Fall Forward (my journey in a nutshell)

By Sophie Olson

This is me; this is my story. But of course, it’s not just mine. This story has happened to and continues to happen to many people. The details may differ but the impact is devastating.

At best, we might experience feelings of shame, confusion or lack of self-worth. At worst, we might feel our lives are blighted by unbearable emotional distress or physical illness. A lack of support for Child Sexual Abuse survivors might lead some to develop coping mechanisms such as the ones described in this blog.

If you relate to anything here, I hope you are reassured to know that you’re certainly not alone. Navigating your way through life as a CSA survivor can feel overwhelming. At times, it might feel insurmountable, but it’s not. There is always hope. There is always a way through.

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Drop The Disorder Poetry Night

I consider myself a survivor of CSA and the psychiatric system, and was pleased to take part in an event by Drop The Disorder: an evening of spoken word performances to challenge the culture of psychiatric diagnosis and the pathologising of emotional distress.

One of the most significant moments of my journey was the time I reached out to a GP as I was leaving an appointment. She was kind, but as there was no screening for trauma, I was set on a path that delayed recovery for an entire decade. She didn’t intend to cause me further harm, she probably had little idea of what else to do with me. Trauma-informed pathways are long overdue and it is time for change. It is hard to have conversations like these without being accused of stigmatising mental illness but those who are harmed by the system must feel able to speak. When I do, I’m not denying the experiences of those who benefit from treatment, I’m validating my own experiences as someone who was failed by that system.

I regret hesitating at the door. This poem is called Door Handle Moment

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Why didn’t you say anything before?

Why didn’t you say anything before? Were the words said when I disclosed. I didn’t know how to respond to that. The things I wanted to say spun inside my head and stuck in my throat but I couldn’t say them. I swallowed my words and looked at the floor instead.

Why didn’t you…?… you could have… you should have…

The events of that disclosure day unfolded violently, like a bomb exploding and glass embedding itself in our hearts. It was one of the hardest and worst things I’ve ever had to do. I tried to say why I hadn’t, I really did but I was mute with shame, regret and fear.

My fault was how I interpreted these responses. It’s my fault.

I was probably in shock too. Disclosure might be shocking for the recipient but it’s far worse for the one saying the terrible words we hoped we might never have to actually say – no more hoping that someone would just notice, ‘get it’ instead. It felt like peeling the skin from my bones, exposing the essence of me to the world. It hurt. I wanted to run away and hide. I wished I’d never said anything at all.

It was impossible to explain why I hadn’t because where would I begin? How could I describe my inability to retrieve the correct words and to speak them aloud? I didn’t say much after I disclosed. I couldn’t answer their questions and some of them made me feel so unsafe I wanted to die. I stayed silent and scrutinised their faces and body language. I was looking for any nuance of behaviour for a sign they didn’t believe me.

I waited to be cast out of the family and shunned for saying these terrible words.

Why didn’t you say anything before?

Now I have my words and if I could go back in time and do it all over again I would say,

I did.

I had been non-verbally disclosing since childhood but nobody was listening. They didn’t understand what I was trying to say.

A Sense of Solidarity

A Sense of Solidarity was first published in Epione Training and Consultancy “See Me – Hear Me” blog.

I have always had a thing about groups. I don’t like them, I don’t trust them. I have been wary of groups, ever since the time an eight year old girl with stocky legs and suspicious eyes accused me of laying eggs during a playground game of 4040. This was the worst crime imaginable in Year Four in 1985. Hand on hip, she stood back to watch as thirty indignant little girls and boys formed a menacing circle and she stared unblinkingly at me as I stood in the middle wondering how the world had suddenly turned so dark. Thirty shrill voices began their chant:

Lay-ing EGGS!, lay-ing EGGS!

It was untrue and unjust but I did nothing; I didn’t defend myself, didn’t shout, didn’t cry or tell a teacher, I just braced myself and waited for it to end.

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A nonsensical short story

By The Flying Child

A young woman turns up at A and E and seems a bit confused. She has a headache and is complaining of feeling a bit nauseous. The doctor sits patiently and listens to her intently as she describes her symptoms. He asks her to walk across the room and carefully observes her unsteady gait.

Ah ha!’ he exclaimes, ‘I’ve got it. You’re finding it hard to walk properly so I diagnose a broken leg! A spiral fracture!’

