For First Time Visitors

If you are a first time visitor to this blog, I invite you to start from the beginning, especially if you are unfamiliar with the potential emotional impact of long-term child abuse.

Trigger caution to unhealed survivors!

Understanding the Incomprehensible

Children of incest or long-term sexual abuse grow up to be wounded adults with complicated emotional issues. Unfortunately, some symptoms are misinterpreted or often dismissed as "crazy", only serving to maintain a tormented victim status. We, as a society, have the power to change this dynamic. Each of us can make a difference.

Sep 14, 2008

Around and around and around




One method very easily available to those wanting to cause a child to dissociate is one vehemently denied by even some who work with survivors. I'm not sure why it sounds so absurd. Do you recall ever being spun around by your hands or a hand and foot by a playful relative because you thought it was fun to be dizzy afterward? In such cases, the child can yell out if it's too much and the adult can (hopefully) gauge when fun crosses over into scary.

A child spun around with the intention of disorientation becomes frightened by the "spinning" alone. Unfortunately, there is usually at least one other element to overwhelm and terrify the child. Survivors worldwide have recalled being spun seemingly endlessly on devices similar to playground rides where someone will run around to spin the others seated on the ride (a roundabout?). A large circle on a spinning device--think very fast merry go round--or even a swivel chair can be used. It doesn't have to be sophisticated. Being dangled upside down in a variety of ways is both terrifying and disorienting. Add dunking in water, bright lights, insects or snakes and you have a trauma situation. Further add a drug that causes another element of disorientation and blurred vision or possibly hallucinations, and you can assure the child will have to "leave the body" to endure what is happening.

I would ask why this is so unbelievable. Possibly the disbelief is in the element of intentionality. My point is that intentional dissociation is the main objective of organized pedophiles. There are many names "out there" for what is done. The names given to such a simple act of torment causes people to dismiss the entirety of what is said. The reality is that "spinning" can be connected by very sophisticated pedophiles to certain memories and even perpetrators. It works like this: the survivor begins to have memories surface about an incident (place, date, perp, some tiny detail) and the survivor immediately is overwhelmed with strong feelings of dizziness, nausea, and other factors to take the attention off the memory and onto what is happening with the body. We don't have to understand how this is done. Frankly, I don't want to know that much.

As a survivor, I had to wade through many memories where an element of "spinning" had to be processed to stop the horrid feeling. A very traumatic memory connected to spinning can cause a survivor to be down (incapable of functioning) for days or even weeks at a time. Apparently barns are popular sites for abuse to include spinning. It is a common element in the memories of many survivors at least in the United States. They have lots of room in a protected environment. They are also nice and isolated.

Spinning is one way a child may try to tell a safe adult--turning around frequently until losing her balance, doing somersaults endlessly, wanting to be spun around repeatedly. Messages can only come out in indirect ways if the child has dissociated. And what about babies who have no voice or ability to act out?

We all know about shaken baby syndrome. Someone could spin a baby around in any number of ways to the point where the baby was overwhelmed. The baby can't tell and it leaves no marks. This is the pedophile mindset. It's very gritty. Toughen your senses so we can obliterate it. Please.

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