Enlightened Choices Newsletter for Women's Trauma Issues - From WIIT - The Women's Institute for Incorporation Therapy - Offering women's treatment programs for acute symptoms of psychological trauma including depression, bipolar, borderline personality, child abuse, sex abuse, trauma, survivor, dissociative disorder, PTSD, multiple personality, D.I.D., ritual abuse, incest and other trauma issues.

The journey you are beginning or continuing is often confusing and stressful. As you heal from abuse you can expect to feel overwhelmed at times. In fact, you may feel as if you always feel overwhelmed. After all, you are striving to accomplish changes in all areas of your life—thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Those old thoughts, feelings, and behaviors will be stirred up constantly. Powerlessness, fear, rage, sadness and grief will all be brought to the surface as you continue your growth. Naturally you will have times of crisis. But still these crisis periods will feel much more manageable, much more controllable, and much more temporary than they have before. The key to working with these crisis periods is to be prepared. To be prepared to cope and move through them safely you need a plan. What follows is a quick guide to preparing a plan to identify and manage these periods in your life.

The steps are meant to enable you to stay in control and to stay powerful throughout the process even when you may feel out of control and powerless. The steps are arranged in two stages: safety and processing. The safety stage includes short term, immediate coping strategies. The processing stage marks the beginning of healing and moving on. It includes long term, deeper coping strategies and skills.

Stage 1: Safety

Begin by exploring the process leading up to a crisis situation. What are the signs you can see that indicate a crisis situation is developing? These are the signs you sometimes miss. Ask others around you to help you make note of these signs. Beginning with the first noticeable sign, start to list steps you can take to stop the process. An example is: one of the first steps in the crisis development is isolation, make sure that you do not isolate. The first step to counteract this would be to get someone with you or go to someone for company. This is "List 1" and it should be the first part of your action plan to stop the crisis process. Working through this with your therapist, friends, and family is a good way to include as much as possible.

Include on this list things you can do to comfort yourself. Make them simple things that address all senses—touch, smell, hearing, seeing—at one time. Some examples are: listening to classical music or a relaxation tape; making a cup of chamomile tea; putting a cool washcloth on your head; curl up in warm, cozy blankets; taking a hot bath; doing something simple like wash dishes; and, breathe.

Often, the worse you feel the harder it is to reach out to others. The negative tapes you hear inside continue to play, your sense of self becomes tenacious and you begin to judge and criticize yourself, "Who would even want to talk to me?" "No one cares about me." "I'm not important" or "it's not important." This is the time for action. Reach out. When you're not in crisis you need to develop relationships with others who can respond. Now is the time to ask them for help to keep safe.

Take the time to list the names and numbers of those in your support system. This will give you a reference for the times you need to call on them. Even calling and hearing a friend's voice on the answering machine and leaving a message can keep you going, if you acted quickly enough. This is "List 2."

This list needs to be thorough. Include supportive friends, family, group members, twelve-step sponsors, therapists, and others on your recovery journey. When you call others for the support, what you say and do is important. Expectations that others are going to rescue you or rush to you will often leave you feeling neglected and ignored. Calling and telling someone what is wrong and what you are not doing just frustrates their attempts to make suggestions or offer alternatives. When you call be sure to have already attempted some of the alternatives on List 1. Be able to talk about the signs and what you have done to change the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. By communicating in this manner, you are taking responsibility for making the changes and asking others for suggestions and support as you make the changes.

If you have been working on making changes, the suicide or self harm option should be moving down your list of options. Make a contract with yourself to utilize all the skills you are learning and the lists you are making now. The intensity of making these changes and processing thoughts, feelings, and behaviors may continue to cause intrusive suicidal thoughts. Contracts with yourself, your therapist , your partner, and a friend will help to encourage you to utilize your alternatives. Write out a plan for keeping yourself alive if suicidal thoughts intrude in your healing process. List what you will and will not do. Identify and explore your history with suicide attempts and what resources you have, you need, and how to get them as part of the plan.

When you are in a crisis stage it is important to simplify your life. You are concentrating on maintaining safety and therefore may not be able to attend to as many different life commitments and demands as before. This is temporary. Don't expect to be as productive, to have as much energy or to maintain your normal schedule. Not accepting this and continuing to maintain a normal schedule is a fight against self. Take care of self. Make a list of the things you are responsible for (List 3). Include everything—family responsibilities, work responsibilities, financial responsibilities, relationship responsibilities, and others. When you have completed the list, go back over it and identify the things that are absolutely essential. Are there things that can be put on hold for a short time? Are there things that can be eliminated, short or long term? Identify these items and develop three parts to the list.

The last list (list 4) is a list of things in your life that give you hope. This may be the hardest. You have worked hard on this journey and have made changes. The ability to recognize these changes and the resulting effect on your life is part of healing. These crisis intrusions are part of the changing you, not a permanent statement of who you are. Refer to this list often during the crisis.

