In this issue of Breaking Free we feature an important analysis of the Power Threat Meaning Framework, examining various kinds of power in people’s lives, the kinds of threat that misuse of power pose and the ways we have learnt to respond to those threats.

My Story By Lindy

Just So You Know

 

Just so you know
I'm doing OK

Have you made a victim submission to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse?

Putting the Pieces of the Self Together One Moment at a Time

In Australia, 5 million adults (1 in 4) are living with the long-term impacts of childhood trauma and abuse. One such man is Ballarat child abuse survivor and advocate Peter Blenkiron, who has described himself as a damaged man, working full time to find healing from the abuse suffered at the hands of a St Patrick’s College Christian Brother when he was 11 years old.

Following two hugely successful runs in 2016 and 2017, including at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, the ‘Putting the Pieces of the Self Together One Moment at a Time’ exhibition, with support from Creative Victoria, will open in Melbourne on 30 June, and run until 21 July at The Dax Centre.

Curated by Blenkiron’s childhood friend and fellow advocate Vanessa Beetham, the exhibition serves to raise awareness of the impacts of childhood trauma, including mental health issues, suicide and premature death.

“Capturing his journey of healing through the lens of a smartphone, Peter’s photographic diary ‘Putting the Pieces of the Self Together One Moment at a Time’ offers a rare insight into the inner world of a child abuse survivor as he slowly learns to re-inhabit his body and mind’, said Vanessa.

The story of one, is the story of many. Included in the exhibition is a monumental artwork by Archibald Prize finalist 2016, Daniel Butterworth, featuring 30 portraits of child abuse survivors and advocates. It is a symbolic representation of the countless numbers of children abused in the Ballarat district. The participants share a vision of societies working effectively together to reverse the destructive ripple effect linked to childhood trauma.

On Friday 6 July , a fundraising event will also be held as part of the exhibition, which will be opened by Martin Foley MP, Minister for Creative Industries, Minister for Mental Health with guest speakers including Dr Judy Courtin, author of ‘Sexual Assault and the Catholic Church: Are Victims Finding Justice?’.

The fundraising event is open to the public and complimentary tickets can be booked online here.

All funds raised on the evening will help support Blue Knot Foundation and The Dax Centre, which works closely with artists and communities to increase understanding of mental illness and psychological trauma.

 ‘Putting the Pieces of the Self Together One Moment at a Time’, 30 June - 21 July 2018, The Dax Centre, 30 Royal Parade, Melbourne. Tel: 03 9035 6258 

Email: info@daxcentre.org

A short film by film maker Andrew Sully and curator/producer Vanessa Beetham recount's Peter's personal story can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/239158731

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Label Free: Understanding Abuse Distress

“I have desperately needed a plain English framework that speaks about abuse impacts in everyday language, and doesn't judge some survival skills as adaptive or maladaptive (or 'outlived usefulness'). The Power Threat Meaning Framework does that.” Nell Butler

We share an important analysis of the Power Threat Meaning Framework by writer Nell Butler “the Framework – is a way of understanding the distress of lived experience, without labels.”

The Framework examines various kinds of power in people’s lives, the kinds of threat that misuse of power poses and the ways we have learnt to respond to those threats. In traditional mental health practice, threat responses are sometimes called ‘symptoms’. The Framework looks instead at how we make sense of these difficult experiences and how messages from wider society can increase our feelings of shame, self-blame, isolation, fear and guilt.

The approach of the Framework is summarised in four questions that can apply to individuals, families or social groups: What has happened to you? (How is power operating in your life?) How did it affect you? (What kind of threats does this pose?) What sense did you make of it? (What is the meaning of these situations and experiences to you?) What did you have to do to survive? (What kinds of threat response are you using?) You can find links at the end of the article for more information.

I’ve Been Waiting For This Since I Was A Child

By Nell Butler

In 2000 I made a short documentary about being in state care as a child. The response from the Australian government was to threaten me with legal action. I was scared because they’d nearly killed me in care. So I stopped talking about it.

Fifteen years later, in 2015, I gave evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Over five years the Commission held 8,013 private sessions with survivors, and heard evidence from another 1,200 witnesses in 400 public hearings.  I learnt that there were thousands of others who shared my distress. I learnt that what had been done to us was criminal, that we were powerless, and that child rape destroys children. I realised all this, and I was furious, because in 22 years of therapy these things had never been recognised.

