|
To me, in my own personal experiences (not saying this is everyone's experience, but rather my own experiences), "forced silence" includes...
1. Keeping the secret (due to repeated threats)
2. Inability to show emotion (due to repeate threats)
3. Punished if emotion is shown
4. Treated differently by each parent (confusion)
5. Treated differently from siblings (confusion)
6. Treated different at different times by the same parent (confusion)
7. The parent is inconsistent with emotions and abuse patterns, thus making their patterns of relating unpredictable
8. The forced silence of both speech and emotion causes the child to feel trapped, helpless, smothered, and imprisoned
9. The forced silence of both speech and emotion causes the child to give in to the parent's needs, thus negating one's own needs, and therefore siding with the parent
10. The forced silence of both speech and emotion keeps the child isolated, infantilized, and segregated from others
11. The forced silence of both speech and emotion causes the child to self-blame
12. The forced silence of both speech and emotion causes the child to internalize suppressed emotions and thoughts while, at the same time, externalizing behaviors that a fragmented self helps with, all unconsciously, and maybe with the help of imaginary friends, which have been retained for longer than normative stages of development because the abuse occurred early on
13. The forced silence of both speech and emotion becomes the host's problem, but not the problem of some alternate personalities that emerge from the same fantasy areas that imaginary friends were retained from (when I was 3 years old, I remember my imaginary friend named Michelle; she remained with me throughout my life, and today I believe her to be an alter)
14. The forced silence of both speech and emotion causes the alternate personalities to speak to themselves inside an inner world, and causes some other alternate personalities to express emotion, while at the same time, some alternate personalities are experiencing the abuse on the outside - without emotion or speech, and while some alternate personalities are mimicking the internalized abuses of the parent, and while some alternate personalities are protecting the system from being known to the host or to anyone on the outside and even some alternate personalties on the inside
15. Only years later, when the host and the alters have exhausted the host's brain from losing time, making up for lost time, and handling many triggers unknown to the host, the alters reveal themselves a little bit at a time; their silence and emotions can no longer be contained; the host begins to feel emotions that seem to come from nowhere or only adulthood traumas; and the system becomes overloaded again and again
The silence of speech and emotion continues in treatment, which brings out the alters again and again, but more covertly as time goes on because they get used to the craftiness of the therapists.
The host gets confused again and again, doubting her own diagnosis.
We all work together after learning some tools and being believed, but only for a short time because people still want to silence our speech and/or our emotions. The silencing of our speech and our emotions is what keeps us dissociated, triggered, and traumatized.
|