Make these lists a permanent part of your life, changing them as needed to reflect where you are on the journey. Keep them with you at home, at work, visiting, on vacation, in the car, and any place where you can reach for them at the first sign of old behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. Others can be supportive and offer alternatives but the responsibility for your safety ultimately belongs to you. Prepare to meet the challenges of the healing process by putting in place a plan for safety.

In the next issue, I will cover Stage 2—Processing.

Personal Notes:

This month I am going to stray from my normal style of writing and share myself with y'all. Recently I have been traveling around the state presenting the program and its concepts. I am fortunate to have the opportunity to present, something that is very dear to me, to other professionals.

There were times when I was met with confusion and disbelief during those early years. At that point, long-term results were only an idea, a theory, a dream. The work and traveling was long and lonely. Each year more and more women have graduated from WIIT into their recovery. Incorporation theory is nearing it's seventh year.

On this most recent speaking tour I have encountered a marvelous experience time after time. I see that there are increasing numbers of butterflies out in the audience. Many alumni have chosen to take time out of their lives and recovery to come to the workshops. Each visit, no matter how short, has been such a great validation.

It has been wonderful to see everyone and how great they have been doing in their recovery. Their hard work was immediately visible. It is more than I could have ever dreamed possible. I was allowed to see the peace in the eyes of these women. I remember that they had longed for this peace when I had first met them. Now many years later, they have accomplished that level and so much more. With each validation I receive, I feel pride for their accomplishments. The process does work and it has been all of you who prove it every day.

I guess I could truly say that these validations are the fruits of all these years of work. Times have been good and sometimes hard, but through it all I have held onto my faith in the program. Unfortunately I don't always get to see the outcome. Through these past months, these fruits have lined up in front of me and revealed themselves.

I want to warmly thank each and every alumnus who has shared with me their accomplishments through letters, cards and visits. The support and validation has been tremendous.

We may not be able to control the wind,
but we are able to adjust our sails

I will be 54 years old this August. I have been told many spiritual truths. There are a few, that through my own experience, I have actually come to believe. I would like to share them with you.

Things I've learned along the way.

Sometimes I have spent the whole day pondering the meaning of my life. Then I realize that I have not paid attention to what I have been involved in or to what's going on around me. I have missed life.
For no apparent reason tragedy will sometimes visit a good person; conversely, good fortune sometimes visits a bad one.
What is, is!
I'm always willing to shoulder the bad things that happen in my life. I also need to simply enjoy the good when it comes.
There is a God. It's not me and if there is a master plan, I don't know it.
Life is short and very precious.
I am capable of being the person that I want to be (most of the time).
Real change takes place in people, very little and very slowly.
It's a whole lot harder to receive than it is to give.
There is only one person whose approval of me is essential to my well being. Me.
The other person may be a problem but they are never my problem. In any situation I am always my problem (and the solution is always within me).

Trapped in different states of mind
Clear consciousness is hard to find

One moment fine, the next in shame
These swings in thought I cannot tame

I step outside so I can see
All that's going on in me

I tell myself to strive to learn
To face my faults without concern

My humanness, it is OK
Ev'n though it causes me to stray

The path will lead me home again
Now with new strengths to grow and mend.

Twelve step meetings, among other support groups, are not a forum for conversations which run along religious lines. From my experience at WIIT, however, I imagine that some of you may be very familiar with the experience of religious confusion and abuse.

When I first entered the program (then the Woman's Center for Positive Growth), I went from a Christian community which spouted chapter and verse to prove such things as, "depression/anxiety are sins (every bit as serious as murder, I was told)" and " Rx drugs for these "conditions" were " of the devil". I'd been through deliverances, seances, and other scary and intimidating practices. I was convinced I was a hopeless sinner and I ran everything through The Word found in the Bible in a desperate search to be "redeemed" from the worthless person I'd come to believe I was.

BUT, one day in the midst of one of my obsessive episodes with "the word", Dr. Bill said to me, "I'll give you 'the word'...just keep doing your work and before long you'll know ‘the word."

It's now two and a half years later, since my first inpatient stay, and I'm finally realizing, in a way I can express, what I've discovered through my work on myself with and following my time in the program.

The "Word" of God is in our hearts.
It's light's been with us from our start.

He wrote it there so we would know,
He's with us as we learn and grow.

It may not mimic Thee's and Thou's.
Our spirits movement will allow.

Freedom from the line and verse.
It moves within us unrehearsed..

The word to which I will avow,
Reflects my truth both here and now.

An expression from within my soul,
Which heals my heart and makes me whole.

I want to take this opportunity to share my vision for this newsletter. When I approached Larry and Dr. Bill about putting out this newsletter, my desire was to provide a forum for those of us who have been through the program. I want to provide a place where all of us can publish our thoughts about life and our journey of recovery, where we can share with each other our ideas and experiences for what is working and what isn't in our lives, just basically whatever we want to share with each other.

