The Trauma Myth ****MAJOR TW*****

I wrote a review of the book: HUGE TW!

Horrendously awful book!

Clancy stakes claim to what she calls the trauma myth, then she attempts to discredit trauma as a psychological reality. Her report is flawed and limited to the point it ignores much of what is known about trauma. She appears ignorant of the knowledge that traumatization is complex and varies depending on many factors and states that: "Society tells you it is traumatizing, therefore it is." I say - Bull!

I survived 16 years of abuse from my sociopath father and to a lesser extent, my borderline mother, and still feel that those years did not bother me. (But I do have dissociative identity disorder, and most of the time have no memory of my childhood.) However, if you ask my usually, very skeptical husband and 5 children, they will give you another story. They will tell you of my intense psychogenic pseudoseizures and of my many dissociated parts that obviously take over - many times a day as well as other signs that those 16 years of childhood abuse did hurt me in many ways. All this and I still maintain that I am just fine and the long list of abuse my Father not only admits to doing, but brags about, did not hurt me a bit.

As far as people go, I am tough. I am not the type anyone would think of as some soft headed, weak bodied female and I will stand toe to toe with the biggest guy out there and take them on - win or lose. I doubt I was some wimp before the age of 16 either, but you know what - it does not matter how tough someone is. When they are a child, the problem is that if it's the parents doing the abuse, then fantasy is their only ally.

I have learned lately that being strong like this, is not so great after all. The effects of the trauma affect my kids and when I really look at the truth of the matter, and not deny the pain - it's overwhelming! Although I do not care about myself much, I do care about my kids. My point is that just because someone like me denies pain or has found a way to live with it, it does not mean that the abuse did not harm them. I would have rated my abuse low on Clancy's test, but I am willing to bet if I did the same abuse to her that I went through she would give it a 10 - if she even survived.

It's not the sexual use, the fact that I was made to feel less than human and made to grovel to live, the rubbing sand in my eyes so I could not see what Father was doing to my little sister (who is now borderline), the beatings and burns, the killing of pets to make me behave, the oxygen deprivation, the threats to be killed, the restraints and being locked up or even the anger and blame directed at me - it is that this was all done by the two people that were suppose to love and care for me. It was that I was isolated and could not ask for help or risk death or worse. It was not having anywhere to turn, without sending the wrath of Father upon any person who tried to help me.

Clancy would have you believe that my trauma was induced by those around me, interpreting it for me. The problem with this theory is that there was no doing that. I only very recently have begun seeing a therapist, and all my symptoms were well established considerably before that - most particularly the dissociative division of my identity into little personality packages, some of whom exist only to hold the trauma memories and keep them away from the rest of me so I can just get through each day. I correctly self-diagnosed as a DID long before I had any contact with a licensed therapist - after all how many things could it be with those signs and symptoms.

Clancy is an experimental psychologist, it seems. Her understanding of this subject however appears fundamentally and grossly flawed. Her assertions are an insult to all I have endured. I see her as an embarrassment to her profession, which clearly is NOT clinical psychology.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-rev ... centReview

I've written about whether DID or not is real in the article "Pseudogenic, iatrogenic or traumagenic? - How do we know that DID is real?" available on the PODS website at http://www.pods-online.org.uk/isdidreal.html. The short answer is, yes it's real, and yes abuse is traumatic.

Wonderful! It kills me that because people cannot comprehend normal personality development, they can't get DID. It's so simple! Headed to read your article!

You have read Haunted Self! Brilliant! Kathy Steele is on my FB. - I love her!!!! What a brilliant woman and she is such a fighter for the cause. Have you ever read why she studies DID? Anyway, back to the subject at hand. I do agree about Nathan - what a fringe whack! I have listened to her lectures and read her and she is a disaster. I have only once response - if the case of Shirley Mason was made up - why do the symptoms still correlate so well with what we know today. Consider this - 3 Faces of Eve came first! Why is there no public outcry to this one? Simply because it has nothing to do with incest. Interesting?

Have you read Howell's 2011 book where she addresses the question of DID being created via therapy. My take from my read of her (in which she cites Kluft) is that a part of the personality can be created by the poor therapy used in the past, but that part created is simply a temporary part. It does not persist. It is not DID.

Reading about when your parts showed up is interesting. For me it was funny. I had all this stuff going on, and I went to a therapist and was told I simply had an inner child. So I read about them, but dang my inner child was an active little bugger. You should have seen it watch a movie! Oh my! I had to figure out that I had DID myself, then it was verified by 3 different health care professionals.




This is too funny! The author of this book also wrote one about alien abductions!?!?!? Whacks!

Back to the Amazon book review:
Everyone here should go and give a like to the 1* comments so they show up on top and let people know what this horrible books is really about!
http://www.amazon.com/dp/046501688X/?tag=bfftlbr-20

The human mind is such a mystery, that I honestly believe that anything is possible with it. When i actually get into debates about DID and other diagnoses where there is a "splitting" in the mind, I always tend to debate about the meaning of a personality. What IS a personality to begin with. And then slowly work my way up to the automatic instincts that we as humans have dug down into us when we are in survival mode.

Mental disorders, when it comes to being faced with trauma (any kind of situation where it produces discomfort or extreme stress for the individual [notice that I am using individual and not grouping] in question), is the mind's reaction of the Fight or Flight. i would believe that mental disorders would be it's flight. While facing the trauma would be the mind's way of fighting.

How the mind will handle the situation depends on the person. One person may end up dissociating to the point where they "split" just so they can cope with the constant trauma. And even then, spiting can be done in many ways, such as with DID, as you all would be aware on how splitting would work, and then BPD, has a "split" where it is more emotional than mental. Some will repress, others will pretend like it never happened. It really depends on the individual, the tools they have, and how creative they can be.

When it comes to disorders for mental health, there are so many ways for the mind to find a way to cope from problems, that just automatically rejecting that the mind could never do that, is just silly. After all, it is possible for the human mind to adapt to many kinds of stress. The mind is truly an amazing thing.

God, why is it that part of me is like "I should go into psychology when I am done with Graphic Design"? Love psychology. It's just amazing... But I don't think I would make that great of a therapist... I told that to my boyfriend and he was like "Irony, a crazy helping out a crazy xD ", he said it in a playful manner, though, which I find very comical.

Let me add an idea to your argument.

Everyone starts out unintegrated. The process of integration in childhood takes years. When there is enough trauma, then the normal process is interrupted. This is current thought, and most people can actually understand this.

In addition - all personalities are made up of parts, not just those with DID. Ask them if they have a part that likes to do one thing, while another likes to do another thing. The difference is that those with DID have barriers around their parts - they are isolated.

Therapy works to bring down the barriers. First one becomes coconscious, then finally after years of work they can operate like a normal brain which is not one part, but the many parts of the personality working fluently together.

brandonsmom777 wrote:childhood SA is not actually traumatic when it happens to a child because a child doesn't even process what's going on as sexual in nature.

This is exactly why it can cause trauma to a child.

*Trigger*
The child doesn't understand what's going on, it's an alien experience.

If someone is touching them against their will, it can violate the child's developing sense of identity, "this is my body" becomes "If i can't control what is happening to my body do i own it?"
*Trigger end*

It can be extremely confusing and stressful for the child.