Breaking the Chains of Abuse

Sue Atkinson

Description

Sue Atkinson, author of the highly acclaimed Climbing out of Depression and Building Self-Esteem, turns her attention to the subject of sexual and emotional abuse. Writing from her own experience, she gets alongside survivors to offer hope and guidance. The book is written in practical style with concrete advice and excellent pointers. The text is broken up into short sections to make it easy to digest.

Informations

• Publié par: Lion Hudson
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780745959269
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Sue Atkinson

A Practical Guide

Breaking the Chains of Abuse

For David

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people helped in the writing of this book. It was within the Greenbelt Arts Festival Survivors Group that I gained the confidence to consider starting it. Thank you Concetta for introducing me to that group and for teaching me about assertiveness and forgiveness. Thank you Kirsty for leading brilliant sessions, Charlotte for friendship and for showing me I could be a princess too, Jane for so many things, especially for support during the editing process. Thank you Melanie and Abi for help with the chapter on dissociating and thanks to the Bristol Crisis Service for Women for help with dealing with flashbacks. It has been a privilege to get to know the amazingly strong people Ive met through S:VOX and Mayumarri in Australia. Youve inspired me and taught me so much about breaking the chains of abuse. Thanks especially to Wendy who taught me how to scream and to Liz for showing me that I could heal. Thank you John and Ruth for guiding me through those tortuous early stages. I will for ever be grateful for your considerable professional skills. I couldnt have managed to complete this book without the support of my sisterhood friends  Jane again, Sue, Elaine, Julie, Julie, Alice, Anne, Meriel and of course Kate, whose drawings of my creatures captured their characters and whose steadfast friendship and wisdom added so much to my own thinking and therefore to this book. Thank you to my family, Jonathan, Rachel, Nick and Liz who are generous with their support and love  and of course David, who is always there. Thank you all.

Sue Atkinson

Breaking the Chains of Abuse A PRACTICAL GUIDE

Sue Atkinson

Copyright © 2006 Sue Atkinson Illustrations copyright © 2006 Kate Litchfield

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A Lion Book an imprint of Lion Hudson plc Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England www.lionhudson.com ISBN 978 0 7459 5135 5 First edition 2006 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved

The text paper used in this book has been made from wood independently certified as having come from sustainable forests.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset in 10.5/12pt Berkeley Old Style Book Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading

Contents

Introduction 7 Ways to use this book 9

Part 1 The start of it all 13

1 Wallowing in it? 14 2 All abuse hurts 18 3 Problems with trauma 25 Strategies for dealing with panic and anxiety 31 4 Problems with memory 34 Strategies for dealing with flashbacks and similar startling triggers 38 5 Abuse and depression 43 Strategies for getting better from depression 49 Strategies for getting rid of negative thinking 50 6 The emergency stage 52 Strategies for surviving the emergency stage 59

Part 2 Deciding to heal 63

7 Images, dreams and reality 64 Practical strategies for learning from dreams 70 8 Transforming moments 73 9 Making friends with our Inner Child 77

Part 3 Understanding the chains 87

10 What’s keeping me chained up? 88 Strategies for dealing with shame and low selfesteem 94 11 Fears and phobias 96 Strategies for dealing with anxiety, fears and phobias 100

12 Hurting ourselves 102 Strategies for dealing with eating disorders 109 Strategies for dealing with selfharming 110 Strategies for dealing with suicidal thinking 111

13 False memories? 114

Part 4 Working through the pain 123

14 Our feelings matter 124

15 Where is God when it hurts? 127 16 The shadow and the shame 133 17 Who am I? 139 Strategies for getting rid of selfloathing 144 18 Why do I switch off? 147 Strategies for dealing with switching off 151

Part 5 Starting to heal 155

19 Healing with puffins 156 20 Beginning to feel angry 162 21 Understanding anger 168 Strategies for dealing with our anger and pentup rage 174 22 Healthy boundaries 177 Strategies for dealing with our core issues 183 23 Forgive and forget? 186 Strategies for exploring forgiveness 194 24 Struggling with forgiving 199 Strategies for forgiving ourselves 206 25 Reflections 208 Further resources 220

Introduction

This book is for:  people who have experienced abuse, particularly sexual abuse  both male and female, adult and child victims/survivors  parents and other supporters of abuse victims who want to know more about the effects of abuse in order to care more effectively  people in leadership positions, such as teachers, health and social workers and clergy, who need information about abuse.

