Victim, Survivor or Phoenix? The Choice is Yours

Important Message: This blog contains intense content and may be difficult to read. However, if you’ve had childhood wounds that are interfering with the quality of your lives, it’s a must-read. I wrote to help others who can identify with the content or have loved ones who may also benefit. I hope it brings you and/or them to self-discovery and healing.

VICTIM, SURVIVOR, OR PHOENIX? The Choice is Yours

Summary

Life doesn’t always go according to plan. We all face moments where we feel overwhelmed, trapped, or powerless, as though the circumstances around us define who we are. But what if that’s not true? What if you had the power to redefine your story?

In Victim, Survivor, or Phoenix: The Choice is Yours, author Joan E. Childs explores the three transformative stages that everyone experiences after trauma: the victim, the survivor, and the phoenix. Through personal insights and empowering stories, Joane invites you to challenge your mindset and step into the full potential of your life.

Nature vs Nurture?

As mental health clinicians, we have often used the above phrase in an attempt to help our clients examine their pasts to better understand their present. I have been in private practice since 1978 and have been known as an expert in Inner Child work. I have pondered why siblings who have had similar childhoods often turn out so differently in their adult lives. As the first affiliate of the John Bradshaw Center in the United States, this has been the core of my work since 1989.

We have been taught to believe that nature vs nurture has been the cause and effect of choices and behaviors. So, the question is, how do three or more siblings from the same family of origin turn out so differently? Is it the wiring in their brain? Is it a cognitive decision they make? Why do some turn out to be victims, others survivors, and some become a phoenix, not unlike the mythological bird that rises from the ashes only to become even more empowered than ever thought imaginable?

The Wounds of Childhood

It has been said that if you have had at least one person in your childhood who loved you and made you feel like you mattered, you have a chance of overcoming a traumatic childhood. If no one in your life made you feel loved, your chances of growing into a healthy, mature adult are unlikely, improbable, or perhaps even impossible. Your ability to self-regulate will be affected along with your self-worth, self-image, self-esteem, and will that has run riot.

What if I suggested this is not actually true. After all, you all know of people who came from wonderful families who provided safety, support, love, and nurturing that turned out to become criminals, drug addicts, and alcoholics. In contrast, others who came from abuse, abandonment, neglect, and poverty somehow grew up to become pillars of communities, leaders, and heroes. In his movie Crimes and Misdemeanors, Woody Allen effectively illustrates this point. What’s the reason for such disparity if their childhoods were similar? I don’t think any of us can really answer that without considering a plethora of perpetual possibilities.

Many celebrities have marched through a trajectory of interminably, tragic, and tormented childhoods and have been triumphant in their lives. Look at the biographies of Marilyn Monroe, Oprah Winfrey, Halle Berry, Naomi Watts, Elton John, Sidney Poitier, Louis Armstrong, and many others who were determined to rise above their childhood wounds and have chosen recovery over acting out or giving up. The need to repeat the past is part of the human condition. Freud called it repetition compulsion, and Alice Miller, MD, author of THE DRAMA OF THE GIFTED CHILD, defined it as the act of absurdity. You might be one as well. Why do some fall through the cracks while others rise to heights beyond their wildest dreams? Perhaps determination might be the magic word that sets them free of their most probable destinies.

Is it Nature or Free Will?

Robert Sapolsky, a neuroendocrinology researcher, author, stress expert, biologist, and neuroscientist, as well as an American academic and primatologist, a professor at Stanford University and graduate of Harvard, (whew) believes there is no such thing as free will. So, the question is, how do three or more siblings from the same family of origin turn out so differently? Is it the wiring in their brain? The cognitive decisions and choices they make? Why do some turn out to be victims, others survivors, and some become a Phoenix, not unlike the mythological bird that rises from the ashes only to become even more empowered than ever thought imaginable?

