Scared Selfless

by Michelle Stevens, PhD

  Of course, I didn’t have any of this perspective at the time. When I talked with Dr. A. Hole, I’m sure I sounded more like “Blah-blah-blah LOVE New York, blah-blah-blah La-La Land has no seasons.” To tell the truth, I don’t really remember much about these sessions except that it was difficult to talk with Dr. A. Hole. He made me feel like a bug.

  Nonetheless, in one session, I experienced my second body hijacking. I was sitting in a hard plastic chair babbling on about the lack of theater in LA when I drifted away and heard a voice speaking.

  “My father molested me,” it said. I knew it must be me talking, but I had no idea how I was doing it.

  I can’t really remember what happened after that. But I doubt it was very enlightening as I stopped seeing the doctor after only seven sessions.

  —

  AFTER MUCH ANGST AND DEBATE, I decided I must leave New York. It killed me to give up my job, my contacts, my perfect apartment, theater, seasons, decent bagels. But what choice did I have? Being alone in the world terrified me. It was a matter of survival.

  So a few months after graduation, Steve and I packed all of our belongings into my new used car. We ordered a set of TripTiks from Triple A and headed west. For my sacrifice, Steve promised we’d rent a huge two-bedroom apartment so I could have a dedicated writing room. He also promised I’d learn to love sunny, seasonless, theater-challenged LA. I tried to be optimistic about the future. But it was hard losing my school, my home, and my dreams all in one day.

  What I didn’t yet realize was that I was bringing all sorts of things with me: buried memories, toxic feelings, psychopathology, and a whole host of ready-for-prime-time inner characters. If Steve had known what he was in for, I doubt he would’ve been so keen to stay together. I suspect he would’ve hopped a yellow cab, bought a one-way ticket to LAX, and ripped out his home phone.

  Instead, we drove across the country, past picturesque farms and the St. Louis arch. Through flat cornfields in Kansas and Technicolor rocks in New Mexico. We visited the “Home of the 72 ounce Steak” in Amarillo and the Grand Canyon in Flagstaff. We had an adventure. The good kind.

  After traveling through Las Vegas and Death Valley, we stopped in Barstow for the night. When I woke in the morning for my first day in California, I was so excited that I ran to the motel window and threw open the curtains. The sun that poured in was the brightest and strongest I’d ever seen. It was blinding.

  Little did I know that the California sun would soon be shining a light on my very dark past and finally set me on the long road to healing.

  PART III

  HEALING

  —

  The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.

  —DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, Infinite Jest

  Daze of My Life

  Please, God,” I prayed. “Please. Please, I’m desperate. When I get home, you have to make the phone ring. You have to make them call today. Please, God, you owe me this.”

  I was walking back from a grocery store on Ventura Boulevard, having just spent my last five bucks on ramen noodles and frozen burritos. When the food in my grocery bag ran out, I would starve to death. After everything that had happened to me, I didn’t have much faith left in God. But He was my only option now. Getting my life back on track was going to take a miracle.

  The miracle I sought was a job, which doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that should require divine intervention. But a year into California dreamin’, things felt more like a nightmare. Steve and I were living in a craptastic one-bedroom apartment in the Valley that shared a wall with the 101 freeway. The few pieces of furniture we owned were all procured via Dumpster. I knew absolutely no one, which was probably for the best, as a gazillion streets with crazy names made it impossible to find anyone or anything anyway. I suppose transitioning to postcollege life in a new city is challenging for everyone. But being penniless, estranged from family, and preprogrammed with endless fear triggers really turned up the heat for me.

