"Watch out now take care
beware of greedy leaders, they take you where you should not go” – George Harrison
Beware of Darkness,
Trauma is caused by emotional experiences that are off the chart not within the zone where emotions can be dealt with in real time, and not simply just outside of the zone of normal emotional experience but off the chart -- traumatic -- not simply experiences of neglect or emotional abuse, but traumatic levels of emotion. These include emotions that are generally considered unpleasant and difficult to deal within even at levels within an individual's window of tolerance to deal with in real-time. Betrayal, loneliness, terror abandonment, grief these are a few of these emotions, emotions that individuals find unpleasant dealing with if in degree and intensity they are within the window of tolerance. Trauma is experiencing these same emotions difficult to deal with or process to absorb as part of the human experience and move on in real time with life, trauma means the degree and intensity of these and other emotions are not just outside the window of tolerance but off the chart. That is trauma experiencing emotions that are unpleasant and difficult to deal with within a human being's window of tolerance to a degree and intensity that is not just outside the window of tolerance but off the chart of experience off the chart of human experience unpleasant intolerable emotions to a degree and in an intensity that they cannot be processed in real time, cannot be processed without help and indeed the normal processing remembering and absorbing them as a part of experience and then moving on itself involves experiencing the same emotions at the same traumatic levels. Thus everything in the human experience invites a trauma survivor to avoid experiencing and processing absorbing the reality of these emotions and the experiences that evoked them, every human defense mechanism comes into play to avoid processing absorption --- which is also known as healing. This is trauma.
Well at least it is part of the trauma story. The other part involves the physical organism ther neurological system reacts to emotions felt at levels with the window of tolerance and in degree and intensity this same neurological system reacts in a traumatic way to traumatic emotions.
This is not to say that the physical organism is permentaly damaged or impared, it can heal just as the mind can heal, but it takes long painful hideous work to process emaotions and heal the neurological system from that which the mind tried to protect it and itself to begin with.
And Trauma can be healed. Those who have experienced trauma are not emotionally disturbed, they are not dysfunctional they are not mentally ill. They are in fact perfectly normal. They we have reacted in a way alll of our symptoms are perfectly normal given what we expereinced or in the case of Childhood sexual abuse what was done to us. Perfect;y normal reactions to truamatic emotions and the events that produced them In fact given the above and our survival we can be said to be not just normal, but exceptional.
There are those who would see us otherwise and who would attempt to profit from it. These are perpetrators as much as if the had molested us or caused other trauma themselves.
They are unscrupulous profiteers who would deny our pain our healing indeed our very existence in order to line their pockets with our pain. They are perpetrators and they are sadists --- they thought their writing and selling books for profit keep us in pain and in fact enjoy our pain.
Two such perpatraors at Patrcik Carnes and Pete Walker.
Judith Herman MD
Having said this it is improper for a properly credentialed person to write about a diagnosis that does not exist. Additionally, it is unconscionable for professionals to write about CPTSD. CPTSD does not exist.
Moreover it is exploitive for improperly credentialed individuals to write about a diagnosis that does not yet exists, let alone "treat" such a non-existent "disorder."
What do Patrick Carnes and Pete Walker write about?
What do they "treat?"
A made up condition which exists only in their minds. If these unconscionable practitioners are writing about and treating conditions that do not yet exist they become exploitive of those who suffer from true condition of PTSD or my preference PTSS, the diagnoses that do exist and for which there is legitimate and proven treatment. To wirte about a non-existent condition and then to "treat" it is to dent real healing to those who need it by diverting them from the legitimate to the fantastical.
People like Carnes and Walker become then no better than the snake oil salesmen of old who sold opium derivatives for every potential disease or discomfort. The result is that the exploiters the snake oil sales people become wealthy, while those suffering from a legitimate condition never get healed, but instead felt better for short periods of time. In the case of snake oil these people feel better because of the opium they are drinking. Of course when the does wears off the need more and more and more, but never really heal. Thier legitimate condition is never healed because it is never addressed. One cannot be healed by snake oil.
The same is true for charlatans like Carnes and Walker. In the case of modern day pop-psychological sales people the sufferer feels better because chasing a therapy that does not exist because the diagnoses does not exist provides temporary relief through to the suffer. BUt this relief is not from healing but from avoiding the problem. Avoiding the reality of trauma provides temporary relief, this is why as stated above sufferers will pursue every available human defense mechanism to avoid healing from trauma. As with the snake oil drinkers though they never heal. If one suffer from cancer and drinks opium laced sanke oil they will feeel bettwer maybe even for years, but the cancer as with the turama experenced by a trauma survivor does not heal it does not go away it grows and continues to affect the sufferes life.
