The Dam Broke

There are layers of releasing trauma in the body. Once we are able to release trauma and to start feeling again, we are guided by inner wisdom. We no live in survival brain. We are able to feel and to interpret what we are feeling. Our energy becomes balanced, we open to new feelings, we begin to trust our competence, and we are able to manage buried memories. However, with trauma, we cannot always avoid triggers.

I had a trigger experience, this past week, with an abusive gaslighting male.  It triggered traumatic alarm in me.  So, with EMDR skills, I went within and was able to ask myself what was triggered.  I asked what was buried beneath the alarm.  I found it was terror of more loss and trauma from an abusive male.  I found the root of the feeling and wept as I had not wept before.  The worst trauma and terror, in this experience with divorce, was always about my children. The worst part was being unable to protect and nurture my children because of an abusive male, a sociopath, who has no conscience.  Jointly, the worst trauma, was an evil system filled with abusive males who refused to protect battered women and children from a sociopath.

With this trigger, the emotional dam of parental responsibility broke. I felt layers of grief with memories of having to relocate for safety. I am not able to recall the moving day.  I was numb and on automatic pilot at the time.  I must have blocked it all out as it was too much to bear. My daughter did not want to relocate as she was in high school. I asked myself ‘how could I leave my daughter?’  I asked myself if I did the right thing? Did I make it better or worse with relocating to a community approximately one hour away?  I struggled to make the decision.  I was planning for economic survival and enrolling in college with hope of achieving financial independence. I was a dislocated worker after being a stay-at-home mom.

The grief included moments of feeling deep pain for not being emotionally available to my children when I was either ill or in survival while being stalked, harassed, and assaulted. It doesn’t matter if there were survival reasons for my feeling like I could have been a better parent. The feelings are still there even if it was not intentional. I am writing letters, to my children, so that I can be genuine, let them know I am sorry for when I hurt their feelings including those I am aware of and those that were not intentional, and to invite healing before I leave this planet. There will always be a tender place in my heart, though shattered, for my children. These are the feelings of a shattered heart that is still picking up the pieces.

Most Damaging Parenting of Children

Melanie Tonia Evans states that the “most damaging thing that can happen to our children is to have a narcissistic (sociopath) parent and a victimized toxic parent because both parents are incredibly absent and unavailable emotionally.” I agree with the lack of emotional availability because that was what I was feeling with this trauma trigger. At first, I even accepted the label of “toxic” parent because I respect Melanie’s work. With more thought, I decided it was once again unfair to blame the victim.

The victim does not have the freedom of choice, nor safety needs met, which are needed in order to make conscious informed choices. These are basic human rights. Battered women are assaulted and ambushed from all sides. While surviving violence from a sociopath, we react by instinct. We fight, flight, fawn, or freeze. I think it would be more respectful to call the battered mother “traumatized” rather than “toxic”. I think it is incredibly cruel to talk about battered women as if there is ever a level playing field in a toxic patriarchal society. Rather, there is an incredible power imbalance which goes unrecognized on a regular basis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P47Tn2iEC5A

I agree with Melanie that we cannot have healthy relationships, with our children, until we heal ourselves. However, when we are in survival, we cannot think about higher needs. Possibly Melanie does not realize that children take anger and revenge out on the safe parent. Possibly she has not experienced family court corruption and parental alienation. Possibly she has not experienced an array of dark forces who do not care about survival of battered women and children. How can we blame battered women while they, and their children, are dying at the hands of their abusers?

I recall a training by Lieutenant Mark Wynn. Lieutenant Wynn was a twenty-one year member of the Nashville Metropolitan Police Department, he served as Lieutenant to the Domestic Violence Division, and he was a member of the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) Team for fifteen years. He has a glowing biography: http://www.markwynn.com/about-mark-wynn/bio/.

In Lieutenant Wynn’s training, he described how law enforcement officers are most often killed when responding to calls regarding domestic violence. When dispatched, the officers have the support of the department and fellow officers. They have weapons to protect themselves and to manage the aggressor. They have the responsibility to kill, if necessary, in order to protect life. Lieutenant Wynn points out that battered women and children. routinely, have none of the above. Yet, society expects the battered woman to simply get up and leave this life and death reality. Society is out of touch with reality when they live comfortable lives and then judge survivors of family violence. Lieutenant Wynn is in touch with reality because he survived domestic violence as a child:

https://www.markwynn.com/

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs reveals how battered women are at the bottom of the hierarchy with survival needs for safety, food, shelter, etc. being unmet. Battered women are not able to adequately provide for children’s needs when they do not have their, nor their children’s, basic human needs met while a sociopath is out to destroy them:

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/needs-before-wants-in-user-experiences-maslow-and-the-hierarchy-of-needs

I believe the sociopath would have killed me if he did not get what he wanted. He was incredibly determined to win at all costs. For ten years after divorce, I was harassed at both home and work, lost my job, and often called law enforcement. I have a number of records, from both the Douglas County and Stearns County Sheriff’s Department in Minnesota, which validate the ongoing abuse and harassment. I scheduled counseling appointments for our children as needed. The sociopath would walk in unannounced, be disruptive, and remove children from counseling sessions. What more could I do but keep trying though the sociopath undermined what I did? He did not care about the needs of our children. He cared about hurting and destroying me:

I struggled to survive the ongoing stalking, harassment, and violence from the sociopath. I struggled with the decision about whether to relocate for safety. I thought about relocating, to the St. Cloud area, in order to work toward a college education and financial independence. No matter what I chose, there was continual and massive opposition. It was enough to single parent our children, who were deeply hurt and traumatized, while living in poverty. It was soul murder for the sociopath to continue causing harm to three vulnerable children and their protective parent. The sociopath laughed, did not care, and I have his handwritten notes to prove it.

