Silent Lucidity: Finding the Words Through the Illusion of Normalcy

By Olivia Benson

In Judith Hermans book Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, she emphasized how the conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. Finding the words to tell my story has been a long journey. My coping was entrenched, and denial was strong. Healing from the messiness of childhood incest in and of itself is so shrouded with secrecy, shame, and humiliation that putting the words together in a way that will envelop an understanding of this atrocity that refused to be buried in my mind meant allowing myself to be vulnerable to the possibility of being shunned and dismissed as crazy. It is about getting well enough to speak about without emotionally unraveling and becoming vulnerable to the stigmas that get attached to mental health. While I have learned the significance of remaining silent until emotional health is obtained, the silence kept me isolated and ashamed for far too long. My book, my words, will shed light on how complicated the journey to health and wellness is while trying to maintain normalcy. It entwines normal life experiences and looks closely at the systems (family/relationships, educational, medical, mental health) and how they either helped or hurt the process. Without looking at the progression of my life, one could not see the dynamics of recovery. Sharing this journey will provide practitioners, both medical and mental health, with a personal perspective of the road to recovery. More importantly, I have tried to communicate my journey in a way that will allow all of us to come a little closer to facing the unspeakable, to take the power out of the word incest, and to help adult survivors break the cycle of silence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546208181

Olivia Benson

Olivia Benson received her M.S. in Educational Counseling in 1994, and her B.A. in Social Science in 1991; with a focus on human development, psychology and women’s studies. She has worked in the mental health field for two decades. Her work experience includes working for social services, not-for-profit agencies, state mental health facilities, and the school system. She believes that, because of the silence that she was bound to, her educational pursuits and work experiences assisted her with developing the necessary discernment skills that aided her with finding the words that are written in this book. For sure, every experience and every life transition became an opportunity to observe, grow and discover what was typical, average and normal development. Olivia believes that the examination and analysis of one’s own unrealized spiritual or intellectual capacity is something that everyone could benefit from, but emphasizes that it is essential for victims of childhood trauma to do the work of self-exploration. She knows that healing requires a lot of personal investment of time and that recovery work is arduous. Her journey was done in silence and it was a lonely place to be. Her story does not spend a lot of time on the act of incest because it is, in her opinion, the cultural taboos that keep incest silent, which kept her locked in pain. She believes that until we can take the sting out of the word, incest, people will remain trapped in shame and humiliation.

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© 2017 Olivia Benson. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/08/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5462-0820-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-0819-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-0818-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017914089

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Dedication

Introduction

Foreword

Why Now?

Denial

Finding the Words

Remembering/Reconstructing

Disconnection

Numb and Automatic

Withholding Truth

Re-Education/Boundaries

Motherhood: Openness to Challenge

Mourning: From Pain to Power

Changing Patterns: Learning to Fight

Mindfulness: Self-Trust/Reconciling

Humiliation: Anger/Rage

Embracing Uncertainty

Healthy Detachment

About The Author

Bibliography

Dedication

To my mother, with love: Writing this book is not about bringing up the ugliness of a messy childhood. It is about finding acceptance and love. Your strength carried me and still does. While I didn’t always agree with the unconditional love you showed your husband, my father; I do honor you. As an adult, I now know the many benefits of your decision to remain silent. I also recognize how talking about any of this would have complicated moving forward because there wasn’t a simple resolution. Your silence was strength. My silence was buried in denial, sadness and pain. My silence was associated with shame and humiliation, and it was making me physically and emotionally ill. Without exploring the internal turmoil, and putting words to the pain, the spirit within me would have died. For me, that was too big of a price to pay.

To my children: Before the birth of each of you, my attachments were quite superficial. It was easy for me to stay detached. When I became a mother, everything became more important and scarier. My love was profound and fiercely protective. It was because of my love for each of you, I could not settle into mediocrity. I was not going to fail. I sought help because I didn’t want my confusion of self to rub off on any of you. I wanted to be able to not only understand, but feel the full range of emotion so that I would have the language to teach you how not to be afraid of your emotions. I wanted you to understand that emotions are our guide to alert us to what is working or not working in our life. I realize that it was quite sloppy at times and, because I was unable to share, it created some turmoil, for that I am sorry. In the end, the reality is that the three of you were my guide, my light, and my persistence; and without each of you teaching me along the way, finding my words that freed my spirit, would not have happened.

Introduction

The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable. (Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman, M.D.)

Incest, it’s unspeakable and the silence around it is crippling. Let’s stop giving one little word so much power. Incest, say it! Say it over and over until you can say it without a lump in your throat. It is just like the word fuck or bitch or faggot or gay before those words became mainstream and lost their power. Take the power out of the word incest. Taking the power out of the word incest doesn’t mean taking the power out of the experience and its ripple effect, but it takes out the sting of the shame. By not saying the word incest, it keeps the power of the act in a fortress of protection of silence and secrecy. By not saying the word incest, it keeps people scared and trapped and hidden. It’s incest. It’s ugly. This word is like a dementor who feeds upon human happiness, and causes depression and despair and steals your soul. It is universally disgusting to so many people and because of this disgust instead of saying incest, words like sexual abuse, rape, and sexual assault replace it, as if these words are more palatable. If we don’t call it what it is, incest remains unspeakable.

Foreword

The healing power of finding your own words to describe your life story and then share your story as only you can is truly a courageous venture (unknown)

For as long as I can remember, I have been searching for a way to put into words this unexplainable void that has been deeply tucked inside of my heart. Knowing where to start was a process in itself. I was so consumed with the fear of being exposed, it paralyzed me. I knew that finding the words that helped me to make sense of the hollowness inside could not have been revealed to me by just scratching the surface. It has been 17 years since I started this journey to find the words. I was at the point that without exploring that nagging, empty feeling, inside of me; I would crumble and I was not sure how far down the rabbit hole I was going to go. But that is exactly what I needed to do, revisit the rabbit hole, that dark place that I had set aside a long time ago to create a functional life outside of the messiness of my childhood. The ability to develop a narrative that was not highly emotional and fragmented provoked an enormous amount of psychological distress. The therapeutic tasks of remembering and reconstructing the flow left me vulnerable to new conflicts and new challenges that created insurmountable grief. The reason I started this journey was based on a belief that if I could find the why in all of this, I could find the I, which would in turn help me find me. As the questions surfaced, the fear was profound. What will I do with this information?