  So did having undiagnosed dissociative identity disorder. Try as it might, my psyche just couldn’t get a handle on what identity was going to help me triumph in LA. The Preppy was too traditional and uptight to hang with laid-back Angelenos, and the Student had lost her one and only purpose in life. The Writer should’ve been able to fit in; lots of Hollywood writers are former theater-loving New Yorkers who eventually grow up and move west in search of grown-up wages. My alternate personalities, though, are not real people. They are caricatures drawn from external images. Like cartoon people, they never seem to age, change, or grow. They are trapped in time. (My wife, in fact, calls me Homer Simpson because I continuously make the same stupid decisions!) As a result, the Writer, who was originally conceived as a New York playwright, had a hard time envisioning herself in La La Land.

  Despite all this, things in LA started out well. Within a few days of arriving, I scored a job interview with the head writers of the NBC soap Days of Our Lives. The meeting went well, and I was asked to intern in the writers’ offices, which is the common launch pad for budding TV scribes. It was a dream opportunity, the kind every young writer wants after college. Things were going great, and within weeks, I was asked to write my first script. By all objective measures, I was on the fast track to a lucrative career as a Hollywood writer.

  But it never happened.

  I started having flashbacks.

  And just like that, my bright future got snuffed out by my dark past.

  —

  MY BREAKDOWN WAS TRIGGERED by the move to LA. People with DID are prone to psychological decompensation when they are removed from the original traumatic situation. Once I was three thousand miles from home, I started to feel a sense of danger that I couldn’t explain. Needing to feel safe, I decided to cut off all contact with my parents. I went so far as to get an unlisted number and a post office box. I didn’t know why, but I wanted to hide from anyone I’d ever known.

  Once I felt safely disconnected from my old life and assured that no one could find me, I started to see things in my mind. The first image was of the American flag hanging above the blackboard in Gary’s classroom. After that, other images would randomly flash: the sign for the Revolution Motel, a man’s calloused hand, my parents’ green bedspread. These pictures were seemingly innocuous and random. They held no meaning for me. So why did they fill me with dread?

  Dread turned to horror as the images became more explicit. Genitalia, blood, and scenes of torture would randomly pop into my head like persecutory Whac-A-Moles. I had no idea why I was seeing these things, nor could I explain the phantom sensations that were happening in my body. Often, I’d feel like my wrists were tied together by a rope that was pulling me along, or I’d feel like my arms were tied to the headboard of a bed. I’d have the sensation of being gagged or held down. But, of course, none of these things was actually happening. What’s worse, I started having violent mood swings. Most of the time, I felt terror or sadness, but there were also flashes of crazy rage. One time, I screamed at Steve and threw a six-pack of yogurt across the apartment because he’d bought the wrong brand. Other times—many times—I curled into a frightened ball and begged him not to leave me.

  When this all started, I had no idea what was happening to me. It felt like I’d completely lost control of my mind and was going insane. Terrifying. As different visions, feelings, and shards of knowledge started to coalesce, and I realized that what I was experiencing were memories, it only made things worse. Imagine waking up tomorrow and learning that the whole life you thought you had lived was a lie. Your loving grandma really beat you senseless. The older brother you idolize stuck his dick in your mouth. This is how it was for me. While I certainly knew my parents were mean, I had no idea I’d been molested. And by my own father! The truth was a total shock—like finding out Dr. Huxtable was a rapist.

  The whole thing sent me into a tailspin. I became obsessed w
ith figuring out what else I didn’t know about my own life. In order to document the things I was remembering, I started to write in my journal.

  11/19/90

  What I Remember So Far

  They are all vague. They are all dreamlike, and they are not all.

  But I have memories. I must get them all out, every single one.

  I remember wrestling on the bed. I remember him putting his hands on my ass. I would tense up. And he would go “la dee dah” and laugh. So amused . . . I remember him forcing his hand down between my thighs . . . I remember a motel in King of Prussia. I remember swimming in the pool at night. I remember him holding me. Maybe touching my breasts. Maybe pulling off the top of my bathing suit . . . I remember another motel in New York. The Revolution Motel . . . I remember more about the hotel in King of Prussia. I remember the room. The inside of the room. I remember him teasing me when I undressed. Telling me I was silly to act modest. What hadn’t he seen before?