The other thing I want is for it to be a link back to the program that can help us all stay on the right track and give us that gentle nudge back in the right direction when we need it. That part has been accomplished, I think, by the generous contributions we receive from WIIT. It is not required that all of the busy professionals within the WIIT program take time out of their schedules and write articles for our newsletter. My belief is that they do it because they genuinely care about what they are doing and about us.

All of these great plans and ideas are wonderful except for one thing, I need more contributions from you all. I'm sure that everyone of you has at least one article you can write or one poem or drawing within you to share. You don't even have to use your real name if you're shy. I do appreciate the articles and poems I've already received but we need more. The deadline is June 15 for the next newsletter. I hope to hear from you!

In the WIIT program, we regularly have women who report: "I was raped." "Maybe I was raped." "One of my alters was raped." "I suddenly found myself in a car with a man on top of me." "It's my fault for getting myself into the situation." "It was another alter's fault and she deserves to die." "Why do bad things keep happening to me? I must deserve it."

You might think such situations are unique to those who have highly developed dissociative skills, but they are not so different than for any other woman who has experienced this trauma. The question, "What did I do wrong?" is not only asked of one's self, but too often is also asked of the victim by others.

Actually, attempting to figure out how we caused an event gives us an increased feeling of power. If we can just figure out what we did wrong, we can figure out how to prevent it from happening again. But instead of just taking responsibility for whatever we might have had control of and changing that behavior, we get caught up in the blame, shame, punishment cycle where we also take full responsibility for what happened to us. We feel too powerless to admit that we cannot control how others think, act and feel. It is actually grandiose to believe that we can control everything and everyone around us. That keeps us stuck in the old childhood patterns of, "If I am good enough, smart enough, quiet enough, the abuse will stop."

If a traumatic event happens, despite our best efforts, it's time to give ourselves credit for surviving the best way we know how.

Well, we're not children any more. We are adults (if we choose to remain in our adult state) with adult resources, skills, abilities, options. We can choose to change the people we hang around with - including whether we hang around with our family "of chance" (origin) who may continue to be the perpetrator(s). We can choose to change where we hang around. We can choose to stop using mind-altering substances that lower our abilities to function rationally and with our full capacities. We can choose to utilize the legal system, knowing that it is far from perfect and can be a traumatic experience in itself. But if the legal trauma can help us take our power back and can stop the continuing abuses, maybe it's worth the chance. (This is an individual, personal choice, like everything else.)

And even with taking personal responsibility and structuring our lives for safety, still sometimes bad things happen. That's life. If a traumatic event happens despite our best efforts, it's time to give ourselves credit for surviving the best way we know how. Such a trauma as rape overwhelms all normal defenses and we have to rely on the ones that we thought we'd never have to use again. This is the time to thank your higher power that you have those supesupernormalenses. Use them. Thank the parts of yourself that helped you survive. Use personal, social, legal, therapeutic resources to heal.

Yes, a rapist takes something from you. But when it's over, just like childhood abuse, you don't have to continue to give yourself away by staying stuck in the abuser values. Take your power back. Allow yourself to heal. Talk, write, draw, change unsafe behaviors, become politically active, share with others when you've healed enough to be able to be helpful to them because that also helps you heal. Take back your life.

I want to go to the store,
But I can't because it's night.
I want to visit my sister,
But I can't because it's night.
I want to look at the stars,
But I can't because it's night.

I want to go out at night,
But I can't because I am a woman.
Because some men are wrong,
I'm summarily denied my right
To go out at night.

I want to protest—
And I can
And I will
And not only tonight!

He took from me
three hours of my life
and parts of ten years more.

He took from me
my trusting of my brothers,
of my neighbors,
of my friends,

for if I could not trust
he whom I had trusted,
whom could I trust then?

He took from me
my credibility,

for if I did not fight till death
and did not scream too loud,
how was it against my will?

He took from me.
He took from me.
And he takes from me still

In my ever diligent search to find more resources, I have finally come across some more, not real major ones, but helpful just the same. 1. I have a puppy who has just had his first birthday. He is male and has started spraying every where. I desperately needed to get him fixed and did not have the funds with my limited income. After much searching and frustration I finally came across a neat program. It's called PetFriends. This organization, with help from the government, will spay or neuter your cat or dog, cost free, if you fall within certain economical guidelines. The difference is that their guidelines are quite generous. Your pet does have to be current with their shots or you have to pay those, but they use privatae vets for the surgery. Contact your local Humane Society for details. 2. Does your car need to be fixed? Is it less than ten years old? Find a way to get on the internet, either your own computer or one at the library. Go to www.nhtsa.dot.gov and go to the problems area. It will tell you all the recalls on your car and you can get a listing of all the Technical Service Bulletins that have been published for your car. If these match a problem you're having, take them to your dealership and ask about repairs under the manufacturer's goodwill policy. Be persistent, they will fix them for free if the TSB applies.