Orlando was a proud man—he was a longstanding local legend in the twelve-step community, with over forty years of sobriety and a reputation for being a thorough but helpful sponsor. Despite his success in staying clean and sober and helping others to do the same, Orlando was miserable, and he was carrying a secret over fifty years old, dating back to his tenure in the Navy. He claimed that there was a story that he had never told anyone that had haunted him for years. Besides the sleep disturbance, he suffered from symptoms of depression and anxiety, in addition to a deep and pervasive shame of which evidently no one in the twelve-step community was aware. His prideful leadership was belied by the fact that he was still—fifty years down the road—a deeply wounded and conflicted man.
Orlando began telling me his story in the second session. It was why he was in treatment in the first place, to share his story and escape the weight of shame that was diminishing his life.
He told me that he was on a Navy ship when he was ordered below deck into the cramped private quarters of two of his superiors. He began to describe how the men ordered him as a young seaman to disrobe and prepare for what sounded like the beginning of an anal rape. Orlando paused for a moment and looked down at the floor, and when he finally looked up, he stood up and said, “I cannot do this. I’m sorry, I will not be back.”
Orlando never returned to my office. I have questioned what went wrong; did I ask, “what happened” prematurely? I don’t think so, but it’s possible that I could have better prepared him for the feelings that he would experience when he told his story. The real blame, though, falls on the culprit that keeps so many trauma suffers silent—avoiding the horrible feelings that comprise the trauma. This avoidance keeps people like Orlando stuck in their pain in the past. Fortunately, Orlando is an exception, not the rule. The vast majority of clients I’ve worked with improved or were completely cured by their participation in treatment and their use of the Fritz. Orlando’s story, though, serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of how avoidance may prevent successful treatment.
Collateral Damage
While trauma contributes to depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD, dissociative disorders, and substance abuse, unresolved pain in the past can also contribute to a host of other symptoms and issues that can linger. For instance, trauma survivors often perceive the world as an unsafe place, feel isolated, withdraw emotionally from intimate relationships, can’t trust others, tend to choose abusive relationships (to replicate the familiarity of an abusive childhood), and sabotage life’s opportunities.
These symptoms don’t automatically disappear after the original trauma has been successfully remembered, felt, expressed, and released. As the following story demonstrates, these symptoms can persist even after the original trauma has been faced and worked through.
Eighteen-year-old Kendra was in trouble for shoplifting—not what would be considered clinical grounds for a trauma diagnosis. Her dad, Tom, overheard her telling her long-distance boyfriend, “I don’t know why these things keep happening to me—first I get molested by the babysitter, and now I’m arrested for shoplifting!” Imagine her dad’s reaction when he overheard this conversation from the next room. Tom had never had an inkling that Kendra had been molested, and he didn’t know what to do with the information.
He and his wife made an appointment to see me, but without Kendra. They arrived distraught and at a loss as to what to do. They explained that they had only used a babysitter once, and it was Tom’s former best friend, Jim. Could that single occasion have been what Kendra was describing? And if so, what could they do about it now? I suggested that they return with Kendra and then tell her the truth about the overheard conversation, followed by the question, “Who was it that hurt you?”
They were shocked when Kendra confirmed that the culprit was indeed her dad’s ex-best friend, during his one and only babysitting opportunity. Then I learned how much damage that one evening had done, including terrible shame, loss of innocence, and rebellion against everyone and everything (and yes, that’s how a well-to-do girl who wants for nothing can find it permissible to shoplift).
There was even more damage that the entire family had sustained without ever realizing that it was caused by the abuse. According to Kendra, who was only nine at the time of the abuse, that was the day when she stopped trusting her parents—especially her dad—to protect her. It was dad’s fault that Jim had touched her and then told her to tell no one. In her mind, dad had set her up for the abuse; and from her fourth-grade perspective, he was responsible for condoning, if not causing it. It was, after all, his best friend.
Further, that was also the day that Kendra had stopped being “daddy’s little girl.” That was the last time she had ever sat on his lap watching movies and eating popcorn, read aloud to him, or sought his advice on anything. He was not to be trusted for anything ever again.
So why hadn’t her parents noticed the changes? Tom said he had noticed, and so had her mother, but ironically, they’d attributed her changes to growing up and needing less cuddles, less connections, less guidance—less dad. Sure, Tom missed her, but if she was growing up, he could accept her changes as a normal part of the growth process. After all, she was the first and only child, so what did he know about normal adolescent female development?
I suggested that Kendra work briefly with me to dispel the horror of the molestation. I used a technique called “Guided Imagery” that is used to complete the unfinished trauma and remove its hold over the survivor. I then asked Kendra how she felt. “Vanquished!” was her one-word reply (after all, she went to a school for the gifted).