It was extremely brutal and intolerable for the sociopath, and the family court system, to ignore our basic human rights to safety. All of these criminals should be incarcerated for failing to protect basic human rights of battered women and children. They caused great harm.

ACE Study – Harm to Vulnerable Children

With no repercussions nor incarceration, the sociopath destroyed the well-being of our children. That is soul murder for innocent children which leads to physical disorders. I refer to the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study) questionnaire which a most important public health study. “The CDC’s Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study) uncovered a stunning link between childhood trauma and the chronic diseases people develop as adults, as well as social and emotional problems. This includes heart disease, lung cancer, diabetes and many autoimmune diseases, as well as depression, violence, being a victim of violence, and suicide.

The first research results were published in 1998, followed by more than 70 other publications through 2015. They showed that:

• childhood trauma was very common, even in employed white middle-class, college-educated people with great health insurance;
• there was a direct link between childhood trauma and adult onset of chronic disease, as well as depression, suicide, being violent and a victim of violence;
• more types of trauma increased the risk of health, social and emotional problems.
• people usually experience more than one type of trauma – rarely is it only sex abuse or only verbal abuse.

What causes this?

“At the same time that the ACE Study was being done, parallel research on kids’ brains found that toxic stress damages the structure and function of a child’s developing brain. This was determined by a group of neuroscientists and pediatricians, including neuroscientist Martin Teicher and pediatrician Jack Shonkoff, both at Harvard University, neuroscientist Bruce McEwen at Rockefeller University, and child psychiatrist Bruce Perry at the Child Trauma Academy.

When children are overloaded with stress hormones, they’re in flight, fright or freeze mode. They can’t learn in school. They often have difficulty trusting adults or developing healthy relationships with peers (i.e., they become loners). To relieve their anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, and/or inability to focus, they turn to easily available biochemical solutions — nicotine, alcohol, marijuana, methamphetamine — or activities in which they can escape their problems — high-risk sports, proliferation of sex partners, and work/over-achievement. (e.g. Nicotine reduces anger, increases focus and relieves depression. Alcohol relieves stress.)Using drugs or overeating or engaging in risky behavior leads to consequences as a direct result of this behavior.For example, smoking can lead to COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) or lung cancer. Overeating can lead to obesity and diabetes. In addition, there is increasing research that shows that severe and chronic stress leads to bodily systems producing an inflammatory response that leads to disease. 

In addition, toxic stress can be passed down from generation to generation. The field of epigenetics shows that we are born with a set of genes that can be turned on and off, depending on what’s happening in our environment. If a child grows up with an overload of toxic stress, their stress-response genes are likely to be activated so that they are easily triggered by stressful situations that don’t affect those who don’t grow up with toxic stress. They can pass that response onto their children.” 

Why is the Family Court System Failing to Protect?

If you and I know the truth about abuse and neglect in childhood leading to high Ace scores, the court system knows this truth also. I believe they are character disordered persons, in an evil, anti-life system, that seriously needs to be reformed. It is a system with archaic laws which continue to treat women as property and with male entitlement to children (whether or not they are abusive). It is a system which is adversarial and feeds conflict so money is made from ongoing conflict. It is a system which takes children away, from the protective parent, because they know the mother will fight to the death for her child(ren). It is a system which ignores the safety needs of children so that children are killed by abusive male parents.

They Should All Be Incarcerated

If you and I know the truth about sociopaths, do court officials know about sociopaths? Why is the family court system so inadequate? Are they evil and simply do not care? Are they part of the deep state? Are they applying corporate law rather than constitutional law? Do they enjoy the suffering and the conflict? Are they ignorant and need training? Are they pretending to be mental health experts which is not ethical to do? Are they mentally ill and/or alcoholic? Are they psychopaths, sociopaths, malignant narcissists, abusers? Are they bribed and paid off? Are they simply caring only about keeping their job and going home at the end of the day? They are committing crimes against the family, against humanity, at alarming rates! They know what they are doing.

What are PCEs — positive childhood experiences?

“Although there is still much to learn about ACEs and how to prevent and mitigate their effects, we also all know that childhood experiences are not limited to those that involve adversity. All childhood experiences matter. In the last few years, researchers have started to examine the impacts of positive childhood experiences (PCEs) on children and adults.

In 2019, a team of researchers — Dr. Christina Bethell, Jennifer Jones, Dr. Narangerel Gombojav, Dr. Jeff Linkenbach and Dr. Robert Sege — found a dose-response association between positive childhood experiences and adult mental and relationship health among adults who had experienced ACEs, irrespective of how many ACEs they had. This means that it’s really important to have positive childhood experiences, no matter how much adversity you have in your life. And if you have a lot of adversity and a lot of positive childhood experiences, you are less likely to suffer the consequences of ACEs. However if you have no positive childhood experiences and few ACEs, the consequences of the ACEs are more likely to appear. Positive Childhood Experiences and Adult Mental and Relational Health in a Statewide Sample: Associations Across Adverse Childhood Experiences Levels | JAMA Pediatrics.

To find out what positive childhood experiences you have, answer the following questions. How much or how often during your childhood did you:

1. feel able to talk to your family about feelings;
2. feel your family stood by you during difficult times;
3. enjoy participating in community traditions;
4. feel a sense of belonging in high school;
5. feel supported by friends;
6. have at least two non-parent adults who took genuine interest in you; and
7. feel safe and protected by an adult in your home.

“Fortunately, brains and lives are somewhat plastic. Resilience research shows that the appropriate integration of resilience factors — such as asking for help, developing trusting relationships, forming a positive attitude, listening to feelings — can help people improve their lives.”.

https://acestoohigh.com/got-your-ace-score/

“The strongest oak of the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun. It’s the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for its existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun”