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Archive for the ‘Child Abuse’ Category


The Truth and the Lies Behind QAnon: A Trauma Therapist Speaks

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The Truth and the Lies Behind QAnon: A Trauma Therapist Speaks

THE POLARITY

A vast majority of Republicans believe that QAnon is a patriotic source of information designed to liberate the world from the hands of sadistic pedophile networks and that the good guys are the Republican politicians who will spearhead this rescue operation.

A vast majority of Democrats do not believe in organized pedophile networks and believe that their leaders would definitely tell them if such a thing were going on in the world.

Both sides are convinced they are right. Neither side presents much convincing factual evidence to support the totality of their assertions.

Sadly, neither of these scenarios are true. How do I know? Because I am in the business of helping sex trafficked people understand their own histories and recover from unimaginable abuse. I am networked in with over 200 therapists who do the same kind of work I do around the world and have spent 25 years researching the underbelly world of mind controlled children who are used in sexual slavery, often starting in infancy, by organized networks of criminals.

WHAT IS THE REALITY?

Because the world of organized crime is so vast and highly networked, getting reliable statistics is extremely difficult. This is part of the problem. The gaps in reliable information get filled in with a mixture of propaganda and fantasy, leading to silly ideas such as that pizza parlors in Washington DC are the problem. Children can be trafficked anywhere. I have heard more stories about church basements than pizza parlors, but, also, why not pizza parlors? A child can be trafficked anywhere.

I have treated dozens of ritual abuse survivors, mind-controlled adult survivors of trafficking and victims of pedophile networks. The vast majority of these patients are sane, highly traumatized and eager to heal. They are surprisingly undramatic in their presentations most of the time due to the amount of trauma that they have endured. Some of them have won court cases against their abusers; some are still figuring out their history. I have also sought out dozens of hours of professional and peer consultation, been on an active listserv with a prominent professional organization and read dozens of books and articles including first person accounts from therapist survivors of these networks.

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM PRIMARY RELIABLE SOURCES

Pedophile networks are, in fact, extensive, organized and lead to the highest corridors of power all over the world.

QAnon has this right. However, no one party or group of people is responsible for or immune to this behavior. The famous saying, “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely” seems to be true in the world of child sex trafficking. Some of my clients have recognized and been triggered by their abusers from news broadcasts on television. Others have family members who are involved in highly prestigious institutions or the government or have been trained and trafficked by those people. And, yes, Hollywood is involved, but so are Ivy League colleges, the military, alphabet government agencies (e.g. CIA) and anywhere else that power and money comingle.

Children can be sold into networks in various ways.

Some children are given in exchange for positions of power or criminal immunity for pedophile relatives; some are born into intergenerational slavery; some vulnerable children are identified by networked neighbors, teachers, dentists or priests and “recruited”. In some cases, parents do not know what is happening to their kids. In other cases, the whole family has been creating mind controlled children for generations for purposes of power and control of society. Some of these families refer to themselves as “illuminati”, “satanic” or “masonic”. Some just want power and money.

Churches are deeply involved in networked pedophilia.

The famous Pace memorandum from the Mormon (LDS) church was allegedly buried by church elders when Bishop Pace, tasked with investigating allegations of widespread abuse, presented his shocking findings. The Catholic Church is filled with pedophile priests, as has been in the news. Many more church organizations than these famous examples are involved. The more fundamentalist they are, the more likely, it seems, that they have ties to systemic pedophilia, which makes sense when you think about how deeply invested fundamentalist systems and cults are in controlling their members.

Every region of the country is involved, and Indian reservations are especially vulnerable.

In my practice, I have had clients involved in networked pedophile groups from thirteen states and all sectors of the United States. Thirteen! If I add in reports from reliable colleagues that number easily triples. And activity is not confined to the US; I have also heard reliable reports from England, Australia, Switzerland and Canada. Indian reservations have had high rates of disappearing children for decades. I have had at least one client who was an eyewitness to the mass murder and trafficking of native children, and I have a colleague who is fighting this battle for the protection and recovery of trafficked people on a reservation right now! Of course, recently evidence has emerged in the media that indigenous children have been sold and trafficked for decades.

There seems to be a common “playbook” for the training of mind-controlled child sex slaves.

One year, I had three different clients from three different states report to me their conditioning to be confined in very small spaces (boxes) for long period of time as young children. They reported a coffin like container either in the house, or the woods, as part of a ceremony or not. Later they reported being drugged and trafficked in crates or similar small containers in boats, buses and in the back of military type Humvees as older children. It makes sense. As one client put it, “trafficked kids smell like urine and gasoline”. This conditioning of young children is too efficient, too consistent and too effective to be trial and error. Somebody or some group is training people to do this. There have been reliable reports of these trainers  using pseudonyms such as “Dr. Green” and “Dr. Black”.

The numbers are staggering.

 According to the FBI, about 400,000 children a year go missing in the United States. A child is abducted every 40 seconds. But those numbers are low. Why? They do not account for familial trafficking. Of all my clients over the years, only one ever came to court attention. None of my other clients were ever reported missing. I told one client that I had been hearing numbers like 1 in 100 people were trafficked and/or mind controlled. They scoffed and said, “well, maybe if you don’t count the sleepers”. (Sleepers meaning people who are mind controlled but have not yet been called up for action or are awake to their condition.) They thought it was easily three times that amount. They have clear memories of every single child in their public school in another state being taken out for abuse and conditioning starting in kindergarten.

You know someone connected to this world, and that’s why you don’t know.

People are terrified to think that these networks could touch their neighborhood, their church, their family. But they do. So many of us have ‘creepy neighbors’, a ‘funny uncle’, or ‘an inappropriate babysitter’. But it is too painful to live with a daily sense of unease; it creates too much cognitive dissonance and fear. So we go into denial. It is natural. Jennifer Freyd’s brilliant book, Blind to Betrayal, shows us how little we actually see of the worst of human nature around us.

HOW DOES QANON FIT INTO ALL THIS ?   

 I believe that QAnon is one of the most brilliant psychological operations in history. It operates with the classic Problem, Reaction, Solution method of behavioral shaping. Present a believable or even true problem: Pedophile networks are extensive and extend into government. Reaction: foment a reaction of fear, disgust and horror through sensationalization and weird details (pizza parlors). And then present the Solution. This is where the mind control aspect of QAnon reveals itself. Their solution is that their guy (Trump, or whoever they want in power) is on the side of good and will save people. The Solution is the biggest lie based on an earlier lie or suggestion that the networks exist only in one party or group of people.

This strategy works because we cannot bear the reality that both sides of the system may be “dirty”. Just as a child will fight to have at least one “good” parent, so will citizens fight to believe that their side (parent) is “good”. They will fight to the death for that belief in some cases. If both sides are involved, the world seems hopeless and bereft. We feel orphaned, just as we would if we found out that both of our parents were terrible people – an impossible realization for most people.

So, one side goes into denial about the problem (Democrats). And one side feels that their side will save humanity (Republicans) and identifies with the aggressor. Brilliant propaganda. But evil. And untrue.

WHAT IS THE ANSWER TO THIS HORRIBLE PROBLEM OF PERVASIVE ABUSE AND TRAFFICKING IN SOCIETY?

 You must do your own internal work and due diligence. Heal your own traumas and fears. People with unhealed traumas are extremely easy to mislead and manipulate. The sad truth is that people you love and admire could possibly be perpetrators, and your judgment about them may have initially been wrong. Be willing to change your mind! Surrender your tribalism and sense of rightness about your position while engaging a clear-eyed curiosity about horrible things in service to the truth. Be willing to accept what previous generations could not see and accept but do this without falling into despair and nihilism.

Moving through stages of shock, horror and grief has taken me, my colleagues and my clients a long time. It is the work needed to fully address the sad truth of humanity: that evil does and has always walked among us, that children need more protection than they get and that people addicted to money, sex and power are highly motivated to destroy other people’s lives.

IS THERE ANY GOOD NEWS HERE?

YES! What we know about we can heal. What we see, we can take action against. When we take back our defenses against this information (“pedo networks don’t exist” or “my side is the only good side”) we can JOIN TOGETHER! We need both wings of the bird to fly. Imagine what could happen if we all came together: Republicans and Democrats to fight this great evil in a clear-eyed way.  What if all the networks were stopped and psychopaths identified? What if all the children could be rescued and adult survivors got appropriate treatment? What might the future look like then?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




Five Unbearable Things I Want You to Know about Human Trafficking and Slavery

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Twenty-four years ago, my sister, author Lisa Pease, alerted me to the information on mind control that she kept encountering in her research. She said, “You are the therapist in the family. I don’t have time to research this; maybe you do”. I was skeptical of the ability to totally control another human being until I encountered the disclosures of trauma-based mind control. It was shocking. Pioneered in the Nazi concentration camps and continued after Project Paperclip had brought Nazi scientists to America there had been a deep and effective dive into gaining total control over human beings starting in early childhood or even later by government agencies and other interested parties. Immediately I realized that I had encountered some of these victims professionally, both as colleagues and as patients. I have spent the time since researching and treating survivors of what is called “sex trafficking” “mind control” “organized abuse” “ritual abuse” “cults” “mkultra” and other monikers, all of which are related to each other. For over ten years I have been a member of the special interest group, RAMCOA (ritual abuse, mind control, and organized abuse) under the auspices of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. In that time, I have given many talks nationally and internationally as well as speaking on a number of podcasts about this issue.  Although I am currently on medical leave the last few years of my practice have been largely populated with RAMCOA survivors. It is heavy work that requires a high level of skill.

 

The ‘training’ to become a human slave often begins in infancy and nearly always includes torture and ritual abuse.

 The human personality and mental structures of self form very early in life, largely before 3 years of age. The brain is exceedingly “plastic” in children; consider, for example, the relative ease at which kids can learn multiple languages, information which sticks in the brain for a lifetime. To gain control and mastery over an entire personality requires creating multiple compartments (alters or ANPs) and then handing the switching over to handlers. This requires extreme and prolonged torture, as well as extravagant rewards. The earlier handlers can start this process the easier it is, and they do, even before birth. This is a very sophisticated process where a computer like system is created to categorize different personalities and subpersonalities for different skill sets, memories, and behavioral programs, including ones that maintain the amnesia of the ‘front’ or ‘shell’ personality which is supposed to be very normal appearing. For clinicians this means that these people have a muddled dissociative picture. They appear to be more OSDD (Otherwise Specified Dissociative Disorder) than DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder). According to several of my clients, assets that appear as multiples are considered ‘programming failures’. Switching of personalities is something that is very subtle and supposed to happen ‘behind the scenes’ in response to subtle cues given by handlers in person, by media or by preprogramming. For the average therapist and citizen well programmed children and adults are nearly impossible to casually detect. I usually end up seeing somebody in whom programming has gone sideways through handler error causing severe psychological damage or because something happened which caused the victim to exert superhuman effort to extricate themselves.

 

Children can be sold into slavery before they are born, after they are born and sometimes a couple of generations earlier. They are used repeatedly for the rest of their lives unless they escape.

 The Jason Bourne conclusion, that people choose this, is a myth. People do not sign up for mind control or trafficking or being a super soldier. Most of the time they are born into it. I have had some clients whose families appear to have been given government favors in exchange for surrendering them to these programs. In other cases, pedophiles have been given immunity in exchange for children. Sometimes the families are literally paid money, as was written about in therapist and survivor Wendy Hoffman’s autobiography, The Enslaved Queen: A Memoir About Electricity and Mind Control (2019). I have had clients who were born into ‘illuminati’ and/or masonic families where this kind of conditioning is business as usual for the family members, who are then groomed for wealth and power. Although high achieving and well to do, the level of dysfunction in these families is off the charts.

 

Trafficked people may live apparently normal lives or lives of extreme dysfunction. You know some of them.

 Reliable numbers are hard to come by because 1) the networks of enslaved people and their handlers extend to the media, science and government who will not report them; 2) many trafficked people are not awake to their plight yet – they are too dissociative, and 3) the masterminds go to great lengths to hide their tracks, and they are very, very good at it. Many of my colleagues give a rough estimate based on decades at work that at least 1% of people in the USA are trafficked through extreme behavioral conditioning. I said this to one of my clients and they actually laughed, “1 percent?! Well, maybe if you are not talking about the sleepers (people who have been conditioned but not called up into use). Everybody in my public school class was taken out for conditioning”. This client was believable. They were not given to histrionics or exaggeration and had a very high IQ, as most of these people do.

I have a colleague who believes we are all screened for mind control usefulness at a young age; she has a longer time in this field than even I do. I do not know if that could possibly be true, although I am now willing to entertain many possibilities that I used to not entertain. I do know that if 1 in a 100 people have this history, you have encountered them. If it is 1 in 30, you have sat in classes with them, know them, and possibly have them as close friends. Even if, against all odds, they are aware of their history they are VERY unlikely to tell anybody except their therapist and/or their partner. Many people have come to me because they know their therapist cannot handle their history and/or will not believe them.

 

Trafficking and mind control (behavioral) networks are extensive and are based in white supremacy. They are in every state and include members inside of the cultural institutions that are supposed to protect citizens: police departments, hospitals, justice departments and governments.

I did not know this for a long time. I just kept following the trails of puzzle pieces. Those pieces were always in plain sight. Everyone in child abuse protection knows about those few judges that just will not give a pedophile a meaningful sentence. They know who they are, but not why they are doing this and who they are connected to. Everyone in the business knows that there are good cops, but also bad ones who are not willing to believe or follow up on child abuse cases involving ritual abuse. And then there is the former False Memory Syndrome Foundation which folded at the end of 2019.  This apparent CIA op (there were at least 3 known CIA operatives on the board) hurt a lot of therapists and clients. They were very successful in infiltrating the media to such an extent that it seems unlikely they were able to do that without help from networks. I have many colleagues still recovering from the “memory wars” that were waged on therapists and their clients in courtrooms all across this country (fortunately I was having babies at that time).

I have had clients from every part of this country. They have disclosed abuse and conditioning in: military bases, churches (Mormon and Catholic figure predominantly), schools, neighbor’s houses, dental offices, remote estates, and mental institutions. Colleagues have fleshed out some of these networks and connections. We know that the CIA and other alphabet agencies had a big hand in developing sophisticated mind control techniques in league with major medical institutions and prominent universities around the country and in Canada. (For more on the CIA’s involvement I recommend my sister’s book A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, 2018.)

Eventually my clients and colleagues begin talking about white supremacy and how viciously white supremacist the abusers were. They start to draw connections to the Masons, the Mormons, the Illuminati and local government systems. They can’t get records. They can’t find records. They are afraid to talk to family.

What really concerns me about the Freemasons is how pervasive yet quiet they are. My family and I have RV’d all over thousands of miles of the Western United States. I have yet to find the town that is too small for a prominent Masonic Hall. Think about it – an all male, mostly all white group of individuals that are everywhere and yet totally secret. (And just in case you know a Mason or are a Mason, only certain people from certain levels are let in on the most nefarious parts of the organization. The rest of the people just have a good bonding and educational experience.) From the point of view of systems theory, if a system is “as sick as its secrets” then the Freemasons are catastrophically ill.

There is plenty of evidence of widespread collusion, conspiracy and control. Research MKUltra. Look up Svali Speaks. Or just start to open your eyes to the patterns around you. Why can cops kill black people with so much impunity and stare in the camera while they do it? Look at Epstein. This is HARD to look at, harder than systemic racism (which it includes) and that is plenty hard. Hard because we cannot believe the wool has been pulled that far over our eyes and hard because the evidence is almost unreadable. Hard because people who believe in collusion are called ‘conspiracy theorists’ – in itself a term used by the CIA to discredit observers. Hard now, because people who see these patterns tend to be conservatives and Republicans so liberals dismiss them. In the 1970s the conspiracy observers were Democrats. Hard because you are going to see some people that you really like or love emerge as part of this nefarious system. Some of that knowledge comes from the primary source of my clients, but there are plenty of other resources for information including many autobiographies, books, podcasts and websites. Lastly, it is hard because it is overwhelming and once you really see the scope of it, you cannot unsee it, and it is easy to lose hope. DON’T LOSE HOPE! Lots of good is happening. But first, we have to deal with this mess.

 

All trafficked people have dissociative disorders that are exceedingly difficult to treat, and most therapists do not have the first clue about doing this work.

 I have trained and supervised clinicians for decades. Almost no therapist comes out of school with a good understanding of dissociation. Thanks to the False Memory Foundation many had their heads spun around by disinformation as did their supervisors. Many clinicians are still ignorant to the reality of organized abuse!  There are only a few of us who want to and can do this work long term. It is arduous and there is little reward for it other than seeing people get free and healthy (which is amazing!). I have had clients dumped in my lap by other clinicians in a very inappropriate way because the therapist panicked or didn’t care enough to terminate professionally. I have had people move to this state just to work with me. Because there are few good options out there. Not much more to say about this other than…I and my colleagues are working on bringing this consciousness to general therapy practice.

If you made it this far in reading, I am truly grateful that you are considering this information. Take care of yourself; a better day is coming.




Health Care Providers: How to Welcome and Respond to Trauma Disclosure

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TMIMy husband, a cardiologist, and I recently spoke to a group of physicians about how heart disease is caused by traumatic stress and also causes it. Afterwards, one family practice doc asked me, “I never know what to say when patients tell me their traumas.”

I realized that many doctors and therapists, for that matter, were trained in an era before abuse was acknowledged, before trauma and PTSD were common household words (in some places they still are not).

So I’ve compiled a short list of do’s and don’t’s when answering a client that discloses a disturbing history of trauma or a traumatic event.

Do:

~ Routinely administer a screening questionnaire for abuse in your intake forms. You can use the ACE questionnaire or website or come up with your own boxes to check off (e.g. history of physical abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, neglect, veteran etc.) Clients with a very high ACEs score will have more health problems as they age.

~ Answer with a sympathetic and simple affirming response such as:

“I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“ That is a terrible thing to have to go through.”
“You must really be suffering a lot (if the event is currently affecting the client).”

If your client’s disclosure is met with a stony or panicked silence they will leave feeling very guilty, damaged, enraged or all three. Abuse has a lot of shame associated with it. Please do not reinforce this by failing to respond appropriately.

~ Maintain eye contact with a soft gaze. Our clients often do not feel seen or like others really want to see them and their suffering. Eyes are “the windows of the soul” and the client really needs to see that you are with them in taking this great risk of disclosure. We know that people are present to us and with us when they look into our eyes.

~ Get yourself grounded in that moment. Take a deep breath and take a moment to really absorb what your client just said to you.

Some of us providers have our own trauma histories and the older we are the more likely that is. If we dissociate or ‘check out’ our client will definitely notice and probably assign the worst possible meaning to our behavior such as: “they don’t really care about me”; “they are just collecting their paycheck”; “they think I’m crazy”. Our traumatized clients already have those feelings, and they respond to any perceived confirmation of those thoughts with panic and/or rage. This panic/rage can be expressed outwardly in your office as difficult behavior or as self-harm when they go home.

~ Ask for more details – especially about how this is affecting the patient in their body right now. It is a universal truth that our clients will only tell us what we are ready to hear. They do not want to ‘injure’ us with sordid details and will often leave out important aspects of their traumas. Occasionally a client will disclose too much in a kind of verbal diarrhea manner; in those cases it is OK to gently contain the discussion and take the necessary action for that client to get help.

~ Assess for current safety and contact the correct agencies as a mandated reporter. You can never overreport elder abuse or child abuse. As a medical social work supervisor I am always surprised about how conflicted medical staff are about filing reports and how little the laws are understood and followed. The state is responsible for determining whether abuse is happening or not. Most medical providers are not trained to make those screening decisions. Hence the law that says you are a mandated reporter to file if abuse is suspected. And, yes, that means everyone on your team who has a contact with the patient. It is extremely common for abuse victims to divide up what they tell to different people. There is no way for agencies to file as a single entity. If a doctor, a nurse and a social worker talk to this person and get any kind of disclosure they ALL are legally obligated to file a report. Our clients almost never call disclosure hotlines themselves. Sometimes they don’t understand that what is happening is reportable. Child and adult lives depend on us doing our jobs. The states do a very good job of maintaining confidentiality about who said what.

~ Refer! to the appropriate provider. Have a list of trusted mental health providers in your office. Steer your client towards the Psychology Today referral website which is excellent and widely used by practitioners.

Do Not:

~ Panic. Forewarned is forearmed. Educate yourself about the types of abuse in your community and the populations you serve. If you are expecting to hear these types of disclosures (and why shouldn’t you?) your clients will have an easier time telling and you will have an easier time hearing. I have heard about some truly horrendous and damaging responses from both therapists and doctors who were not ready to hear an abuse disclosure. One damaging response can put off a patient’s healing for years or forever.

~ Promise to keep a dangerous secret. A lot of patients will ask us to keep what they tell us confidential before they want to disclose anything. Don’t paint yourself into a corner. When my patients ask me to keep their secrets, I always reply that it depends on what kind of secret they have and explain my role as a mandated reporter. That gives them more control on what they want to disclose.

~ Ignore a disclosure. Yes, I know you have less time to do more work than at any other time in your career. Working correctly with a disclosure does not have to take a great deal of time. Our patients are pretty savvy. They know we have busy schedules and lives, and they do too. The vast majority of people who disclose will not abuse the privilege. If they do, you can still be kind and containing at the same time. Or you can ask them to schedule a longer appointment soon for a full trauma assessment (something I hope to be coming soon to a medical and psychiatric clinic near you). Being busy is no excuse for being uncaring. It’s not business; it’s personal.

~ Forget to take care of yourself. Know your community population. If you are in low income, high crime area, your entire population may be filled with trauma. Taking a trauma informed approach to your practice could be the best thing you ever do for you and can avoid needless complaints and confrontations. Get therapy if you need it (and who doesn’t?). Do your own sympathetic downregulating exercises: yoga, tai chi, meditation, exercise, breathwork. The less you care for yourself and your own suffering, the less you will want to help anyone else.

There, that wasn’t so hard was it?! If you need more in-depth assistance I offer trauma-informed consultations for health care professionals, and I travel!

Be well!




Why Dylan Farrow’s Disclosure Matters

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“It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator…All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.” 

                                                                                                ~ Judith Herman

 From 1989-1993 I worked in Massachusetts for the Child-At-Risk Hotline at Judge Baker Children’s Center, in the Longwood Medical Area.  We covered the entire state after hours for reports of suspected child abuse and neglect when the departments of investigation were closed for the day and on weekends.  I was a supervisor, which meant that every single suspected case of abuse or neglect was “run by” me.  With the screener’s help I determined whether it was a case that was false, probably true or so emergently true that we had to take action that very shift.

 Children’s lives and well-being hung in the balance so we were very highly trained and conscientious in our work.  Over that period I estimate that I heard somewhere around 15,000 stories of child abuse.  I developed a very good BS detector.

 Like many I had heard vague allegations about Dylan Farrow when she was a child, but it was hard to know what to think and why the case had not been prosecuted.

This week’s publication of her letter to the New York Times has changed all that for me.  

Since it was published last week there has been a firestorm of responses and conversations popping up all over social media, some helpful and others not so much.

As a child abuse prevention professional and a treater of many adult victims of childhood trauma I would like to add my perspective.  I believe Dylan.  Her story is coherent, believable and internally consistent.

Let’s look at the list of secondary gains that each side gets from lying.  For Woody and Dylan there are reasons to lie and reasons to tell the truth.  There are also many reasons not to.

Dylan Lies:

 Pros:                                                                          Cons:

She gets attention in the press.                           She and her family is vilified in the media.

She gets people to feel sorry for her                   Her credibility is forever tarnished

                                                                                   in the eyes of friends, employers, etc.

She’s going for a book or movie deal?               Her accused is a Hollywood insider.

 

                                                                                  She could be sued for defamation.

 Maybe I lack imagination but I’m already out of reasons for her to lie about this.  Usually when people tell big lies there is a big positive payoff.  I don’t see it here. Do you?  The Cons are overwhelmingly negative and threaten to ruin her life.  Just to be a somebody in the press? There are easier ways.  OK, let’s look at the other side.

 Woody Lies:

 Pros                                                                           Cons

He keeps making movies                                     He gets a clean conscience (if he’s not

                                                                                    a sociopath)

He keeps all his money                                         He may need to pay a lot of money in a

                                                                                    lawsuit

 

People keep loving him and his work                 People will be revulsed by him and his work

 

He keeps his relationships                                     He loses friends and business contacts

The Romans used to ask an important question, Qui Bono?  Who benefits here?  Dylan suffers more by lying than she gains.  Woody suffers more by telling the truth by far.  Lying is in his best interest as it is in the case of most perpetrators.  Even if we look at just dollars and profit motive, Dylan stands to lose more than she gains by lying where the opposite is true with Woody.  It is incredibly hard to win lawsuits against perpetrators, especially when there was no original conviction.

But what about the argument her mother made her do it by “implanting” memories. Oh please!  Maybe (maybe!!! although I’ve never seen it in decades of practice) a seven year old could be persuaded.  But an adult knows better.  Mind control is possible, but it requires years of skilled training to do and the only experts in the world are black ops top secret level psy military people who do not publish manuals.  Occam’s razor suggests that this argument is full of giant holes.  Like smoke and fire, reports of abuse almost always coincide with actual abuse!

As for Woody, well we already know him as a man with exceedingly poor boundaries and someone who acts without considering the consequences for those around him by marrying his long-term partner, Mia’s teenaged daughter. Everyone who “testified” for him at the awards show (wasn’t that strange) talked about all the roles he had written for women, not anything about his character.  I had the sense that the women supposedly speaking on his behalf were really speaking on their own interests.  But having said that perps are exceedingly good at getting people to believe them. And the longer the friendship, the harder to see the perp inside the man.

If you look at the Herman quote above you will see why.  I have written in The Trauma Tool Kit how the mind wants to avoid material it sees as threatening to its own sense of security and comfort.  Contemplating that your best loved films were created by a monster creates a level of cognitive dissonance that most people cannot handle.

But, you see, we must.  Because this is one story among millions.  Every day there are victims who tell the truth and are shut out of their families because the perpetrator is believed.  Because the people they tell will not or cannot tolerate a change in perspective and a re-ordering of their own lives and view of reality.

Our culture is sick.  I agree with the neo-feminists who talk of the ‘rape culture’ in which we live.  All over the world from time out of mind women and children have been raped, dominated and treated like property. Men have relied on each other to maintain power, to satisfy their lusts and desires and do what they want. Just because they can.  For humanity to evolve, this has to end.  That means TELLING THE TRUTH, no matter how unpleasant or personally uncomfortable that makes us.  After all, it could be your daughter or son, neighbor, friend or cousin who is the next victim.

Only then will the real healing begin for individuals and society as whole.

As for me, I’m breaking up with Woody and all his films.  I wish Dylan a sense of wholeness, peace and healing for her future. She has suffered enough.

 

 

 







The Root of Violence: Solutions for a Beleaguered World

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When I was in high school and the world’s population was at about 4 billion, I saw a video about an experiment in rat overcrowding. The researchers showed very clearly that up until a certain population the rats were civil, harmonious and happy. When they became overcrowded, the rats turned on each other and a cycle of violence began. I remembered wondering where that tipping point was for humanity.

Today the world’s population stands at about 7 billion, ready to top 8 billion in the next decade. I cannot help but wonder if the world is getting too crowded to maintain civil societies. At least in the old models.

Fortunately, we are not rats. We are human beings with a plethora of ingenious human tools at our disposal, the foremost being a thinking, self-reflective brain. We can not only reshape our environment, we can also reshape our bodies, personalities and even our own brains.

Clearly, it is time to evolve.

What would it take to stop the violence?

Currently it is popular to blame religion for violence. But I don’t buy it. Historically, nationalism was blamed for wars. But we didn’t abolish nations, nor could we. Anymore than we can abolish religion. The search for God and religion seems to be hardwired into the very fabric of humanity. And that’s potentially a good thing. Innumerable hospitals, orphanages, and other charitable endeavors have been supported by large religious bodies.

Look, I’m a therapist. I’ve spent a lifetime peering into the hidden mechanisms of human consciousness. I’ve worked with victims and perpetrators of violence, religious, atheist, you name it.

And the root of violence is pretty simple. The recipe is this: take a human ego, prone to intense biological impulses like sex and aggression, add a dose of rejection, violence, or trauma and withhold empathy, attachment and kindness. Don’t forget to add the testosterone, or all that violence will turn inwards. This is the basic formula; there are of course endless ways to “spice” things up. Anything that disinhibits a human helps: drugs, a charismatic leader, any kind of reward real or imagined, spiritual or material. You get the picture.

When the world becomes an overall less kinder place to be, when governments exist to punish and control rather than support, when adults are too busy trying to survive than to connect, when children are subjected to all manner of abuse growing up, when basic needs are withheld (food, shelter, education), then we can be sure the rise of violence is around the corner.
My little piece of contribution centers around psychological trauma. Like the tipping point for rat populations, I believe that there is a tipping point for the number of citizens with untreated abuse and trauma issues that starts to unravel societies and the fabric of civilization gets weak, gauzy and prone to tears.

That is why I wrote The Trauma Tool Kit: Healing PTSD From the Inside Out. But one book is not enough to stem the tide.

If we want to turn this around we need the biggest investment in our humanity the world has ever seen.

Our healthcare system is broke.
Out educational system is broke.
Our national aggression is disproportionately funded.
PTSD is a national (and global) epidemic.
Our TV and media is a wasteland of violence, sex and empty, puerile stories aimed at the basest nature of humans.
Adults can’t find meaningful work or time to connect.
Children can’t get their emotional needs met so they are turning to early sex, drugs, computers and violent videogames.

Like the global climate crisis we are in, we are in a crisis of our own humanity.

We need to ask ourselves: what does it mean to be human? Are we living lifestyles that are in alignment with our values and ideals, or have we given up?

The answers are simple. Accomplishing them requires insight, wisdom and the will of the people.

1) Convert from a permanent wartime economy to a peace economy. Stop trying to control the world and get back to taking care of American citizens.
2) Reinstate the important status of mothers in the world by funding them to stay home with their children as needed. Working mothers is a redundant, and obnoxious term. We need to recognize that all mothers are, by definition, working.
3) Stop projecting our own internal demons onto other groups: immigrants, “terrorists”, “dirty hippies”, whatever. And affirm the dignity of all human beings, the vast majority of whom merely seek to be happy.
4) Reign in the vast greed industries and interests in Washington.
5) Recognize that only people are people. Corporations are sociopathic entities.
6) Fund a single payer healthcare system and come into the 21st century.
7) Throw out the educational dictates of the last 20 years and create sound educational ideas that really engage students and teachers in learning in the new millennium.
8) Turn off your TV. Or at least have enforced rules about usage .
9) Heal your traumas. Help yourself.
10) Recognize that your children, friends and neighbors may be struggling quietly and desperately in need of help. Help them.
11) Spend more time with your kids. Quality is not enough. Quantity is also required for healthy kids. Don’t let computers and TV parent.
12) Create community events for connection. Host a potluck once/month. Get involved. Talk to your neighbors. Get over your fear of the ‘other’.
13) MEDITATE. Rats can’t meditate, we can. If we all just calmed down and healed our own brains, it would be enough.

