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Children subjected to coercive techniques often have histories of severe abuse, neglect, multiple out-of-home placements, and adoption. Practitioners of coercive therapy often tell [adoptive] parents these methods are the only ones that will work to keep their child from becoming a serial murderer or sociopath.
We know that people with a history of abuse and traumatic losses are more sensitized to traumatic experiences and retraumatization when exposed to stimuli or physical coercion that is likely to remind them of the original abusive situation. Coercive therapy is terroristic and abusive as well as dangerous. Literature confirms that similar techniques are used in brainwashing: The subject is degraded, belittled, may be physically abused, is told it is for his benefit, and is thus coerced to consent. Hacker (1976), an acknowledged expert in terrorism, writes, “Coercion, having obscured its brutal origins, is then at its most triumphant when the victims are compelled to experience submission as a voluntary decision.”
Coercive techniques are antithetical to all we know about helping survivors of trauma. Trauma treatment is intended to empower survivors—not to frighten them, have them give up control, and make them assume a submissive posture. Coercive techniques foster the development of trauma bonds based in terror; they do not facilitate healthy attachment.
We would not be permitted to use these methods on prisoners of war or convicted felons, but we permit it for our children—children who have no voice.
”6 notes
and the word “resolution” is triggering as fuck to me because you know what that usually means as a survivor?
it means, its up to you to forgive and forget and transform your abusers/oppressors and if you choose to be like “fuck you, go away forever, and heres a punch in the face while im at it”, which is a perfectly reasonable reaction to abuse,
people come down on you about “compassion” and “sympathy”, “peace”, “love” and “resolution”. not them for doing it to you, but you for bein angry and resentful about it.
i hope you mean everybody but the survivor is gonna resolve shit! alls ima have time for is resolving my healing and ima need support for that too!
i hate that “resolution” always comes with comfort for the abuser and more of a burden for the survivors.
maybe i dont wanna resolve shit, maybe i just want you eradicated from my life and the planet and that is MY resolution!
Yes, all of this. We don’t need to forgive our abusers or talk to them to “heal”. We’re allowed to hate them. fuck forgiveness. fuck being polite. fuck “meeting them halfway” because they obviously didn’t give a fuck about the person they were abusing in the first place.
the bold.
129 notes (via glitterlion & bad-dominicana)
Can you imagine a website on domestic violence (but isn’t child abuse domestic violence?) offering advice to an abuser on how to get back together with their victim?
Why are children who run away from home criminalized?
Why do we make it next to…
Cutting my birth family out of my life was one of the best decisions I ever made. I can’t even comprehend how much happier my life has been since I decided that no, I didn’t owe them anything, I didn’t need to have any sort of relationship with them, they didn’t deserve another chance, and that I deserved to put myself first.
But this is so true, I’ve had all sorts of people say things that basically amount to ‘give them a second chance’, never mind that I was put into foster care because they were abusive and neglectful, people saying, ‘Oh but I’m sure they loved you’ like that makes it all better, like I should keep quiet and forgive them.
It is ten times harder for adopted children to break the silence about abuse. Adoption industry leaders and “experts” who’ve founded foster care paradigms dictate verbatim that the public must, “believe the parents, not the child.”
The lifelong demands placed upon adoptees to be utterly grateful to our “saviors” (both the family and society we are adopted into) intersects to lethal consequence with the Eurocentric anthropologically deviant ableism that systemically stigmatizes adoptees as serial killers before we even clear puberty.
As someone who was also adopted and then subsequently put into foster care as my “saviors” continued to escape any and all consequences for their criminal abuse, I am truly SO FREAKING GLAD you managed to escape your abusers. Most of us who go through “disrupted adoptions” aren’t so lucky to survive to such an extent. We’re the secrets that not even the most liberal outfits are willing to countenance, because our very existence is a slap in the face to the bullshit White Savior Industrial Complex narrative that must always invariably end happily in some softlit ‘Third World Solidarity’ power trip-cum-fantasy.
Take care and stay gloriously ungrateful. X
107 notes (via theterribleandthegreat & dickensian-werewolf)
Mia McKenzie, creator of Black Girl Dangerous, author of The Summer We Got Free (via etiquette-etc)
i think i gasped a little when i read this because it’s almost word-for-word my therapist’s explanation of why i learned to be anxious as a child (“if your dad might blow up at any minute then your anxiety protects you”) and why it’s not helping me now (“he’s not here anymore”).
(via dorightwoman)
6,056 notes (via hyunsooklee & etiquette-etc)
(Source: rabbitinthemoon)
6,054 notes (via poc-creators & rabbitinthemoon)
1.
a small girl wriggles around on the couch under a blanket
rubs the soft corner against her cheek.
the doctor enters the room, closes the door. he tells the mother to lay on top of the small girl. when the small girl screams, her sound is muffled by the weight of the mother’s love.
the mother grunts. i love you so much. don’t you want to love me too?
2.
This results in a lack of ability to attach or to be genuinely affectionate to others.
According to The Center’s treatment protocol, if the child ‘shuts down’ (i.e., refuses to comply), he or she may be threatened with detainment for the day at the clinic or forced placement in a temporary foster home; this is explained to the child as a consequence of not choosing to be a ‘family boy or girl.’
3.
Dad: Do you think that maybe you’re gay because your birth mother couldn’t care for you?
Me: Huh?