This book is especially for people like these friends of mine who are survivors of abuse:  Flick, who is struggling because she has to stop therapy and she doesnt know how she will cope.  Helen, who had a Tshirt made with Silent no more on the front and I was sexually abused on the back.  Richard, who has lost two stone and has another eight to lose. He started to comfort eat after he was raped ten years ago.  Laura, who was told that if she put on weight she would be given help. So she put on weight only to find that the help was a totally unsuitable mixed gender and mixed needs group therapy, where she could not talk about her abuse. She has been told that if she stops going to the group (it is destroying all her confidence) she will get no more help at all.  Lucy, who is trying desperately hard to stop selfharming.  Ali, who became so ill after he was attacked that he became depressed and had to give up his job. Hes been unemployed for six years and is finding it hard to convince employers to take him on.  Claire, who says: I often think of a little gremlin sat on my shoulder whispering negative things in my ear. He tells me Im a waste of space and a bad person who isnt worth bothering about. Hes very good at popping up when Im at my lowest!

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A communication problem The trouble with abuse is that abused people dont much like talking or writing about what happened to them, and those who havent been abused find the whole thing so upsetting that they dont want to hear or read about it. I hope I can solve at least some of this problem of communication by writing honestly and openly about what happened to me and to other survivors. (Ive used the term survivor as shorthand for people who were abused. I know some people dont like it much, for all kinds of good reasons, but it is such common shorthand that most people will know what I mean. It signifies the move we make, with help, from being a victim to being someone who is trying to heal. And it feels true to my daily life; I just about survive  with help.)

The statistics The statistics for child abuse, adult rape and sexual assault and adult domestic violence are shocking. Some recent research from the UK and the USA gives the following figures:  One in four girls and one in nine boys experience some kind of abuse in childhood.  One in eight women and one in twelve men report that they were sexually abused before the age of sixteen.  One female in four experiences domestic violence at some point in her life.  One male in nine is abused at some time in his life. (But we know that the figures for men represent considerable underreporting by men and some say it is at least one man in seven and probably more than that).  In the UK in 1999 over one in three female murder victims were killed by their present or former partner.  The NSPCC says that in the UK, more than one child dies each week as a result of abuse by an adult.  In the USA it is estimated that there are 60 million survivors. Thats about 20 per cent of the population, or one in five people.  Statistics vary, but it seems that a huge percentage of the prison population were abused as children.

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As Ive trawled through books and research reports to verify statistics, one phrase crops up again and again:

Our results show only the tip of the iceberg because most abuse is not reported.

Although I know that more people are abused than is generally recognized, I feel deeply shaken by these statistics. Its time for the abusers to be afraid, because the culture of secrecy and silence that they need is being smashed apart as researchers shout to the world that all is not well.

Ways to use this book  This book contains practical ideas to help you to recover from the traumatic effects of abuse.  It is a book to do as much as to read, so you might want to read it all the way through or you might prefer just to dip into activities that suit your needs at that moment. (For example, finding coping strategies for dealing with panic and so on.)  You will get more from it if you treat it as a workbook and actually do some of the activities, so you will need a range of pens and pencils, and at least one notebook.  You can develop some of the activities with crayons and paints etc. But if that doesnt grab you, just miss those bits out and come back to them later.

 If you have a supporter you could tell them you are reading the book. Sharing some of your work with them might help you to make considerable progress.

 Focusing on the trauma can start to give us some power to change our own lives. We cant sit around and wait for other people to change our lives. That doesnt work.

 We are the ones who must change our lives, in our own way and in our own time. It is a long slow process, but the activities in this book are designed to help you to get back the power in your life that you lost because of abuse.

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