It is a poor sort of memory that only works backwards. Children usually do not have a choice who their parents are, nor can they understand that parents may simply be too depressed, enraged, or spaced out to be there for them or that their parents’ behavior may have little to do with them. Children have no choice but to organize themselves to survive within the families they have. Unlike adults, they have no other authorities to turn to for help—their parents are the authorities. These kids cannot rent an apartment or move in with someone else: Their very survival hinges on their caregivers. Children sense—even if they are not explicitly threatened—that if they talked about their beatings or abuse to teachers they would be punished. Instead, they focus their energy on not thing about what has happened and not feeling the residues of terror and panic in their bodies. Because they cannot tolerate knowing what they have experienced, they also cannot understand that their anger, terror, or collapse has anything to do with that experience.  

 Abuse victims do not talk; they act and deal with their feeling by being enraged, shut down, compliant, or defiant. Traumatic memory differs in complex ways from normal recall, and it involves many layers of mind and brain. At first some experience waves of intense, free-floating terror, and there is a feeling that the situation is going to kill them if they do not get out. Learning to keep the mind alive while allowing the body to feel that the feelings they have come to dread slowly enables some to stand back and observe their experience, rather than being immediately hijacked by their feelings. Some try to vanquish these feelings with alcohol and exercise, until they can gain ownership over their physical sensations, and learn to tell the difference between past and present. Many adults have problems with communication because when they are kids and try to tell their parents things, any attempts to divulge the secret is often countered by an adult conspiracy of silence and disbelief. 

 Parents do not like children telling secrets and lies. The Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome follows: Initiation, intimidation, stigmatization, isolations, helplessness and self-blame. It is all a process of the terrifying reality of child sexual abuse. Any attempts by the child to divulge the secret will be countered by an adult conspiracy of silence and disbelief: Do not worry about things like that; that could never happen in our family. How could you ever think of such a terrible thing? Do not let me ever hear you say anything like that again! The average child never asks and never tells. Nonetheless, how could parent inflict such torture and terror on their own child? Part of them continues to insist that they must have made the experience up or that they are exaggerating. 

 Many children and adult victims of abuse, all of them are ashamed about what happened to them, and they blame themselves—on some level they firmly believe that these terrible things were done to them because they are terrible people. One young lady would float up to the ceiling in her mind when she had sexual intercourse, because that is what she used to do to try not to realize she was being assaulted. As an adult, the lady would have consensual sex with men and sometimes women. When a partner told her how good she was in bed and that he barely recognized her, and that she even talked differently, usually she did not remember what had happened, but at other times she would become angry and aggressive. She had no sense of who she really was sexually, so she withdrew one dating after she assaulted a guy in bed for touching her leg.  No one knows if this woman was insane or actually suffered childhood trauma. Nonetheless, be careful of who you pick up at a bar or are introduced to. 

 Nonetheless, male abuse victims and female abuse victims often cling to their abuser, and even when they are adults. Hostages have paid the bail to have their abuser released from jail, expressed a wish to marry them, or had sexual relationships with their captors. Victims of domestic violence often cover up for their abusers. Judges often tell me how humiliated they feel when they try to protect victims of domestic violence by issuing restraining orders, only to find out that many of them secretly allow their abusive partners to return. Power gives a feeble, furious woman make instruments. And the effect is as terrible as the combination is unnatural. Commit to memory now, what you will understand afterwards. All this is yesterday’s event. Events of later date have floated from me to the shore where all forgotten things will never reappear, but this stands like a high rock in the ocean.  

The Winchester Mystery House

My desire to do paranormal investigations in The Winchester Mystery House was not to embellish or damage the reputation of the museum, but rather shed new light on the history and mystery that surrounds it. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/