Avoidance of the difficult and painful work it takes to heal from trauma the legitimate DSM DX code of PTSD (308.9) provides momentary relief, because the healing work which is painful is being avoided.
Those who have experienced trauma, especially those who have experienced it from Childhood Sexual abuse are particularly susceptible to avoidance. Why?
A- the healing work is so painful that and the natural inclination of any human being is to avoid pain.
B- The healing work in trauma requires remembering these painful experiences so the conscious mind that has repressed these painful experience produces a a new painful experience in the conflict between the conscious mind aht wants to avoid the pain of retrieving these memories at all costs and the conscious mind whose only desire is to remember and permanently eradicate the pain through remembering and absorption. It is the unconscious mind that drives healing.
Trauma is caused by emotional experiences that are off the chart not within the zone where emotions can be dealt with in real time, and not simply just outside of the zone of normal emotional experience but off the chart -- traumatic -- not simply experiences of neglect or emotional abuse as Walker asserts, but terror, betrayal, loneliness, untold inexpressible grief a greif like being on fire from the inside out. Walker has no concept of any of this. We are not talking about neglectful parents here, as walker does in his book, who did the best the could, we are talking about criminal child abuse, parents who the very best they could muster was criminal child abuse, parents who belong in the penitentiary.
Pete Walker is an MFT he does not have the credentials necessary to speak or write about Complex PTSD nor the professional expertise to refrain from writing about CPTSD since it has not been proven to exist yet, nor to my knowledge a hypothesis regarding CPTSD nor experimentation to differentiate the symptoms in degree and intensity of CPTSD from PTSD.
Pete Walker writes books to make money. By purchasing these books survivors enrich Pete Walker while focusing on an mirage that talks about healing. There is no healing in Walker's work just as there is no medicine in snake oil, quite the contrary there is a comfortable and comforting avoidance of the hard, hideously painful work it takes to absorb and integrate the unthinkable and become whole.
Pete Walker is exploitative of survivors. He takes our money while pontificating on subjects he knows nothing about, and with an MA is not credentialed to write about. . Thus he takes on the role of perpetrator himself and supports society's ontological perspective that supports abuse, ie, he diverts attention from healing for profit. Patrick Carnes is an EdD not a clinical psychologist and also has a longer history than Pete Walker of writing books that are exploitative of survivors.
Dr. Carnes went so far in is older book, "Out of the Shadows" as to label survivors as sex addicts. Thus missing an opportunity to contribute to the diagnoses and healing of CSA by
A- not using the term "addict" metaphorically (which has no place in scientific discourse as it means a physiological reaction to an opiate and thus is meaningless as he uses it, except sex as "addiction" is profitable for Dr. Carnes to treat) and
B-providing an element a symptom sexual promiscuity and calling it "addiction" he avoids real help what is really needed. And what is sporely needed and has been needed for decades is an accurate assessment for Childhood Sexual abuse that includes the symptom of promiscuity. He could have promulgated something really helpful an assessment. Instead he chose to exploit survivors by focusing on "addiction" as a disorder, and he did it to make money -- to exploit survivors for personal gain thus making himself a perpetrator of Childhood Sexual Abuse.
C. the lurid stories contained in his book actually promote the symptom and discredit healing.
Labeling CSA survivors as sex "addicts" only diverts their attention from real healing methods by sending them down a path that addresses symptoms and thus diverts attention from the real issue. This negative self labeling "I'm a sex addict" with a pejorative term having a social stigma. This labeling of "flashbacks" or repetition of the abuse, ie, sexual promiscuity as "addictrion" serves only to shame (another truamatic emotion and one that only survivors know ie it is not excessive guilt but self hatered) shames the victim.
So as with Pete Walker Patrick Carnes also is a perpetrator by exploration of survivors for personal profit. They both provide paths for avoidance and in the case of Dr Carnes actually shame the victim by equating sexual acting out a perfectly normal response to CSA and a replication of the abuse and as flashback, with "addiction."
Avoid these two so called authors they will set your healing back for however much time you follower their teachings and then have to conceptually deprogram from their nonsense.
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