But regardless of the success of the imagery, the damage to Kendra’s relationship with her parents, especially her dad, was not magically repaired. She could release the horrors of the molestation, but that did not mean that all was automatically better with her parents. For that to happen, Kendra needed to hear their apologies, believe their innocence, and choose to trust them again.
Repairing a relationship can be a process, so Kendra gradually made the effort to be with her parents and talk, really talk, for the first time in nine years. During college, she took opportunities to return home and watch movies with her parents. She didn’t sit on daddy’s lap, but she was back to eating his popcorn and sitting between them.
Her symptoms waned and gradually disappeared. I’ve related Kendra’s story because for at least some of you, it’s not just the original trauma that’s the problem, but a host of symptoms that originated with the trauma. The good news is that the Fritz can help you put away the trauma, and ongoing help specific to the collateral damage can also be immensely helpful in repairing the remaining damage. But for now, to help you capitalize on the Fritz’s healing power, let’s look at the five steps in depth, starting with Remembering.
Chapter Three
Remember: Tell the Tale in Detail
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“It seems to me that there are more hearts broken in the world that can’t be mended, left unattended. What do we do? What do we do?”
—Gilbert O’Sullivan
Remember: Tell the Tale in Detail
Dennis was sixty-one years old when I met him. A delightful man with two somewhat inconsistent passions—NFL football and cross-dressing—he presented with some of the classic symptoms of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress, all of which he believed had been caused by priest abuse, exactly fifty years ago.
Dennis was very discouraged; not only were his Dolphins in last place this season, but he believed he would never recover from his deep-rooted shame and self-contempt. Dennis had worked for the government consistently throughout his life but had always felt he was a failure. His interests could afford him temporary respite and escape from his sense of failure and disgust but never made him feel like a whole man or a worthwhile person or husband. Unfortunately, his wife could never understand why Dennis had so much self-contempt. She tolerat
ed his cross-dressing, as she knew this was something that brought him a lot of excitement and positive feelings, though she didn’t appreciate him spending more time in the bathroom on Saturday nights then she did.
In the second session I asked Dennis what had happened to him fifty years ago.
He said, “Do you mean with the priest?”
“Yes.”
“You know, you are at least the fourth psychologist I’ve seen, and the first one to ask me what happened.”
“What did you do with the others, exchange recipes?” I asked, demonstrating my amazement that in fifty years, he had never had to address the trauma, despite receiving professional help.
Dennis reluctantly began to share his stories of the sexual abuse, even though he felt emasculated by the tears and helplessness he experienced as he related the details of each episode. Dennis explained to me that he had never told anyone his story. After prompting him with the question of what had prevented him from doing so, he went on to tell me about the story of his brother. Dennis explained that one day, he and his little brother were in the back of one of the priest’s cars driving to the church. There were two priests, one in the front seat with Dennis and one sitting with his brother in the back. Suddenly, his six-year-old brother blurted out, “Father Patrick is touching me!” The priest in the passenger seat turned his body all the way around and got in Dennis’s brother face and yelled, “You will never speak of this again to anyone!” Dennis told me that he was in shock and speechless as both boys remained silent for the rest of the ride, gripped with fear. Three days later, in a terrible accident, Dennis’ brother drowned in a pond near his house. Dennis believed that God himself had punished his brother for speaking against the priest, and that Dennis, in turn, was never to speak about what happened to him. He never did, until, of course, he and I began psychotherapy.
On approximately our sixth session, Dennis claimed, “Doc, this is just not working. It’s getting worse. Now I am even dreaming about the priest. How is this supposed to help me if it’s now infiltrating my dreams?”
I had a strong hunch that because he was relating his stories one by one, (this is the only way to successfully treat traumatic memories, one at a time,) he had stumbled upon another memory that was now manifesting itself in his dreams.
“Tell me about your dream.”
“I don’t know, I feel like he’s coming into a room and whispering my name: Dennis, Dennis, where are you?”
Since it was already apparent to me that this was a memory couched in a dream, my job was simple: encourage him to complete the memory that was now surfacing.
“Where is this dream taking place?”
“Oh, s**t! I know where this is! We are away at a church weekend retreat. It’s late at night, and all of us kids are asleep in a big room. Father Pat is creeping into the room trying to locate my bunk. I remember now—this is where it all started.”
Dennis expressed his anguish, first in tears and then in some words of rage directed at the priest. I asked him to share everything he could remember about the incident until he had completely depleted his memory of these experiences.
Dennis never had this dream again. He didn’t need to. He had processed the dream and the accompanying feelings, and he chose to release the ugliness of the rape in a letter directed to the priest (more on this technique in later chapters).
Dennis was in therapy with me for less than three months before he told me that for the first time in his life, he believed he was finally finished with the priest. (There were only three or four memories of being molested by him.) In fact, he claimed that the only time he ever thought about the priest abuse now was in my office, when I asked him about it. He sent me a Christmas postcard featuring strong words of affirmation for our work together on the back and a picture of himself in drag on the front.