OK, then. We do have choices. It’s either us or no one. We can cower in fear waiting for the next attack, the next screw gone loose, or we can start changing our communities here and now.

I vote for now. I’ll go meditate on it, and then I will act.




Healing Together With An Infinite Mind

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HT_logo_HPI just returned from my favorite conference of the year, the Healing Together Conference put on by Infinite Mind.  Infinite Mind is a group of people with DID, which is Dissociative Identity Disorder.  You might know it better as Multiple Personality Disorder.

Why is this my favorite conference?  Many reasons.  This group of people who suffer from DID and those who support and/or treat them are the most dedicated, open and knowledgeable group I have been involved with.  There is no lying, no minimization, no disinformation.  Pain is acknowledged but not dwelt on. Jaime Pollock, the main organizer, is known for her organizational skills, her comedic timing and her immense sensitivity to the suffering of others.  She is completely open about her own journey, but never triggering.  There is an art room and a quiet grounding room with lots of pillows and blankets with student psychology interns available to help as needed.

Remember the movie Sybil?  Well, the real Sybil, Shirley Mason painted her way through her treatment.  There was a beautiful and moving exhibit of some of her paintings during the conference.  Despite the recent book questioning her diagnosis, most people who knew her, and most specialists believe, she was, in fact, DID.  The pictures in this article are some of hers.  Some facts about them: she often painted telephone poles, sail boats (to sail away from her pain?) and yellow, she said, was the color of her mother’s screaming.

Another famous multiple, Truddi Chase, wrote the runaway best seller When Rabbit Howls.  Her daughter, Kari, gave a very moving account of what it was to be the daughter of a multiple growing up.  It was very clear that a distant, mean father was much more of a liability to a growing child than a mother with DID.  Another interesting presentation was a mother-daughter pair from England discussing the same topic.  Carol, who only “discovered” her DID later in life brought some remarkable videos of herself in other personality states (called ‘alters’ or ‘parts’).  Her daughter with much patience and humor described a mother who often could not remember what she had said five minutes ago, but she was fun to play with!  They shared a very dramatic and, at times,  journey of healing which continues today.

On a more serious note, the mental health system in England and other places is severely lacking and there is much international work to be done on educating practitioners not only about the reality of DID, but how to work effectively on integrating painful memories.

Here are a few important facts to know about people with DID:

 1)   DID begins at an early age, usually before 7 but is often not diagnosed until later in life.

2)   DID is always the result of severe and prolonged trauma.  There has to be immense force involved to shatter a mind.

3)   Most people with DID are law-abiding and peaceful people who suffer from extreme internal torment.

4)   Many people with DID grow up to be loving (if somewhat dysfunctional) parents.

5)   Children of parents with DID can thrive, especially with support from the community.

6)   People with DID hold jobs in all sectors of society.  They are preschool teachers, lawyers, police officers, writers, hospice workers, etc.

7)   You cannot tell if someone has DID by looking at them.

8)   With appropriate treatment people can integrate fully and heal from DID and their traumatic histories that were the cause of their problems.

9)   People with DID almost always have problems with losing time.  Often people think they are pathological liars because different alters give different information. Over time they learn how to compensate for these difficulties.

10)  DID is fairly prevalent.  It is estimated that  1 out of 100 people in the USA suffer from DID, and it is found in every country.

 I had the privilege of giving trauma informed yoga classes in the morning and presenting two workshops: one on Yogic Modalities For Healing From PTSD and one on The Effects of Abuse and Trauma on Developing Children. The audiences were engaged, and responsive.  

 If you are a therapist, a physician, someone suffering from DID or you know someone with DID I would highly recommend this yearly conference as a place to learn, to laugh and to commiserate with a group of compassionate and knowledgeable people. It is held in Orlando, Florida every year in late winter.  I feel very grateful to be involved with this amazing group.

 




Find Your ACE Score

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Last year I posted about the largest study you’ve never heard of : the Adverse Childhood Events Study.  ACE has shown by using over 17000 participants data over several years that the more adverse childhood event categories you’ve been exposed to, the higher your chance of illness, obesity, mental problems, and socioeconomic ills.  You do not have to have full blown PTSD to be exposed to these risks.   People with the highest scores died, on average, 20 years sooner than people with the lowest scores.  The good news is that getting treatment and adopting healthy lifestyle behaviors can mitigate your risk.

What is your risk?  Take the questionnaire below:

 

Finding Your ACE Score While you were growing up, during your first 18 years of life:

1. Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you?

or

Act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?
Yes No If yes enter 1

2. Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Push, grab, slap, or throw something at you?

or
Ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?

Yes No If yes enter 1

3. Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever…
Touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way?

or

Attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you?
Yes No If yes enter 1

4. Did you often or very often feel that …
No one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special?

or

________

________

________

Your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other? Yes No If yes enter 1 ________

5. Did you often or very often feel that …
You didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you?

or

Your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it?

Yes No If yes enter 1 ________

6. Were your parents ever separated or divorced?
Yes No If yes enter 1 ________

7. Was your mother or stepmother:
Often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her?

or
Sometimes, often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard?

or
Ever repeatedly hit at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife?

Yes No If yes enter 1 ________

8. Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic or who used street drugs? Yes No If yes enter 1 ________

9. Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide?

