TRIGGER WARNING – THIS POST DISCUSSES SEXUAL ABUSE 

My name is Elizabeth and I am a survivor of sexual abuse. I suffered the worst abuse during my first years if you can call any sexual abuse worse than any other.

I think the fact that I was so young made the pedophiles clamor over me like bees to a honey pot with my so-called father as the dictator. I was loaned out, gang raped, and experimented on like a lab rat. Despite my young age, I remember almost everything that was done to me because it was so traumatic. My young mind couldn’t process it and replaced those images with sheer terror.

I didn’t have the words to explain and I cannot remember their names or all their faces. I remember it as a young child experiencing sex with someone quadruple their size – terrifying! The sexual abuse I suffered for years after with my so-called father was also terrifying but it is those earliest memories of trauma that are the worst.

In this article, I want to share with you how I took my healing into my own hands and over-wrote the most painful trauma memories with my adult understanding of what happened to me. By doing this, I have changed the way those memories are stored in my brain and they do not hurt as much.

I will never forget, nor will I stop hurting but I have found an inner peace within me, which helps when I look forward to the future.

It’s only in recent years that I have had the strength in my own mind to go back into my past and focus on what actually was happening to me. I decided I needed to know. The truth hurt because as an adult, I can now understand how much they hurt me, not just physically but emotionally too. My brain remembered it all in 4D cinema as I went back seeing and feeling it with adult eyes. I reached out to the younger me on a deep level, reassuring my younger self that I understood. I will never forgive them for what they did to me but I have forgiven myself for being there.

I have accepted that there was no way I could have fought my abusers and escaped from it. I have accepted my past and recognized how it has affected me growing up into the adult I am today. After looking at pictures of myself as a young child, I was shocked to see how vulnerable  It has taken years to get to this point but I feel at peace with myself.

Accepting strange child narratives from the past

I recently had a CT scan in the hospital. It made me remember vividly when I had a CT scan as a young girl and how terrified I was. I had a lot of severe vaginal infections and STDs due to the abuse. The evidence was obvious for all to see and yet nobody did. I know now that the doctors needed to do a CT scan to find out if my kidneys were damaged. My thoughts went back to that day. Mother did not explain why I had to go into a machine and the doctors didn’t talk to me because I was so young and directed all their talk to mother. I remember hearing how “I couldn’t understand” so they would speak to my mother and not me. To a child that is one of the most degrading things an adult can say. A child can actually understand a lot more than given credit by adults.

The worst thing an adult can do is ignore the child, talk over it, or worse – lie. All of those happened on that day and it has haunted me for years. Now, I finally have closure as I understand what was happening to me that day and why.

My adult self let the memories of the CT scanner flood my brain as I lay inside it on the gurney and heard it scanning my body. It took about 15 minutes and then a technician injected a dye for a second high-resolution scan. That feeling when the dye enters the veins and runs through the body all the way down to the lower abdomen was something I recognized immediately.

It was the warmth of it, spreading throughout my body and filling me with an odd sensation as my memory floated back to the young me going through the exact same sensation. This time I understood what was done to me. This time, the CT machine, or the spaceship that the young me called it, did not frighten me. I knew I was safe and that the machine was helping me to find a diagnosis. In my childhood, I believed I had been abducted by aliens and brainwashed. My mind made up a story of that dye being some kind of drug and a control chip in my body, making me bad and forcing me to do bad things.

The brain is an incredible organ. It absorbs all information and stores it. Most often we can recall those memories at will and remember happy times. Trauma memories are not like that as they are stored incorrectly in the brain due to the nature of their characteristics.

The individual cannot understand what happened and why because of the horror attached to them. I hope in this article, I have explained how I managed to re-write those traumatic memories and file them away in storage where they do not hurt me as much.

I do hope that you, my survivor friends out there, will be able to do the same and get your peace one day.

My name is Elizabeth and I am a survivor.

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer and Terms of Service.

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Save

Elizabeth Woods

Elizabeth Woods grew up in a world of brutal sex offenders, murderers, and inconceivably neglectful adults. She suffered sexual abuse throughout her childhood and witnessed unspeakable events. Elizabeth survived in an environment where most people would not. She is now able to help other survivors heal from trauma through her writing and blogs. Elizabeth is passionate about spreading awareness of what it is like to survive after trauma. There is always hope.

Elizabeth is the author of several books and has written her memoir, telling her childhood story: The Sex-Offender’s Daughter: A True Story of Survival Against All Odds, available on Amazon Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Offenders-Daughter-Story-Survival-Against-ebook/dp/B0BBSV97VF/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=0pSdX&content-id=amzn1.sym.cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_p=cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_r=134-9913214-5397651&pd_rd_wg=MPpMc&pd_rd_r=d375a758-2d9b-4c6e-9aee-52c1f5a4e6f7&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk

Elizabeth is also the author of “Living with Complex PTSD” and the Cedar’s Port Fiction series: “Saving Joshua”, “Protecting Sarah”, “Guarding Noah” and “Bringing Back Faith” available here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQRNST2B?binding=kindle_edition&qid=1711883073&sr=8-2&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tkin