The young woman is feeling so unwell and she’s relieved to hear him talk about treatment. She is eager to start. She would do anything to feel better and to be able to walk without falling down, and so, with her leg in a cast, she carries home her prescription of pills and with due diligence, swallows one a day, as instructed, despite the inner voice that knows her best, saying, ‘but are you sure?’

Two weeks later, the young woman is back. She’s still not able to walk steadily, and still feels sick and confused. Her head is pounding. She feels sick with pain. The doctor reassures her that some broken legs take longer to respond to treatment and hands her another prescription for stronger pain killers, and sleeping pills to help her sleep. He gives her a pair of crutches. ‘It’s a transverse fracture’ he says with conviction. ‘This will do the trick’.

Six months later he’s a bit perplexed. He has prescribed a new cast, extra-strong painkillers, sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication – and nothing is making the slightest bit of difference. The young woman still can’t walk from one side of the room to the other without falling over. ‘Well this is a tricky case,’ he says. And the young woman decides to come clean. She felt too embarrassed before to say that she thought the problem might be an injury to her head. She tells the doctor that she was hit on the head as a child, repeatedly, with a brick by a person she loved and that she hadn’t known how to tell him because of the shame. Because it was hard to explain. Because she was afraid of what he might think of her and her family. The young woman feels relief when the truth is out as this has been a heavy secret to carry and she waits for the diagnosis to change, and for the treatment for her injured head to begin.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ says the doctor, and then to her surprise he adds, ‘but you are still having this problem walking. We need to sort this out. I think we need to amputate the leg. It’s the only way I’m afraid. Sounds drastic, but others swear by it. You’ll be up and about in no time at all!

The young woman can’t believe her ears. None of this makes sense. ‘But what about what I just told you?’ she asks the doctor, and she refuses to give her consent to amputate the leg, despite his cajoling.

‘There is no more treatment’ the doctor says. ‘I therefore diagnose you with a disorder of the leg that is severe and enduring. You will never recover, or indeed live without community support or medication to manage the symptoms’

The young woman says goodbye to the doctor and walks unsteadily out of the hospital, throwing her cast, crutches and pills into the bin on her way out. (Apart from the anti-anxiety pills which she hangs on to as she’s feeling extremely anxious about her predicament)

Eventually, after a lot of searching, the young woman finds a head injury clinic. The head injury specialists know the right treatment but it takes a lot of time . They teach her how to rest and care for her head, in the way she avoided in the past because she didn’t like to think about the past, or even acknowledge that she had a head at all, and in the end she makes a full recovery. They tell her that every now and then, the sickness and headaches may return. They tell her not to be surprised if her body reacts to seeing a person, or a brick, or if she reads a story about a child being hit over the head. ‘If you react to this’ they say, ‘if the headaches, sickness and unsteadiness return, it’s perfectly normal. It doesn’t mean to say you need a cast or crutches for your leg. You now have the wisdom and tools to know what to do’, they tell her.

‘Of course’, they remind her, as she walks steadily out of the door, ‘this doesn’t mean that there’s no such thing as a broken leg, or that you will never break your leg. If you do, by all means seek treatment to heal it.’

When the drugs don’t work… what then?

It is common for the survivor of child sexual abuse to struggle with their mental health. Many will find themselves in the psychiatric system. At first it can feel like a huge relief. We are told we feel the way we do because we suffer from X, Y and Z. We are told to take medication and we do, because it comes with the hope of recovery. For some, medication provides relief. They may take the prescribed dose for the recommended time and feel better, able to continue with their lives, untroubled by past trauma. But what do we do when we feel we’re not recovering from child sexual abuse? How do we cope with the bitter realisation that we feel exactly the same about what happened to us when we reach our forties, fifties and beyond? We begin to wonder; is true recovery even really possible? We hear a lot of talk about ‘recovery’ from trauma, but the truth is I didn’t believe recovery was possible – or maybe it was possible for others and there was something wrong with me. The years went by, along with the hope that anything would change for the better.

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Left vs Right

Trigger warning (CSA, suicide)

I wrote this shortly before being admitted to a psychiatric hospital. I think back and wonder if I knew why I was so unwell. Did I equate this depressive state with child sexual abuse? The answer is yes, but I don’t allude to it here. When I wrote this, The Black Door was locked and bolted, but it was a deliberate choice to keep it that way. These memories were always clear to me but I didn’t allow myself to let them out. At this stage, they were beginning to find a way through the gaps, but I wasn’t ready to write about that. I was silent about the abuse, even inside my own head.

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