Imagine for a few moments that you are a space traveler. You've been traveling across huge distances, many light years and have crash-landed on a strange planet due to a malfunction onboard your spacecraft. You've suffered some injuries although none are as yet immediately life threatening. Smoke and flames in the cabin force you to bail out and you hope and pray that the atmosphere outside is breathable. You open the hatch and stagger out, relieved that the air is apparently breathable, albeit 'heavy' and strange smelling. You look around at a purple, rocky, barren landscape, disoriented by what you have just been through. "What now?" you ask yourself. You decide to walk toward a large rock formation nearby to escape the heat and glare of this alien world's midday sun. Within minutes, you're sweating from your exertion and are getting dizzy. You notice that you are expending much energy gasping for air and finally realize that the atmosphere has a lower percentage of free oxygen than Earth. After an hour of staggering along in physical agony from your injuries and oxygen deprivation, you finally collapse in the shade behind a boulder at the base of the formation.

You awaken some unknown time later amidst a vast commotion. A small group of people who look and act much like earth people have surrounded you. They are talking excitedly in a strange language amongst themselves, occasionally gesturing in your direction. A feeling of panic starts to rise in you as you wonder what is happening and realize that your throat is parched from thirst and that you're weak, exhausted, hungry and still having problems breathing the air. As you try to sit up, your body feels like it is made of lead and you almost fall over, reeling from dizziness. "Water" you manage to croak, with a sinking feeling as you remember that these people, or whatever, aren't going to understand anything you say. The babble of voices dies down after one of them yells something inomprehensible upon hearing you speak. "Water", you say again, this time gesturing like you are drinking something. One of the people starts chattering in a strident voice to a couple of the others and one of them produces a gourd-like thing filled with a pinkish colored liquid. You drink the sweet, sticky liquid in huge gulps, emptying the container. A woman in the group approaches with a handful of cube-shaped morsels which resemble beef bouillon cubes, only larger. You gladly accept them from her and proceed to eat them. In the meantime, four men standing away about fifteen feet appear to be ranting about something. One of the men, presumably the leader, barks an order to the four and they immediately fall silent. The leader turns to you and motions for you to follow. "Where else is there to go?", you figure.

Shakily, you rise to your feet and take a few steps. Suddenly an overwhelming wave of vertigo engulfs you and you stumble into the rocky wall of the nearby formation. The leader shouts something in a staccato voice and seconds later, you feel the large hands of the four men roughly lifting you. You pass out, only to awaken sometime later as the men unceremoniously drop you on the ground in a rocky warren. From the sounds of the activity outside, you deduce that this must be whatever town, camp, ... in which they live. You're starving hungry despite having eaten the cubes. A woman comes in with more pink drink and cubes. "Hello, mam ... mam" you say, trying to get her attention but she turns and leaves as though she doesn't hear you. You crawl to where she deposited the wooden tray of food and take a drink of the pink stuff. It leaves you immediately nauseous and you lie back down and breathe through your nose to keep from vomiting. After awhile, the nausea subsides and you chance eating the cubes. Firm, waxy in consistency, very bland flavor. Not bad tasting, but as before, they do nothing for the hunger pangs which continue to plague you. Meanwhile the leader, two men and a woman visit you. The leader and the two men address you numerous times in what sounds like different languages, but you are unable to establish any communications with them other than with simple hand or body gestures like eat, drink, walk over there, ... Although they are kind and are trying to help, you detect some frustration building on their part. After leaving you some clothes which resemble a more finely woven version of burlap, they leave you alone in your grotto. You notice that the sun has set and that the light from a campfire outside is all that you have to see by. The flames leave a flickering wash of dim light on the rock wall of your grotto framed by the shadow of the doorway. Watching your own shadow projected on the wall, you contemplate your situation: You're stranded in a totally alien world, completely dependent upon the good will of a race of people whose language you can't even speak. While some of them are trying to help, they clearly are getting frustrated. Most of them are indifferent and some of them are outright resentful of the demands which your presence has placed on them. You are hurting, in shock from the trauma you've just experienced within the last few hours and to make matters worse, you have allergies or problems assimilating the only food and drink available. The air is marginally breathable and may even be toxic - who knows? Your injuries, the recent events, the lack of proper food, water, and medical care have left you somewhat mentally disoriented. Your only means of getting back home, as well as any equipment or supplies which may have helped make life easier, is now a smoldering heap, perhaps totally unrecoverable. The only civilization here has never even thought of electricity, let alone a radio - whose signal would take years to reach someone who would even understand it. At this point, you are stuck, stranded, and armed with only your wits and your own ailing body.