His argument is based on causal determinism, which states that everything that happens results from prior causes. He believes that our actions are determined by our biology, hormones, childhood, and life circumstances outside our control. In addition, he claims that there is no moral responsibility because our behavior is determined; Sapolsky believes that no one is morally responsible for what they do. For example, he believes that murderers technically don’t deserve to be punished, even though they can be locked up to keep others safe. Sapolsky’s book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, refutes biological and philosophical arguments for free will.

Well…I don’t exactly agree. It would make my life’s work a sham. What I do believe is that human beings have the possibility of change if they make that choice. The brain has plasticity! It takes courage, time, commitment, determination, and sometimes money. It is unequivocally the best investment one can make in their life. Here are two stories that illustrate how people can thrive after childhood trauma that could have kept them from having the life they deserve, but instead chose to rise above their past and become the person they were intended to be.

Sharon: From Trauma to Healing

Sharon, a 53-year-old woman and client, had no memory of her early childhood before age 17. She revealed that her biological father perpetrated sexual abuse during her lifetime until she had the courage to escape from the family home when she was 45 years old. Using hypnosis and Neuro-linguistic Programming, I was able to regress her to discover that when she was 5 years old, she first became his sexual partner. The secret he made her promise to keep had been repressed all through her life until she entered treatment with me. Her childhood memory was so reprehensible that it had been erased from her conscious mind, dormant, deep in the recesses of the Amygdala, which is part of the mammalian/limbic system, the center of emotions. Its purpose is to stockpile trauma with the positive intention of protecting us. However, it can only do that for so long. If left untreated, it will eventually impact the quality of our lives in numerous ways.

Dissociation was the defense mechanism her unconscious chose to help her cope with what her father perpetrated upon her when she was too young and vulnerable to defend herself. Using hypnosis while doing Inner Child Work, she recalled how he had her touch him inappropriately while she was on a playground turntable. He brainwashed her into believing that it was showing love to her Daddy.

Despicable? Disgusting? Reprehensible? It gets worse.

Her father convinced her that his love for her was the best any father could give to his child. To cover up his pedophile acts, he supported her interest in athletics, mainly basketball, attending all her games, teaching her the guitar, and giving her voice lessons at the cost of having intercourse with her as she grew into adolescence and adulthood. He would be the only man in her life and kept her prisoner to his needs and desires. Not allowed to see other boys, he kept a vigil on her, demanding that she come home after school each day. He would go into her room in the evenings while she was asleep to molest her several times during the week.

To make matters worse, her mother was aware of her husband’s actions and did nothing to stop them. She learned that he had done the same to her older sister, who left home right after high school. Sharon stayed and suffered until she met a woman who became her life partner and helped her escape in the middle of the night when she was 45 years old. Her wreckage caught up with her as it always will, and at age 53, she was determined to get treatment and searched for a therapist who specialized in Inner Child Work. After much due diligence, she found me online and set up an appointment to help her overcome the trauma from her past.

She flew in from another state halfway across the country and spent five days with me doing trauma work, 8 hours a day. After five days of breaking through the past, she felt empowered and lighter, having given her Inner Child the love she was denied and deserved.

I suggested she write her story, which became a book, and share it with others who may have suffered sexual abuse. Her recovery was her mission. Today, at 70 years of age, she is thriving as an inspirational speaker, delivering hope to others who need to hear her story as part of her own healing and recovery, as well as what could be theirs. By helping others, she continues to help herself.

Isabelle: Shattered Soul to Emotional Recovery

This was the worst case I encountered in my entire career. You might be wondering how anything could be worse than Sharon’s story. I thought the same until I met Isabelle. In her mid-fifties, she found me through a book she had read on Complex PTSD. After a telephone conversation, she scheduled an appointment. Isabelle was also in her mid-fifties, charming, beautiful, extremely intelligent, and very well-kept. It was clear she came from money…lots of it! She was dressed exquisitely in designer wear from top to bottom, complete with jewelry to match. One could never guess what I was about to learn.

