Ritual abusers are masters at “programming” a child’s mind. By “programming,” I mean that they “implant” self-serving behaviors to control the child. While this might sound like a science-fiction movie, I assure you that it is very real. I know because I experienced it.
I was suicidal as a teenager. It started soon after I went through puberty. This is common among sexual abuse survivors. After reaching puberty, the child appreciates the gravity of what was taken through rape at a much deeper level. I battled suicidal urges on and off throughout my teen years.
When I would fantasize about how to kill myself, it was always by swallowing a jar of pills. I wanted to fall asleep and never wake up. I never considered another form of suicide.
This changed during my senior year of high school. My father (the “good” parent) died suddenly, and my mother/abuser started sexually abusing me again. I felt an overwhelming desire to die with a razor. The thoughts kept swirling around my head that I wanted to “watch the lifeblood flow out of me.”
I even came close to doing it. I locked myself in my mother’s bathroom with a razor and prayed for God to give me one reason not to do it. Fortunately, I fought my way out of those feelings and put my suicidal desires behind me.
I did not deal with suicidal urges again until I started recovering memories of the ritual abuse. I also did not ever deal with self-injury before I started to recover ritual abuse memories. I dealt with the pain of infertility, the frustration of the adoption process, and other very difficult life circumstances without self-injuring or considering suicide. I even made it through a year of the healing process without either, including recovering memories of my mother sexually abusing me.
As soon as I started recovering ritual abuse memories, I started banging my head as a form of self-injury. I wanted to bang my head repeatedly into a brick wall – not just any brick wall but a particular one with messy mortar that was never smoothed down. I also felt very strong urges to “watch the lifeblood flow out of me.”
Neither of these urges seemed to originate from myself. If I were to choose to self-injure, I think would probably choose cutting. I would definitely choose a less messy way to go through with a suicide. And yet, I was plagued with both of these very strong urges once I started recovering memories of the ritual abuse.
I came to recognize that these urges were programmed into me. The cult “programmed” me to self-destruct rather than tell. The brick wall I “saw” with the self-injury urges was a particular one that the cult used as part of the programming. The cult taught me the phrase “watch the lifeblood flow out.” This is not something I would have come up with on my own – certainly not at age 16.
The good news is that programming is much easier to remove than your own deep-seated feelings about yourself. As Chrystine Oksana says in Safe Passage to Healing, programming is like a foreign object, and the mind is eager to remove objects that do not belong.
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Only the other day i was telling my dad that i have often wondered why i started feeling extra ‘wappy’ when i reached puberty. Now after reading this i see that theres a reason for it that makes sense.
Your blog is helping me massively.
Thanks, simon
Wow…..I have been reading and the last few days some of the things you said have made me really wonder if ALL bad people do the same things….so scary
Thanks for sharing…..
I will be discussing more next week that explains some of why we see commonality in certain types of abuse. Ritual abusers are “organized” abusers. It is like being abused by “professionals” versus “amateurs.”
– Faith
Theres a question ive always wanted to ask you but ive forgotten. If you have time id really appreciate a response! Here it is :-
***Could be triggering***
I trigger massively when i get water on my face. So basically i trigger when ive had a face wash or shower, or even when i go out and theres rain on my face. I can even be playing sports and ill sweat and it will run onto my face and its a MASSIVE trigger. This is less-so now ive worked through alot of memories, but ive always wondered why it is.Someone has said that maybe its because the abusers washed me after they abused me but i keep thinking it something else.
Was just wondering if you had any idea?
Simon
Simon,
If you have an inner commentor somewhere inside you, when you are pondering this specific trigger, quietly pose a question to the commentor. “What is the worst thing that could have happened to make me fear this?” Then wait to hear or see (my commentor drags up pictures from the past) the answer. It may come in a flash or a series of thoughts that you’ve never thought before. There will definitely be a strong emotion attached to it, sometimes for me that feeling is betrayal or despair.
You’re doing a great job paying attention to what triggers and doing the detective work for the why.
Hi, Simon. I have written a response that will publish on Thursday.
Take care,
– Faith
Hey Faith,
Over the last few weeks, we have been chatting about various issues/topics on Adoption Under One Roof (www.ouradopt.com), and during that time I came to realize that you and I share a similar childhood. Yet, after reading your personal blog, I realized just how similar they are… I take to heart that “programming is much easier to remove than your own deep-seated feelings about yourself.” I spent eight years in therapy re-programming my mind. I will spend a lifetime re-programming those deep-seated feelings.
Michael (aka CalifDads)
Hi faith, Thanks, i look foward to reading it.
Take care yourself, Simon.
Thanks for the advice deanandme, i did try it yesterday and the feeling i got was that it was from being a baby when my mum was washing me and changing my nappys and that, but theres that much coming up at the moment im not sure!
Hi MIchael!! Glad to see you over here, although I am so sorry that you can relate to my personal blog.
If one of the similarities we have is the ritual abuse, then stay tuned for next week. I had a major epiphany this week that has helped me enormously in coming to terms with the ritual abuse.
Take care,
– Faith
[…] faithallen @ 7:31 am Tags: aftereffects of child abuse, child abuse, triggers On my blog entry Ritual Abuse and Programming, Simon posted the following question: Theres a question ive always wanted to ask you but ive […]