ignorant of sexual victimization. We pretend nobody is involved, even though the veterans may outnumber the recruits. Projections of any of the prevalence surveys to include elective and dissociative denials would insist that childhood sexual abuse is a normative experience, yet we ignore the implications of a society populated with the walking wounded.

Any gathering of our associates and friends contains people who were molested as children. Every extended family, every neighborhood, every church congregation, every medical society, every class in law school, and most every football team, legislative caucus and jury, conceals people who are hiding unspeakable memories of “unusual” childhood sexual experiences. Those experiences may have been agonizing or ecstatic or a confusing mixture of both, but the fact that they can’t be shared says something about our collective fear of finding out.

What About Us? Abuse Histories in the Making

Published March 25, 2017 by Nan Mykel

I belong to a talkative brown bag lunch group, and last week someone started talking about child sexual abuse, whereupon another put her hands over her ears so as not to hear. When I wrote my book on incest, the first assistant I hired refused to read it. It’s okay to have strong negative feelings about the topic, but what about the children who are continuing to experience incest, for example, living their own abuse histories even as I write this blog and you read it? We don’t have to read lurid, painful histories, but how about educating ourselves so as to better protect our own children and others’?

INITIAL PREFACE TO “FALLOUT,” 13 years ago

Published March 16, 2017 by Nan Mykel

PREFACE — I was 65 when struck by the idea of writing this book. If I fail to write it now, at 68, the book will never happen. I will have lost the chance to say some things which I believe are important from my vantage as former victim, former treater of incarcerated sex offenders, former treater of survivors, and as the product of years of quality psychotherapy and analysis.

I’m going to write as though the reader is female because that seems most natural to me, but much if not all of this book applies equally to males, and to both victims who became law abiding citizens and those who went on to become molesters themselves.

Society seems to either be in denial about the actual damage resulting from sexual abuse or to blow it out of proportion–to portray child sexual abuse as worse than murder, for instance. I endorse neither approach.

It’s a confusing, complex world, and grabbing hold of a stable purchase from which to perceive it is especially difficult for those whose most precious boundaries have been trampled, often by those who think they love us. Perspective is a continuing problem for me, at 68. It will be, forever. We aren’t crazy. We’re scrambled.

SO SAD

Published February 13, 2017 by Nan Mykel

Jeffrey Sandusky, the son of convicted sex abuser and former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, has been arrested on felony and misdemeanor child sexual abuse charges, according to court documents from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

The younger Sandusky, 41, faces 14 counts, including sexual assault of a child older than 11, sexual assault of a child less than 16, and a variety of other sexual abuse and child pornography charges.

(CNN News)

ONE PARAGRAPH PER CHAPTER – Chapter 9: The Trauma Bond

Published January 29, 2017 by Nan Mykel

From FALLOUT: A Survivor Talks to Incest Offenders (and Others) by moi:

If you, the reader, are a survivor, I invite you to reflect as you read this book, whether or not you are journaling. If you were abused, take a moment to introspect. How do you feel toward your perpetrator? Angry? Protective? Sorry for him? Hate? Affection? Regret that you told or didn’t tell? How frequently does he cross your mind, and what do you experience at those times? Have your feelings changed over time? How? Have you moved beyond anger? Or did you short-circuit your anger into a “flight into health?” Did you feel compelled to forgive him? Why? Are you in any kind of continuing relationship with him or did you escape the tendrils? I was surprised to learn that strong continuing feelings between victim and perpetrator are an acknowledged and normal response to incest. The feelings resonating within the bond are stirred together: love, pity, disgust, shame, fear, empathy, guilt. (p. 90).

ONE PARAGRAPH PER CHAPTER – Chapter 6: Modus Operandi

Published January 28, 2017 by Nan Mykel

From FALLOUT: A Survivor Talks to Incest Offenders (and Others) by moi:

THE SECRET – The goal of grooming is not only to build the child’s trust, but also to ensure that she will keep the secret. At the moment of the incestuous assault, the victim not only has her lifelong schemas about the world trashed, but is given “the secret” to carry, hidden from everyone else in the world. Having the secret gives her the uninvited power to destroy the family and her father, and drives another wedge into the already troubled relationship with her mother. At that moment, with reality unraveling, keeping the secret means that she is now an accomplice. Carrying the secret adds to her sense of isolation and being different from everyone else. All the while, she is fighting the shame of her out-of-control body’s response. (p. 75)

ONE PARAGRAPH PER CHAPTER – Chapter 3: How Could I Do It?

Published January 25, 2017 by Nan Mykel

From FALLOUT: A Survivor Talks to Incest Offenders (and Others) by moi:

Medusa still frame Since behavior is largely a product of thinking, the deviant thoughts of sex offenders are of utmost importance. Incest offenses in one study were found to possess deviant attitudes in three domains: sexual entitlement, perceiving children to be sexually attractive and sexually motivated, and minimizing the harm caused by sexual abuse of children (Hanson, Gizzarelli, and Scott, 1994). My father had thinking errors in all three domains.