Mom: Yes, well I’ve read about this sort of thing as a symptom of Attachment Disorder.
Me: Are you fucking kidding me?
Dad: Well we’re just saying, maybe if you would have been able to breastfeed and bond with her then you wouldn’t…well, you know.
Me: Like pussy?
Mom: Elizabeth!
Dad: Chase girls around.
4.
deep tissue massage, aversive tickling, punishments related to food and water intake, enforced eye contact, requiring children to submit totally to adult control over all their needs, barring normal social relationships outside the primary caretaker, encouraging children to regress to infant status, reparenting, attachment parenting, or techniques designed to provoke cathartic emotional discharge
5.
My therapist has no fucking idea what she’s doing, but I don’t have anyone else so I let her do things. She says she is going to “re-parent” me. I let her cradle my adult body in her thick arms, like a baby against her breast. She smells of lavender and her skin feels mealy on my cheek. I tell her it hurts, but she encourages me to stay with it, stay with her. She coos and talks to me in a baby voice, tells me how much she loves me. I try to remember my mother, pretend to cry. After a few sessions of this, she just stops. She never suggests it again.
6.
the following sequence of events is described: (1) therapist ‘forces control’ by holding (which produces child ‘rage’); (2) rage leads to child ‘capitulation’ to the therapist, as indicated by the child breaking down emotionally (‘sobbing’); (3) the therapist takes advantage of the child’s capitulation by showing nurturance and warmth; (4) this new trust allows the child to accept ‘control’ by the therapist and eventually the parent
7.
Andrea Swenson, Age 13
Lucas Ciambrone, Age 10
David Polreis, Age 2
Krystal Tibbets, Age 3
Candace Newmaker, Age 10
Logan Marr, Age 5
Cassandra Killpatrick, Age 4
8.
You are so special. You were chosen.
It is perfect, you are perfect and we want you to always know this.
There is an ache you would not understand, dull and insecure.
Can’t you just be grateful you weren’t thrown in a dumpster?
No, my real parents.
You’re such a pretty girl, yes you are! Who’s mama’s pretty girl?!
anyone remotely connected with adoption and children’s rights needs to be following this writer.
15 notes (via terriblegurl)
Anne Lamott (via feministartdegree)
i mean really this should be the survivor anthem (other than destiny’s child Survivor duh), because fuck past abusers who get pissy over you airing out their dirty laundry
(via sluteverbabe)
bolded for emphasis, we need more anthems, we need more mantras to repeat when the other ones stop working
(via trashydyke)
(Source: ithurtssomuch)
6,892 notes (via yalesappho & ithurtssomuch)
[tw: abuse]
“When I was a kid, I used to go over to friend’s houses and notice that their parents never seemed to bully them or hit them. I assumed this was just because they had a friend over, and that their parents terrorized them all the time when I wasn’t around. I didn’t identify my situation as abuse or reach out to a teacher or counselor because I thought everyone had to live through this. I was probably twenty by the time I realized that some families really don’t humiliate and belittle their kids, ever. I wish someone had gotten that through to me. I wish instead of saying vaguely and uncomfortably “you can talk to the counselor if you have problems at home,” my teachers had said flat-out “it is not normal to be afraid of your parents, and not normal to be unhappy whenever you’re at home, and you can ask us if you’re not sure if something’s okay or not.” I wish someone could have taught me that wanting to be safe was human instead of selfish. And I’m probably going to make a whole post about this so I won’t belabor the point right now, but this is why feminists care about media and memes that normalize rape. (Or that stigmatize the words “rape” and “rapist,” but enthusiastically normalize the act of forcing sex on people, as long as you don’t call it that.) Because it tells people that rape is normal, that it’s a popular and accepted way to express romance and/or dominance, and we can’t assume that everyone absorbing this culture knows “of course that’s not how it really works.””—
The Pervocracy, Everyone else is doing it… right? (via slutwalksignideas)
!!! I wish someone could have taught me that wanting to be safe was human instead of selfish.
(via newmodelminority)
^Oh, this. Totally and completely this. No one outside of my family ever knew anything about what happened in the house of my APs until I ran away at 14. And even today they think my want as a teenager to live in a violence free environment was selfish. Nooo, I just disliked being punched, kicked and dragged. Silly me!
6,759 notes (via fairyonacidbanging & slutwalksignideas)
Carol Forgash and Jim Knipe, from “Healing the Heart of Trauma” (via disabledbyculture)
i want everyone to read this who has ever questioned why a survivor still has a relationships with the person that violated them. this is one of the reasons & others too.
(via afrafemme)
1,054 notes (via lostintrafficlights & disabledbyculture)
You privileged fuckers srsly think that a little transracially adopted girl getting dumped in foster care and left stranded in legal limbo isn’t really relevant because it “happened a few years ago” and eventually got placed in (yet) another family?
I could post tons of articles on adopted children who are abandoned, abused, neglected, and even killed by their Western adoptive parents, because this shit keeps happening, it’s NOT an anomaly nor can it be isolated to the past. Why do you think countries as diverse as Russia, Guatemala, and Nepal (just to name a few) have scrambled to close off international adoption to more “civilized” countries? lol, cause they jealous of your “freedums?”
Thanks for educating me on how becoming part of yet ANOTHER new family mitigates having lost your entire birth family, then being kicked out of your adoptive parents’ home into foster care about years of living as their child…
p.s. LOL, white ppl.
(Source: brandx)
8 notes
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