  —

  THIS IS HOW my memory started coming back to me. In strange bits and pieces. Some things, little things, just seemed to suddenly appear as normal everyday memories—Gary’s hands on my ass, a time he put ointment on my genitals. They were so obvious, so complete, that I wondered how I ever could have forgotten them. Other things, bigger things, were more hazy—sexual play on my parents’ bed, being fondled by Gary in his classroom. These were more dreamlike and foggy. They didn’t feel like normal memories at all. And then there were the teasers, the little shards of knowledge that seemed to foreshadow memories to come. Like suddenly remembering certain hotels but not knowing why. Or certain men my father had known.

  It’s important to know that the recovery of my memories didn’t happen all at once. They came in clumps over a period of about fifteen years. In this first round, I didn’t yet realize I’d been used in prostitution or kiddie porn, nor did I remember any of the S/M stuff. Hell, I hardly remembered anything! All that came to me was the daily run-of-the-mill molestations by Gary—in his classroom, in motel rooms, on my parents’ bed. But that was plenty to freak me out! I can’t say for certain why the memories came back in stages or why I generally remembered the more “normal” abuse long before the really kinky stuff. I assume my psyche gave me what it thought I could handle, which was very little at the time.

  I realize that for someone who has not experienced the recovery of repressed memories the whole thing must seem bizarre. It was bizarre for me too.

  One minute, I was a normal college grad trying to start a career. The next, I was some incest victim. What the fuck?

  —

  TRYING TO MAKE SENSE of what was happening to me, I went to the source of all knowledge in the days before Siri: the bookstore. Prominently displayed was a recent bestseller called The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse. It provided answers in plain black-and-white. It said I was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse like countless other women, and that my flashbacks and mood swings were par for the course. It explained that my history of depression, anxiety, and suicide attempts were means of coping. Most important, it said I could heal and told me how.

  Nowadays, there are many books about child sexual abuse. In 1990, though, when I began to regain my memory, talking openly about incest and molestation was still very new. In the ’70s, the women’s movement opened the can of worms when it dared to speak out against rape. Speak-outs on incest soon followed, and the movement to publicize and prevent child sexual abuse was born. By the mid-1980s, child sexual abuse became a major focus of American culture.

  Groups popped up to help victims while law enforcement cracked down on perps. Sensational stories about satanic cults and abusive preschools dominated the news. In short, child sexual abuse became a very big deal—some say to the point of national hysteria.

  In a bizarre twist of fate, my personal history coincides precisely with America’s “discovery” of child sexual abuse. In the 1970s, at the height of the kiddie-porn market, I was forced into those films. In the 1980s, during the fervent hunt for child molesters, my father was prosecuted. By the 1990s, when the term recovered memories hit the mainstream, I was just beginning to have flashbacks. Yet despite being the poster child of an era, I was completely unaware of the larger political and social machinations surrounding child sexual abuse.

  So when I bought The Courage to Heal, I didn’t know there was a controversy surrounding its discussion of repressed and recovered memories. In the book, the authors, who don’t hold degrees in psychology or any other mental health field, encouraged readers to unearth their repressed memories of abuse through regression therapy. They urged readers to trust the veracity of their recovered memories even if there was no objective proof of abuse. Most controversial, the authors told readers that if they felt they were abused they probably were even if they had no memories of abuse.

  This loosey-goosey approach didn’t sit well with some people. A few readers claimed that upon following the advice in the book they recovered memories that later turned out to be false. Around the same time, an organization called the False Memory Syndrome Foundation was formed by a group of parents who claimed that their adult children had falsely accused them of child sexual abuse. The FMSF worked hard to build skepticism about recovered memories of abuse—claiming such memories were either the result of media influence or misleading therapists who implanted ideas in their patients’ heads.

