Faith Allen’s Story – Flashes of Other Ritual Abuse

*******trigger warning – ritual abuse, self-injury, and suicide*******

I have not fully healed all of my ritual abuse memories, and it is possible that I never will work through all of them simply because there are so many. I have flashes and a “sickening awareness” of different abuses that I suffered. I am going to do a quick overview in this blog entry.

I believe that my ritual abusers gave me shots, presumably of some sort of drug. I get weekly allergy shots, and I used to get migraines from them. I went to a headache specialist, who could find nothing physically wrong with me. I finally recognized that I was being triggered and used my tools to control my anxiety so I could continue taking these shots.

I am triggered by popsicle sticks, particularly if they touch my teeth. For both my sister and me, just the thought of popsicle sticks anywhere near our teeth triggers us mightily. I have fought back by buying bags of popsicle sticks, breaking them into pieces, and throwing them at the wall.

I never self-injured until I began recovering memories of the ritual abuse. Even all of the memories that I shared from my early years did not trigger self-injury urges. However, as soon as I started recovering ritual abuse memories, I experienced extremely strong urges to bang my head. Not only did I “need” to bang my head, but I “needed” to do it into a very particular brick wall. I see it clearly in my head. It looks like an amateur built it, and the mortar is gooping out in a messy way and hardened like that. I believe that I was “programmed” to bang my head into that particular wall rather than remember the ritual abuse.

I also went through years of suicidal feelings, but I never once considered using a knife or razor. However, the one time I came the closest to killing myself (when I was 17 after my mother started abusing me again), I grabbed a razor. I kept having a recurring thought of wanting to “watch the lifeblood flow out of me.” I know of no 17-year-old kid who thinks of the word “lifeblood,” so I suspect that was a programmed response as well.

I am very triggered by splinters, so much so that I will not even try to remove a splinter from my son’s body. If it doesn’t bother him too badly, I tell him to wait until his father gets home. If it is really bothering him, I take him to the doctor immediately. I absolutely cannot try to remove a splinter from his body. I have no idea why, only that I get extremely triggered by the thought.

I am triggered by flashing lights and any light shining directly into my eyes.

The ritual abuse was so traumatizing that many of the pieces still have not fallen into place. I don’t know if they ever will.

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Photo credit: Julie Crowley

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