Unlike Sharon, Isabelle remembered everything that happened to her from the time she was very young, 4 or 5 years old. After an initial session and having read her Life History Questionnaire prior to her visit, her childhood stories were unleashed like a volcanic eruption, with metaphoric lava cascading down, coupled with explicit content.

Having been a psychotherapist since 1978, now in my mid-eighties, it was difficult for me to maintain my composure. Over the next few months, I learned probably the most tragic and unimaginable history of my entire career. Isabelle’s misfortune lies in her relationship with her stepfather, whom she thought was her biological father until her mid-20s. From early childhood until she married and moved out of her family home at age 18, Isabelle was her stepfather’s concubine and sex slave.

Her memories of hearing his footsteps coming for her when she was only 8 years old, realizing she was trapped with no one home to protect her, terrified her. Her mother had abandoned her many times, only to meet with the lover she had at the time. She knew the danger that lay ahead for Isabelle alone in the house with him. She knew Isabelle would be defiled, but was not willing to protect her daughter as she was mentally ill and hospitalized several times during Isabelle’s childhood.

Isabelle would hear his footsteps as he walked down the hall towards her bedroom. The sound elicited severe anxiety that would manifest into a panic attack. With no way to escape, she had no choice but to surrender to what was about to happen, as it had so many times before. It was always the same. She was to accompany him to his boat, where 8 or 9 of his “buddies” would be waiting for them. During the entire trip to the dock, he would fill her with lies and promises that she would be fine and have fun with his friends. He reassured her that nothing would ever harm her. Not unlike Sharon’s father, he too supported her wishes and dreams in exchange for sexually abusing her.

She knew she would have to do what her father expected, as she had many times before. Isabelle was between the ages of 8 and 10 years old. She had to perform fellatio on each man. How she survived this atrocity is beyond belief or imagination. Her two sisters were also part of his sexual advances, but were spared the boat trip. She was the chosen child. One sister became an alcoholic, drug addict, and criminal, held behind bars; the other committed suicide.

I need not go into any more detail about Isabelle’s life story. I will tell you it gets worse, but there is no need to embellish what is already a deplorable history. The important thing is how it turned out. She had many conflicts and concerns regarding her safety with men. She had fear of entrapment issues, co-existing with fear of abandonment, that would throw her into a crisis for insignificant happenings when her partners would suddenly be out of her sight. She had many relationships, including three marriages and divorces, and three children with two different husbands, all while pursuing a law degree that led to a career as a prosecutor and ultimately, the mayor of a large city. How did she become the person she was intended to be while her two sisters fell through the cracks of addiction, criminal acts, and suicide?

Isabelle was determined to get well, despite having already achieved success in all her pursuits prior to seeking treatment. What may look like success may, in fact, be a shattered, frightened woman who was able to create a well-developed survival suit that was a cover for a shattered soul. In her case, she presented all the right stuff, but inside her perfect presentation was a frightened, wounded child in a power suit.

Despite the well-woven survival suit, Isabelle chose to find her authentic self. She had to go through hell once more to discover her essence, shed her survival suit, heal her broken childhood, and restore her sanity. She committed to treatment and learned how to heal her inner child that had been denied the love she needed and deserved. She learned how to reparent herself and became the poster child of emotional recovery. She was determined to love herself and dignify what had been stolen from her as a child. She exemplifies how dreams are possible even if they had once been destroyed.

Epilogue: Transforming Trauma into Empowerment

Guaranteed that this is a very long and intense blog, but very valuable to you, my readers. Early abuse, neglect, and abandonment can predict our future if not corrected. The long, hard road leads to a path of discovery and healing. Not everyone knows about this. Not everyone chooses a path to recovery. Too often, people go to their deaths, never knowing who they are. The poet says, What I am is me; for that I came

You can’t always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes you’ll find you get what you need.
– Mick Jagger, THE ROLLING STONES

My new book, DO YOU HATE THE ONE YOU LOVE? Strategies to Heal and Save Your Relationship speaks to these issues. No one escapes adversity. The choice is yours: victim, survivor, or Phoenix!