  While there is certainly evidence that false memories can be created under certain conditions, the idea that hordes of women are routinely duped by self-serving therapists reeks of an Oliver Stone–style conspiracy theory. It harkens back to the 1890s when Freud’s colleagues accused him of implanting false memories in his patients, as well as the 1980s when skeptics claimed therapists were creating false cases of multiple personality disorder. There’s a theme here: In all of these instances, people uncomfortable with the divulgence of widespread child sexual abuse try to discredit and silence victims. They do this by calling us “confused” or “manipulated,” but what they are really calling us is “liars.”

  To this day, many people believe that recovered memories of child sexual abuse are never real. Upon hearing my story of recovered memories, I have no doubt that skeptics will try to discredit me. At worst, they’ll say I’m a charlatan who’s making the whole thing up for money. At best, they’ll say I’m confused, that my “memories” are false and were implanted by The Courage to Heal or some Rasputin-esque therapist.

  The thing is: My memories started coming back to me before I ever bought any books about child sexual abuse or sought any kind of therapy to deal with the memories I was recovering. In addition, while pursuing a civil case against my parents, my lawyer managed to collect quite a bit of evidence of the crimes committed against me, including medical records and eyewitness accounts.

  Is it possible for people to repress and later recover the memory of a horrible event? The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, all mainstream organizations that specialize in the study of trauma, and a vast clinical literature say yes. In contrast, false memory syndrome is not recognized as a diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association or any mainstream psychological organization.

  If one needs more proof that a person can repress and later recover traumatic memories, there is also ample anecdotal evidence. Take, for instance, the case of Alicia Kozakiewicz. When Kozakiewicz was thirteen years old, she was abducted outside her Pittsburgh home by a man she had met on the Internet. She was held hostage, tortured, and sexually assaulted for four days before being rescued by the FBI. When agents entered the dungeon where Kozakiewicz was being held, they discovered her chained to the floor with a leather collar around her neck. Despite this acute trauma—probably because of it—Kozakiewicz could not remember the horrors she endured during her ordeal. In addition, the teen also suffered huge chunks of memory loss for the years before her abduction. By the age
of nineteen, Kozakiewicz said she had come to recall “bits and pieces” of her life and the trauma. Slowly, over time, she appeared to be recovering the memories of what had happened to her.

  —

  KOZAKIEWICZ AND I SEEM to have suffered similar traumas. We were both taken by sadistic men, locked in basement dungeons, bound, tortured, and raped. We both dealt with the trauma by blocking out the memory of it, by repressing it. Repressed memories, though, rarely stay that way. They creep in as frozen images, phantom pains, confusing dreams.

  When my memories started coming back, I was thrown into an emotional crisis. Some days, I felt so terrified that I would hide inside my closet for hours. Other days, I cried uncontrollably and couldn’t get out of bed. Unable to function, I was forced to quit my internship at Days of Our Lives. I could barely write a grocery list, much less a script!

  Recognizing that my life was falling apart, I knew I needed help. Exactly how to get help, though, was a bit of a mystery. I knew I needed a therapist, but good ones cost good money. Now unemployed, I was SOL. This is one of the catch-22’s of severe abuse. Healing from it takes a lot of time and money, but traumatized people are often too damaged to work steadily.

  Eventually, I found a nonprofit counseling center in Van Nuys that offered low-cost therapy to poor folks. These sorts of clinics are all over the country and are the primary source of care for the sickest patients, who generally lack money or decent insurance. The way these clinics are able to offer cut-rate fees, however, is by staffing green therapists. These are mostly students in their first or second year of graduate school working for free to earn the hours they need to become licensed.

  It’s a sad reality that therapists with absolutely no experience and very little training are routinely thrown into rooms with patients suffering from serious mental health issues, including borderline personality disorder, dissociative identity disorder, and other forms of dissociation. New to the game, these therapists often have no idea what they’re dealing with, which helps explain why patients are routinely misdiagnosed for years.