Hello!

Are you near San Diego, California?

If so, we would love to meet you this week!

Several representatives of AbuseConsultants.com will be in San Diego, CA for the 8th International Conference on Family Violence from September 16 – 20, 2003.

In fact, AbuseConsultants.com is working as a Conference Collaborator and we will be available at an exhibit booth throughout the entire conference. Come see us!

What’s new?

Are you curious about the results from Survey 1???

We are very pleased to announce that the first edition of “The Negative Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse – Survey Results” are now printed and will be available at The 8th International Conference on Family Violence. The collective voice of nearly 200 survivors and/or their loved ones is presented in this booklet.

What else is new?

Also at the 8th International Conference on Family Violence, AbuseConsultants.com will be announcing the grand opening of our newly developing Trauma Therapist directory. The start date for this service is planned for October 1, 2003.

We receive numerous requests from survivors looking for trauma specialists from all across the country. In response to that need, TraumaTherapist.com will be a place for therapists and counselors to list their practices in vivid detail. Not only can therapists use this opportunity to become more visible to those seeking a trauma therapist, it will also serve as a way for survivors to learn more information about each counselor.

What do you think?

How many people really know about the depth of the negative impact of childhood sexual abuse?
What percentage of survivors struggle with the same issues that you have?
What percentage of survivors feel like they have adequate treatment and support?
What treatments and therapies do survivors say are most effective?

Surveys

Yes, even though the first edition of survey results is in print, we are continuing to accept more survey submissions each week. If you haven’t yet sent in your thoughts and comments on surveys 1 and 2, there is still time. You will be heard!

The 8th International Conference on Family Violence is only the first of many conferences where this information will be available. We will be presenting YOUR VOICE through the surveys, and will be using this information to teach and educate therapists about what the survivor community says and needs. Too many times survivors are not heard – well, this is your chance to tell the therapeutic community just exactly what we need to know. We have to learn from you! Never mind what the books say – this is what YOU say!! Your opinions DO matter and can be very helpful in teaching others.

I do hope you find “The Negative Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse – Survey Results” as interesting as I have. If you can’t make it to San Diego for the conference, copies of the early edition of the survey results will soon be available on-line.

Thank You

This month’s THANK YOU goes out for every person who has submitted a survey.

We thank you for speaking out!

We appreciate you!

Your words have been truly incredible – they are so very powerful. The collective voice of survivors and their loved ones IS being heard. It is enormously clear that you all have had important things to say. I am genuinely impressed with the time and effort you all have taken on each of the survey responses. Thank you.

DID Therapy Tip

Every DID person I know has had difficulties using their voice and expressing their feelings or opinions. Some people are nearly mute with fear of expressing themselves. Some people have never had the opportunity to speak for themselves due to the amount of control exerted by their abusers. Still others go overboard and scream and holler at everything, which of course, leads to other troubles in being heard effectively.

It is an important and challenging skill to learn how to express yourself and to talk about your internal needs when most of your life has been consumed with keeping secrets. The fear of telling is enormous. The confusion about what threats are real, which threats are internalized tricks, which are from history, and which are relative in the current day… well, it just gets all mixed up. Add fear, time distortion, internal chaos, old rules, and fragmented memories to the situation, and it becomes VERY difficult to talk about what you need to say.

Child parts are of course, often particularly fearful of repercussions and punishments. However, the child parts have a great need to tell what has been happening to them, so it is imperative to make your ‘talking place’ as safe as possible. Stand firm in your beliefs that any abuse of children (including internal child parts) is not acceptable. Have older protective parts tend to the kids and keep them safe from the others that might want to harm the child. Work as hard to protect an inside kid as you would to protect an outside kid. Inside kids deserve safety too!

Explore different ways to express your feelings and opinions, such as:

Write in journals and then read them out loud
Make drawings, collage or clay art - speak out loud about your creation and what it means to you
Sing loudly in the privacy of your home
Read stories out loud to your little kid parts
Let your inside ones holler and squawk out loud to each other in fun
Insist stubbornly on your right to freedom of speech
Say whatever you want to say on a survey
Allow your child parts the right to say what happened
Refuse to mimic the same dysfunctional family rules that kept you from talking in the first place
Break or change any rules that cause dissociation and secrecy -- let your kids have permission to talk and to tell.
Explore the benefits of voice therapy --- hearing your own voice out loud is actually extremely therapeutic for you! Read the research about this – it’s true!! Talking DOES help you to heal!!

Be willing to speak out!! It will make a difference!!

I hope to see you in San Diego --