This is , in many ways, the same situation that survivors of childhood abuse/trauma face right here on Earth, circa the 1990's. They live on a planet with a toxic, debilitating social atmosphere where people are strongly discouraged from acknowledging the feelings resulting from the abuse and their effects, dealing constructively with them, or holding perpetrators accountable for their actions. The would-be benefactors to the man in the story represent the therapists, doctors, ministers, ... who in general have a desire to help a person in need but who in too many cases lack the skills or the tools/resources to render meaningful assistance. The indifferent people in the story represent those who don't know, don't care, don't believe or who see the problems of such a person as insurmountable and 'give up' without even starting. One must wonder how many of these indifferent' people actually have unresolved/unacknowledged childhood abuse issues and are thus too uncomfortable in dealing with someone who reminds them of their pain. Thus it becomes easier for such people to not notice or validate the feelings those who would bring up such issues. The four men who roughly handle the protagonist are stand - ins for those who resent anyone who calls attention to a problem or brings one to them. Such people include those in a dysfunctional family or organization who are so emotionally enmeshed or codependent with the perpetrator(s) that they will defend that agenda at the expense of the truth, justice, or the needs of the victim. Frequently, even victims who, through their own pain, have totally disconnected from their own reality in order to survive emotionally can fall into this category. Also included in this group are those who themselves are perpetrators and therefore have a vested interest in the victims of those activities not arousing public awareness by speaking out. Perpetrators will use any means at their disposal to bully victims into not talking, discredit them, impugn their motives, create an intolerable social environment for the victim, manipulate them with guilt, sympathy pleas,... All of the factors mentioned in the above paragraph serve only to retraumatize abuse victims, perpetuate dysfunctional behavior of individuals, families, organizations and ultimately, society itself. Only the perpetrators win by these secrets being preserved. It should be pointed out that many of the toxic behaviors mentioned occur automatically, and unconsciously. These are everyone else's defense mechanisms. The victim uses denial, addiction, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, ... as his/her defense mechanisms. Only through therapy and recovery can one deal with these issues and hope to discard old, possibly destructive habits. It is during this process that one is most vulnerable to this toxic atmosphere mentioned earlier. One most assuredly does not need his reality denied him by others - even under their misguided attempts at helping, nor does one need the 'pink drink and food cubes' which represent the many dismissive platitudes frequently offered. Being told "Just forget it - it's in the past", "You've got to learn to forgive", "It'll only bother you as long as you dwell on it", ... These all translate to "Don't deal with it. Don't talk, don't tell. Don't bother me with it". If these issues had been properly addressed when they occurred, the victim would have been done grieving his losses a long time ago rather than now. Simply shoveling more dirt over a Superfund dump site does nothing to make the land safe for habitation or protect the ground water. The drums of waste will keep leaking their poison into the land and likewise, such buried memories and unresolved feelings will leak their poisons into the mental landscape of the victim. This has unpleasant and frequently destructive consequences for both the victim and those around him. The statistics for addiction, domestic violence, suicide, ... among people exposed as children to alcoholic parents, domestic violence, sexual assault, abusive school situations, ... are compelling and are well documented for anyone who cares to read them.

The only real hope a person has of not contributing unnecessarily to the load of dysfunction in the world and to take control of his own life is to get and stay in touch with his own reality - however ugly that may appear, and seek professional help for serious problems. Being able to set personal boundaries with other people is a vital skill which many of us never learned in our families of origin (how would they have been able to get away with what they did if we could think through all the craziness?). Until we do so, we will be sitting ducks for perpetrators of all sorts in abusive work, social and family situations. One important way of taking control and staying in touch with one's reality is talking with people dealing honestly with similar issues. This greatly breaks down the feelings of isolation and alienation portrayed in the hypothetical story told earlier. By articulating what is going on in your own internal system in a safe and appropriate forum, the tremendous hold that such events and their connected feelings have over a person can be greatly diminished if not entirely broken. The toxic waste in the mental Superfund site is thus unearthed bit by bit and laid exposed to the elements so that their breakdown is hastened. It may 'stink' unbearably at first, but it does subside and eventually leave.

As we develop good coping skills and learn to set healthy boundaries with people, some interesting things will begin to happen. People who could previously 'walk all over us' i.e., trash our personal boundaries, will get quite resentful. They may accuse us of 'being difficult', or say that they 'liked us better before we got therapy'. This should be an alarm signal for us - ask yourself "what is this person's real agenda, anyway?" Some people have such low self esteem that they need someone more emotionally needy than themselves to be dependent on them in order to feel okay. Such people who have used us for that purpose before may pull away from us as we get healthier. We probably already would be in the process of doing the same. If, in our own dysfunction, we are using someone in this manner, we would be extremely uncomfortable when they suddenly start getting recovered. Those in a family who are not yet into recovery will side with the most dominant and controlling family member in order to maintain the status quo - the primary agenda of the dysfunctional family is to maintain whatever sick balance that has traditionally been there. To change that raises too many fears and too many issues - particularly the fear a perpetrator has of being 'found out'. The last thing an alcoholic parent wants is his/her drinking and abusive behavior discussed. The last thing a pedophile wants is for it to come out that he/she was incesting the kid(s). Anyone daring to point out these things runs the risk of ostracism, threats, bullying, being told he's crazy, ... from other family members.

Many people in recovery end up taking a temporary, or sometimes permanent, vacation from the situation until they've worked through the issues and can set up and enforce the necessary boundaries. Like the man in the story, we will never get back 'home' because for us, 'home' represents where we were prior to any abuse. Our abuse cannot be undone or unlived. What we can do is try to create a 'place' for ourselves where we have safe people to talk to, where we are protected mentally and emotionally by boundaries we have defined and above all where emotional honesty and speaking the truth is rewarded rather than punished.

Copyright 1997 by Karl T.

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