If you suffer from a social predator’s abuse, I urge you to find someone to talk to. Seek out people who are sympathetic to your suffering but allow you to reveal and heal at your own pace.
Here’s a link to Finding a Therapist Who Can Help You Heal. It’s a great article from HelpGuide.org, covering the following eight topics:
-How therapy and counseling can help
-Finding the right therapist for you
-Types of therapy and therapists
-What to expect in therapy or counseling
-Making the most of therapy and counseling
-Determining if therapy is working
-When to stop therapy or counseling
-Paying for therapy and counseling
Here are two links from PsychologyToday.com to help you find a therapist in the United States or in Canada, Mexico, Europe, South America, or the Asian Pacific.
I understand treatment isn’t for everybody; I needed it, yet I forewent it forever. Many people don’t have the money or time. Or, like me, they don’t have the trust. Fear of facing our fears prevents many of us from seeking professional therapy. Nietzsche was spot-on with that business about the abyss.
Fortunately for us abstainers, though, keeping appointments with professionals may not be as crucial to healing trauma as keeping multiple connections with people who care. That’s the consensus I drew from Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score and Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah’s collaboration on What Happened to You?
I offer a combination of quotes from Dr. van der Kolk:
“Study after study shows that having a good support network constitutes the single most powerful protection against becoming traumatized.”
and
“Traumatized human beings recover in the context of relationships: with families, loved ones, AA meetings, veterans’ organizations, religious communities, or professional therapists. The role of those relationships is to provide physical and emotional safety, including safety from feeling shamed, admonished, or judged, and to bolster the courage to tolerate, face, and process the reality of what has happened.”
I don’t mean to diminish the value of mental health professionals’ services in healing trauma. And I don’t wish to imply that Dr. van der Kolk does, either. Please note that he includes professional therapists above and is, of course, one himself. It’s just that I’m concerned for people like myself who don’t have the money, time, or trust to seek out and benefit from those services.
Dr. Perry, answering a question from Oprah in their book, What Happened To You? also emphasizes the importance of healing forces outside of professional therapy:
Oprah: “What if you don’t have the resources to get a therapist?“
Dr. Perry: “Great question. Most people who experience adversity and trauma do not have access to therapy, let alone a clinical team like I just described. But what we’re learning is that having access to a number of invested, caring people is actually a better predictor of good outcomes following trauma than having access to a therapist.”
But we must be careful not to take Dr. Perry’s quote out of context. Before and after the above statement, Dr. Perry alludes that multiple therapeutic techniques might be best when integrated and administered by well-trained professionals.
Suppose you’re suffering from a social predator’s interference in your life, and you need some relief but aren’t ready to jump into therapy. In that case, I highly recommend Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score and Dr. Perry’s and Oprah’s collaboration in What Happened to You? The doctors and Oprah make the underlying principles of effective trauma relief available to all of us: affordable, understandable, and above all, safe and compassionate.
If you’re not even sure if you’re suffering from trauma, van der Kolk describes what he calls “the imprints of the trauma on body, mind, and soul,” which you may be able to relate to:
“…the crushing sensations in your chest that you may label as anxiety or depression; the fear of losing control; always being on alert for danger or rejection; the self-loathing; the nightmares and flashbacks; the fog that keeps you from staying on task and from engaging fully in what you are doing; being unable to fully open your heart to another human being.”
Another way of putting it is that overwhelming, unbelievable, and unbearable events get heavily encoded in the brain by the body’s stress-response system. Then, in a vicious circle, we ruminate or are inadvertently reminded of the original event, and repeated secretions of stress hormones engrave those memories ever more deeply in the mind. We eventually become overwhelmed by uncontrollable emotional responses; the body gets stuck in a fight, flight, or shutdown mode.
It gets worse if your trauma is caused by a social predator’s ongoing deceit and abuse. In that case, your body has not been fooled, and you are in a fight for your life. If not for your very breath and heartbeat, then for your very life of mind. Shall your thoughts be yours, or shall they be controlled and owned by another?
The very worst is when the source of your trauma is the most intimate person in your life, the person whom you would ordinarily turn to for emotional support. Dr. van der Kolk says this is when people will likely go over the edge.
If you are in that predicament or suspect you are, I repeat: find someone you can talk to. Seek out people who are sympathetic to your suffering but allow you to reveal and heal at your own pace. Even if you’re under attack from a non-intimate, find somebody to share your frustration and pain with.