It took Dennis time to remember in the right way, but time does not heal emotional wounds on its own. It merely passes. An entire half century had passed since he was molested by the priest. During that period, unfortunately, Dennis had only stewed silently because of the molestation. It is almost impossible for a child to separate from having experienced something ugly without the child feeling ugly herself or himself.
Dennis became the ugliness of the molestation. He lived nearly his entire life in shame and self-contempt. Only by having the opportunity to remember and process each of the memories could he finally reach a place of self-forgiveness and release the traumas.
The Myth That “Time Heals All Wounds”
The myth that time heals all wounds is pervasive in our society. In fact, it is even perpetuated by the mental health profession. How many psychotherapists are guilty of promising their clients that this (whatever it is) will get better over time? To those who believe that myth, I can introduce you to Vietnam veterans who are worse today than when they came home from combat in 1968. Similarly, I’ve met survivors of incest, rape, and family tragedies who have become more embittered over the years. Healing may occur over time, not because time passes, but because time affords you the opportunity to let go and make peace with the trauma.
It Is Letting Go, Not Time, That is the Ultimate Healer
The successful treatment of trauma requires the client to directly face the unresolved drama. This is known as exposure: one must remember the trauma in its entirety and deal with the accompanying feelings. But while exposure to painful material is necessary, it is not curative. The cure occurs because the client not only faces what happened (finally), but then feels, expresses, and most importantly, releases the painful emotions. In other words, exposure alone is the equivalent of only remembering the trauma and never processing it nor putting it away. It is the release of pain and fear that is ultimately curative.
Prolonged exposure is a technique that forces you to continue to re-experience the trauma. Ideally, you would habituate to the experience, meaning that it then no longer evokes that same magnitude of hurt or fear. In my experience, it is completely unnecessary to make anyone repeat the experience of trauma. To the contrary, one complete telling of the trauma, inclusive of the feelings (felt, expressed, and released), is sufficient to help you to make peace with your unresolved issue.
Remembering, of course, is only the first step of healing from your pain in the past. Trying to skip this step is as ill-advised as trying to skip first base on the way to second.
Linda and the Chicken Wire
Linda came to me many years ago with this simple request: “I just want to feel something. I am completely numb and feel absolutely nothing.” At the time, I was unaware that Linda was blocking out the significant child abuse that had occurred when she was age four. She had been the victim of what is now called “human trafficking”, as she was sold to various men in her community for sexual services while her single mother was working, and had entrusted her care to a great aunt and her boyfriend. As she began to remember some of the horrific incidents and the specific places and faces of the offenders, Linda became understandably upset. She did not want to continue with this process of healing from her terrible memories. In fact, she was in the process of remembering an incident where she was looking through chicken wire. Day after day and even in her dreams, she had a disturbing sense of being small and looking through holes in a chicken wire fence. Whatever that memory contained, Linda was not up for it. It was disturbing enough for her that she decided to take a break from treatment. That break lasted for five years before her depression intensified to the point that she decided she needed to finish what she had begun. During these five years, she remained stuck in a place of remembering looking through that chicken wire. When she returned to treatment, this was precisely the place to which we needed to return. She was finally capable of finishing remembering the story of being locked in a little crate from which she had looked out through chicken wire. By remembering and grieving through that terrible event, she never had another
image, dream, or disturbing thought about the chicken wire again.
The healing process lasted for years—Linda had an unusually large number of abusive events to work through—until each one of her memories were remembered. But at the end of her treatment, two days after her final session, Linda called me to say she was experiencing feelings she had never had before and realized that these were feelings of happiness. She said it had taken her seventy years of life, and more than twenty years of therapy, to finally experience what it meant to be happy, but that had required flushing out all the ugliness of her childhood abuse.
Remembering rarely takes this long, but I relate Linda’s case because it demonstrates how not remembering keeps people stuck. Despite doing her very best to run away from treatment, Linda could not escape the image of the chicken wire until she decided to face and process the memory. Only then did it go away forever, as it was finally finished.
Exploring Memories
What if you can’t trust the accuracy of your memories?
I know there are many of you who are skeptical as to whether the mind can repress memories for decades and then recall them in detail. While much debate has taken place on “recovered” versus “false” memories, it’s not really an issue from a therapeutic standpoint. After more than thirty years of full-time practice and 70,000 therapy sessions, I have seen dozens of people who have repressed segments of (or entire) memories, all of whom were successfully treated when the memories were allowed to surface. The byproduct of a repressed memory surfacing has without exception been positive. Not one of my clients used the material to blame others for their lives; no one attempted to take anyone to court and sue them. The memories were ultimately digested and processed in such a way that they could now be integrated into the recovering person’s life. I have read about people creating “false memories,” but in my outpatient practice this has not been an obstacle to treatment.
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