Wholeness
My Healing Journey from Ritual Abuse
by
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Chapter 11
Hard to Believe
I knew before I picked up the telephone that what I needed to say to Francisco was not going to be easy for me to address. I also knew that it was time for me to address the issue of just how much my body was reacting to the work. Fortunately, the years of work with Francisco had given me enough trust in him to broach the subject, so broach the subject I did in our next session.
“Because my primary way of accessing information is kinesthetic, I’ll tell you what my body told me this week. I had lots of vaginal drainage, like I was making love every day, although nothing could be further from the truth. I’m incredibly embarrassed to tell you this, but it’s easier to say over the phone than it would be if I were in your office. My health is all over the map and I’m gaining weight again. This makes no sense to me, with all my nausea and vomiting. You’d think that I’d be as skinny as a rail.”
“This sounds to me as if an earlier part of you is trying to communicate with you, Suzie,” Francisco commented. “I think we need to explore this. Do you want to go back and take a look?”
“No,” I said, backing away from the phone.
By this time, I had relived so much trauma that I did not think I could survive any more of it, either physically or mentally. I was sure any new revelation would send me over an edge from which I would never return.
“No, you can’t make me. Not even God himself can make me!”
“It’s okay, Suzie. I understand,” Francisco assured me. “But you know, I think that repressing these memories lowers your chances of survival. Up until now, you have repressed memories in order to survive, but now, in order to survive in the future, you must remember.”
“No! I’m afraid. Every time I feel like I’m getting close to reliving this one, I feel like I’m going to faint. I mean really just fall right on the floor. I don’t want to lose consciousness here on the floor, alone. You know how I throw myself right into the middle of these traumas, and this one is just too dangerous. I can feel it, Francisco.”
“So what you’re saying is this: You do not yet have a strategy that allows you to retrieve the information about a past trauma without reliving it.”
I was fortunate to have someone who could reframe my most fearful therapeutic assumptions in such a straightforward manner.
“That’s right,” I said.
“Okay, what if we are able to develop a strategy that will allow you to see the event from a distance, to dissociate from it? Are you willing to negotiate with me and process the event, using all your parts and all your resources? You will then be able to preserve the learning, heal the inner child, release more pain, and gain more energy. Aren’t these outcomes that you find appealing?”
“I suppose,” I said haltingly.
“Okay. And let me ask you this: What do you think will be different if you do the work?”
This was not a new question and my answers hadn’t changed.
“The nightmares will stop. My body will go back to being normal. I’ll have more energy for my family. I won’t get these sudden episodes of sickness.”
“In other words, you’ll be freer to live life to the fullest,” Francisco summarized. “You win. Your family wins. Everyone wins. Suzie, the best revenge for everything that happened in your past is to live a happy and successful life.”
Francisco had metaphorically walked me up the steps and opened the door.
“You know I want to win,” I said. “You know it’s not just because I’m competitive. I’m determined. And Little Suzie’s need to survive has consumed me. You know I also do not want my father to win and ruin the rest of my life . . . and the rest of my children’s lives.”
“Yes, I know,” he replied.
Part of me hated to clean the slate of my past in order to set my soul free. Another part was happy to do it. Not only would my mind be free, but more importantly, my soul would be free.
The insight astonished me. For most of my life, I had eschewed the spiritual nature of man, and yet here I was, grappling with a notion that would change my mind-set forever. What did I truly believe? What did it mean to be human? Did it mean being only human, a person subjected to irresistible urges and temptations? Or did it mean being a uniquely caring, compassionate creature and a soulful person? Psalm 8:3 said, “When I see the heavens, the work of Your hands, the moon and stars that You set in place, what is Man that You are mindful of him, the human being that You take note of him? You have made him but little lower than the angels, and crowned him with honor and glory.” Perhaps heaven was there to teach us that there could be no light without dark. This was easier to think about than to do.
At the moment, my buried trauma was crowded and dense with the smoke of fear.
Francisco pushed. “You and I will have to discuss this change in strategy. Is that a deal? Are you ready?”
“No!” At that moment, I could not move past the fear. I could not get my mind to integrate any new information. I just couldn’t.
Francisco knew I was struggling and backed off. “Okay, but you know it is going to happen, sooner or later.”
I did know, but I stuffed the information down into another section of my brain and said, “Not today.”
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About the Book
Wholeness (My Healing Journey from Ritual Abuse) is the courageous, unfathomable story of a woman’s recovery from a decade of childhood satanic ritual abuse.
- The book provides hope and inspiration for the estimated hundreds of thousands of victims of such torture.
- For counselors and other psychology professionals, her journey offers techniques and approaches that should benefit other survivors.
- And for the general public, the story sheds light on the subjects of ritual abuse, as well as how the mind stores and can recover traumatic memories.
Wholeness also demonstrates the undeniable power of repressed memory and disassociation. As a psychology doctoral student, Suzie Burke (pen name) studied how the mind can repress and wall off traumatic events for defensive purposes. The ability of the mind to hide traumatic memories deep within our unconscious mind in disassociated parts of ourselves is well documented with those who have survived early-age sexual abuse, torture and many other instances of severe psychological trauma.
In her first-hand experience, Dr. Burke tells how the reality of her own childhood was hidden in her unconscious until events nearly three decades later provided triggers that could not be ignored. Her journey to wholeness was filled with incidents of re-living events which included body memories of physiological shock, choking and vomiting.
The account goes beyond the psychological elements of her recovery. It is also a spiritual journey to wholeness in which she discovers that she is indeed a loving, compassionate woman.
About the Author
Suzie Burke, R.N., Ph.D. is the pen name of a real woman who is a registered nurse and licensed professional counselor with a doctorate in psychology.
She sought professional counseling for herself when she experienced an episode of major depression. Initially, she assumed the mental and physical signs of her depression were caused by the family’s move across the country with her business executive husband. She discovered, however, her depression was deeper and darker than most.
In order to survive the trauma of horrific ritual abuse she suffered as a child, her mind had long ago repressed those memories. The10-year path to health, happiness and wholeness was a result of a savvy counselor, her own determination not to let her perpetrators “win,” plus a family that never wavered.
Suzie Burke is now thriving. It has been nearly a decade since she ended her inward journey of self discovery. She has not, as of this writing, had any further triggers that caused attacks: no unexplainable vomiting, no shock episodes, no migraines, no strange body memories—nothing. Her life is now joyful and peaceful—not perfect, but far better than it was. She now practices as a licensed professional counselor, fulfilling not only her life-long dream but her soul’s purpose.