Maybe you haven’t been traumatized into wanting or needing therapy, or you’re hesitant to broach a subject with friends, family, or associates that seems far-fetched. A safe alternative might be an online support group. Here are several, with brief descriptions of each:
Out of the FOG – Forum is for people with a family member or loved one suffering from a personality disorder. Although this forum states its mission “…is to provide information and support, without judgment, to anyone who has a family member or loved one who suffers from a personality disorder,” you might also be able to address personality disorders of not-so-loved ones. A less restrictive item in their guidelines, under ‘Who We Are,’ says, “Out of the FOG is a group of peers dedicated to offering support and the opportunity for personal growth for people who have been affected by someone who suffers from a personality disorder.”
Aftermath: Surviving Psychopathy Foundation – Survivors Forum. The Foundation’s mission statement begins: “The Aftermath: Surviving Psychopathy is dedicated to educating the public regarding the nature of psychopathy and its cost to individuals and society. We seek to support the families and victims of those with psychopathy…”
Fort Refuge – Abuse Survivors’ Community. Be sure to read any forum’s rules or guidelines—they vary widely—but I’m sharing two Fort Refuge forum guidelines because I think they’re substantively different from other forums’: 1. “Please don’t expect counseling. If you need advice, one-on-one help, or someone to focus on addressing your needs – you’re looking for a trained volunteer. We don’t have those on Fort; we are just a bunch of anonymous strangers (of various ages, intelligence, and mental health) sharing common experiences. What you read on Fort can be helpful, validating, infuriating, inspirational, ridiculous, naive, funny, insightful, or boring – depending on the day. Forum threads and chat conversations are focused on mutually interesting topics that everyone benefits from, rather than on “supporting” someone specific. Most of us genuinely care, but we are not a hotline, a counseling service, or a twelve-step program.”
2. “Just talk of yourself. Abuse robbed us of the basic right to think with our own heads, feel with our own hearts, make our own choices, and take responsibility for our own actions. We’re trying to regain this freedom, so please don’t tell (advise, suggest, encourage) us what to do, think, or feel all over again. Just talk of yourself – we feel survivors owe this much honesty to each other. When all of us share our true experiences, genuine feelings, and honest thoughts on the topic being discussed, everyone can find something that clicks for them, from the person who brought up the topic to those who’ll join Fort ten years from now.”
Survivor – DomesticShelters.org Victims and Survivors Community This site states: “This group is designed to be a safe space for domestic abuse victims, survivors, advocates and others affected by abuse to support one another through meaningful dialogue and helpful insight.”
If you’re unsure how to use the above forums, online support groups, or survivors’ communities, contact the site administrators and ask. Tinker around and ease your way in to ensure that whichever you try is a good fit. The available options will vary from one forum to another and may not be evident initially. Also, no online help site will be active forever; they will all have highs and lows in their reader participation and posting. If you get a chance, let me know which ones you’re trying and how they work for you. You can use the comment section below or email me at RobertRedAct@protonmail.com.
A word of warning, though: the same as we must watch out for conscienceless types face-to-face, we must watch for them online. Please see Fort Refuge’s Cyberstalking: Staying Safe on Abuse Support Sites, and Top Five Scams on Abuse Sites.
Another Fort Refuge article you may find helpful is Seven Tips on Choosing the Right Online Support Group. Please understand that I wouldn’t be so gung-ho, suggesting therapy, confiding in friends and family, or online support groups if I hadn’t been demolished by a social predator myself.
The crazy thing is, though, I have been both predator and prey. Paradoxically, I had to be devastated by a superior psychopath to realize the error of my ways. I offer the fictional account of all that in my Memoir of a Repentant Psychopath, available on Amazon.
It’s a hell of a thing to write home about, but my sordid past qualifies me to talk about social predators. My checkered past, including assault, robbery, and prison time, has given me an inside view of antisocial personality disorder and a running start on psychopathy. For example, it’s my first-hand experience that social predators are smart enough but draw a blank on empathy and the self-regulation that comes with it. Life can repeatedly kick the crap out of predators for trashing the fundamental human rights of others, yet they refuse to admit fault. A magical sense of entitlement, missing mental parts, or whatever you want to call it, it’s a curse on society. I’ve come face to face with my own lack of empathy, and fixing it is like the roadwork you see everywhere. The infrastructure of one’s personality is an awful thing to neglect.
But here I am, rebuilding burned bridges. And part of my repair is to console and encourage others. Those who have been side-swiped, T-boned, or ran straight over by one of life’s remorseless need some understanding from others. I get it now, so send me your story (RobertRedAct@protonmail.com) if you need to tell someone. I’m not mystical and certainly don’t have curative powers, but I will listen until I’m overrun, and then I’ll recruit from the readership for help in responding.
Until next week, don’t let the heartless destroy your will to live! Check out the resources in my posts and home page, and continue seeking others’ understanding and compassion against predators’ interference in your life. Let me know what’s working, and I’ll do my best to pay it forward.
Robert Red Act