Tag Archives: abuse
When Speaking the Truth Changes the Dynamic: Reclaiming Agency After Harm
For a few years I felt helpless about something awful that had happened to me. An abuser had sexually assaulted me, and for a long time it felt like the story ended there: harm done, no meaningful response from any … Continue reading
Posted in Abuse
Tagged abuse, accountability, neglect, speaking, speaking up, truth, truth-telling, voice
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The Cost of Unmet Needs: Trauma Imposed Across a Lifetime
The worst part of my story is not the harm done to me at the hands of caregivers throughout my life, or the institutional betrayal when organizations protect the abuser. It is how many other people have similar experiences. Every … Continue reading
Posted in PTSD
Tagged abuse, harmful treatment, healthcare, Medical PTSD, Medicine, psychiatry, Trauma, unmet needs
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Why I Don’t Go to Hospitals Anymore
I’m done with hospitals. I value care, but these environments reliably cause harm. I know this from numerous experiences that involve virtually every department. Hospitals are built around speed, liability management, billing codes, and rigid hierarchies. Human regulation is not … Continue reading
Posted in Healthcare
Tagged abuse, accountability, assault, doctors, exploitation, harm, hospitals, para-police, predatory doctor, Stress, trust
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Stuck on Red Alert: The Hidden Harm of Seeking Help
For most of the last seven years, I haven’t been able to feel the normal range of human emotions. Joy, peace, gratitude, awe, and beauty have been mostly absent. Most of the time, I can only think about these things. … Continue reading
Posted in Abuse, Healthcare
Tagged abuse, awe, emotions, healthcare, hypervigilance, joy, Medicine, peace, recovery, Red Alert, wonder
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Creating My Own Justice: Art, Words, and the Nervous System
I keep talking about what happened to me because the lack of justice makes it impossible to “let it go,” as if that is even a thing. The psychiatric abuse and forced FGM surgery didn’t just happen; they continue to … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability
Tagged abuse, art, expression, failure of justice, integration, interpersonal neurobiology, IPNB, justice, justice making, medical abuse, medical harm, painting, process, recovery, watercolors, witnessing
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Trauma and the Anti-Human System: Why Psychiatric ‘Care’ Fails
A pain specialist referred me to the Johns Hopkins Hospital Pain Treatment Program (PTP) because it is supposed to be one of the top hospitals in the country for pain. When you’re living inside a body that’s been pushed past … Continue reading
Posted in Abuse, Psychiatry
Tagged abuse, Hopkins, Johns Hopkins, lions, medications, pain, pain treatment, psych medications, psychiatric hospital, psychiatry
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The Madness I Lived, the Meaning I Made: A Cohesive Narrative For an Extreme Life
Creating a cohesive narrative of one’s life is one of the most powerful ways to make sense of what we’ve been through. It allows us to see patterns, understand our survival strategies, and reclaim a sense of agency in a … Continue reading
Posted in PTSD
Tagged abuse, clarity, cohesive narrative, narrative, PTSD, resistance, story
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An Open Letter to ChristianaCare Patient and Family Relations
To Denise, Charlie, Kellie, Manasi, and Jennifer of ChristianaCare Patient and Family Relations: Since ChristianaCare banned me from contacting any of its employees because I won’t stop talking about the gynecologist who performed medicalized Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) on me, … Continue reading
From Trauma to Truth: How I Became Anti-Psychiatry
I became anti-psychiatry because of what psychiatry did to me and what I saw it do to others. I walked in with severe Complex PTSD. They put me on Lexapro. The suicidal ideations started about 3 weeks after. When I … Continue reading
Posted in Psychiatry
Tagged abuse, anti-psychiatry, Behavioral Health, chemical imbalance, control, hierarchy, IPNB, Mental Health, psychiatry, Trauma
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Truth-Telling is Refusing to Let the Story End the Way They Wrote It
Trauma recovery doesn’t come from “getting over it.” It emerges from changing your relationship with what happened. There are many ways to do this: through story, compassionate witnessing, individual work, and collective work. But a key way to reclaim your … Continue reading
Posted in Accountability
Tagged abuse, ChristianaCare, painting, recovery, Rockford Center for Behavioral Health, speaking, survival, systemic abuse, truth, writing
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