Yes No If yes enter 1 _______

10. Did a household member go to prison? Yes No If yes enter 1 _______

Now add up your Yes scores:  ___________

For more information go to www.acestudy.org.

 




The Relevance of Mind Control and Mass Shootings

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At least one of the recent spate of murderous shooting rampages show evidence of high level mind control of the perpetrator. The Aurora shooter, James Holmes is reported to have told another inmate that he thought he was in a video game at the time of the shooting and that he had been programmed and rehearsed to complete the shooting at the movie theater.

Crazy, you say?

Well many therapists, many of my colleagues have treated patients with credible stories of mind control perpetrated by factions within the US and other governments. These techniques were developed and honed in the Nazi death camps. Those “technologies” were then imported along with clandestine Nazi scientists into the USA through the infamous Project Paperclip program. Scientists have been perfecting these techniques for decades beginning with the famous MKUltra program and others such as Projects Monarch and Bluebird. These programs are well documented by releases under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Unfortunately under the Bush administration many previously released documents were reclassified or redacted to the point of illegibility. Nevertheless copies remain in the hands of a few.These programs were publicly discontinued several decades ago, but the research and the programming has continued clandestinely under ultra secret black ops programs.

I have heard disclosures from prominent therapists and psychiatrists, one of whom revealed in a public workshop that some of his clients could trace their programming back to “scientist and program” and that he had shared a hallway with Martin K. Orne who used to brag about his ability to make people do anything he wanted. (Orne has sat on the famous and fraudulent False Memory Foundation and is implicated in the MKUltra programs of the 1970s).

Any time therapists and their clients have tried to step forward with this information we have been threatened, attacked and sometimes had our licenses revoked. Therapists have also been harassed with reports of mutilated animals being left at their houses and even break-ins. There has been a profound media silence in the United States about such matters even while Canada publicized a national case of successfully suing and winning a settlement with the CIA over the mind control practices executed in that country.

Today a colleague whom I respect highly sent out a release about this article on her blog about why therapists have not been credible in the media and the attacks to which we have been regularly subjected on behalf of our clients.

I hope you will take a moment to read it, but I must warn you that if this information is new to you or if you have been a victim of these programs, you will find it highly disturbing.

If you want answers and want things to really change you must educate yourself on the unthinkable. These programs must be exposed and disbanded and the thousands of citizens subjected to them require healing apace.

You can find the article here:

Common Forms of Misinformation and Tactics of Disinformation about Psychotherapy for Trauma Originating in Ritual Abuse and Mind Control by Ellen Lacter, Ph.D.




ACE (Adverse Childhood Events): The Most Important Trauma Study You’ve Never Heard About

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In order to understand why his obesity patients were dropping out of a successful weight loss program, Dr. Vincent Felitti dived into their medical records and interviews for clues. What he found launched a several year study that has enrolled more than 17,000 people. These patients were talking about incest, abuse and neglect, extreme adversity in their childhoods.

The Centers for Disease Control and Dr. Felitti with Kaiser Permanente launched a study to look at adverse childhood events and their effect on health and longevity over the lifespan. 

What is an adverse childhood event? For the purposes of the study it is:

– sexual abuse 
– physical abuse
– emotional abuse
– physical neglect
– emotional neglect
– a home where the mother was treated violently
– substance abuse in the home
– mental illness in the home
– parental separation or divorce
– one or more parents imprisoned

Count up the categories that apply to you. That gives you your ACE score. Anything above 4 predisposes people to substance abuse, dysfunction and health issues among other things. People with the highest scores died on average 20 years earlier than people with low ACE scores. (For more information about the mechanisms of these effects see my earlier blog posts on the HPA Axis.)

You can check out more information about the study here. Highly recommended reading for everyone: those of us who suffered difficult childhoods, caregivers, treaters and public policy setters.

This can feel overwhelming as we delve into the truth. The good news is that we are beginning to finally come to terms with the widespread effects of trauma and PTSD and the need to heal from it!




Trauma and Attachment

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Here’s a little known fact about trauma: an experience of extreme stress or trauma always ruptures a sense of connection and secure attachment in the world. 

What do I mean by that?

The world and our sense of safety and connection in it profoundly altered by the sense of disconnection. This makes healing from trauma a doubly hard endeavor.

Here are some examples of common traumas and the ruptured attachment:

Rape: strangers, your own judgment, even a whole gender (men, usually).

War: commanding officers, countries, your own country, people of other races

Child Abuse: authority figures, intimate relationships, justice system, sense of self

Natural Disaster: God, nature, government (if inadequate response)

Car Accidents: other drivers, own judgment, motor vehicles

Major Medical Illness: body, medical system (if inadequate), society (if not able to get insurance or help due to finances)

There are, of course, many other kinds of trauma and endless variations on disrupted attachment and connection depending on the experience involved.

All victims of traumas naturally experience a questioning of and sense of separation from self. Most end up having some sort of spiritual crisis in that their attachment to a higher power is called into question.

Without feeling secure in the world it’s easy to become lost and not know where to turn to for help when you need it the most. Therapists often underestimate the damage done by rupture of secure attachment in the midst of crisis, and patients often end up feeling angry, guilty and paralyzed. 

It is important to not pathologize these responses but to see them as a normal conditioned response to trauma and extreme stress. 

So, easy does it. When you are ready, sit down and think about areas of mistrust that result directly from your trauma. Be good to yourself today!




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