The first time I told a doctor about the sexual abuse she said that I was delusional and would need to take medication for the rest of my life. She told my youth worker to take me to the local mental hospital. Luckily, the worker was a feminist. She believed me and said no (but not in front of the doctor). I learnt I wasn’t safe accessing medical or mental health care. However, I still needed support. The trauma counselling I found was still imbued with blame. When I was distressed and despairing I was told I should learn to tolerate emotions better. When I was angry I was told that being angry is like holding a hot coal and it will only burn me. Every impact I experienced was described as maladaptive. I was told that it’s not what happened to me that’s the problem, it’s that I‘m coping with it wrong. When I asked why I was coping with it wrong, they said it was probably genetic. I was left believing I was innately defective.

The Power Threat Meaning Framework was launched on 12^th January: a new framework for understanding human distress outside of the clinical lens of ‘diagnosis’. It offers me something different. It suggests that in fact the way I coped was adaptive and normal, that it fits with common ‘patterns of embodied, meaning-based threat responses to the negative operation of power.’ The Framework may have the same capacity as the Commission to witness and validate harm, because it connects harm to distress and it does not judge our survival as maladaptive. The most significant thing for me is that it accepts the existence and impact of systemic violence. Slavoi Zizek names systemic violence as ‘the often catastrophic consequences of the smooth running of our economic and political systems.’ I would include the mass sexual abuse of women and children in families and institutions as one of those catastrophic consequences. Addressing these consequences involves challenging authority.

At the Royal Commission I noticed something. When we care leavers talked to each other, we used different words to the professionals. We used torture for being burnt with cigarettes, not child abuse. We said rape, not sexual assault, rights, not needs, oppression, not vulnerability. Torture, rape, rights, oppression: political terms for political problems.

When professionals spoke about what happened to us they de-politicised it. The Power Threat Meaning Framework acknowledges that the medical model of human distress privileges Western psychiatry over other cultural understandings, and that its use of specialist terms results in the loss of the full, wonderful range of words people have to describe our experiences. In an attempt to sound neutral it defaults to the mildest terms for describing emotion and experience, but when we are talking about child rape this language is invalidating and de-politicising.

When I tried to get support after the Commission hearings my story still could not be heard.

I said “I’m angry that I was denied an education.”

The psychologist said: “Having difficulties studying is common when you’ve had trauma.”

I said “No, I wasn’t allowed to go to school.”

The psychologist asked: “Did you feel too unsafe to go?”

I was denied education. There was no schooling in the institution: it was an institution where children were locked in 24/7. My access to school was not psychological, it was material. Why wouldn’t she believe me? This was not a one-off misunderstanding, I experienced it repeatedly. Over and over my real experiences were reframed as personal failings. I spent six months of 2016 crying for most of every day. I brushed my teeth crying, I got dressed crying. I saw a friend, cried, was comforted and then started crying again as I walked home. I woke up already crying.

At the Commission, witness after witness and document after document had affirmed both my memory and the recollections of the women in my film. My husband dug through the boxes of research I’d done in making the film, and we added it to the Commission’s pile. I was denied education. I was sexually assaulted and then I was blamed for it.

I was psychiatrised in care, coerced into saying out loud over and over that my behaviour caused the assaults, that I was responsible. The social workers working in the institution were not ‘doing their best’; they were doing deliberate harm to children, and that included raping us. That adults deliberately harm children seems to be the hardest thing for many people to believe.

No injustice can be addressed if we don’t react. Psychiatry has been telling us that the problem is our reaction, not the harm done to us. But our distress is the healthy reaction, not society’s denial and failure to address abuses of power, especially against children.

The Framework still allows space for professionals to impose their theories, especially trauma theories, onto our lives, in making formulations. I prefer Ignacio Martin Baro’s firm assertion that a psychologist’s job is to enable an oppressed person to create their own theories about their lives. To me, the Framework’s ‘General Patterns’ describe the impact of oppression and challenge the way that the dominant powers define the reality of the oppressed. The psychologists who interpreted my real experience of being denied education as a failing of mine, or even as an impact of trauma, were defining my reality based on their own knowledge. We live in the same society, but according to their knowledge, it is not one that denies education to children.

The Framework suggests talking about real world events, not ‘symptoms’. It suggests asking how unequal power has marked our lives, how it has harmed us and how we live with it. It suggests that helpers should be on our side, allies to the oppressed and abused, making explicit the systemic violence that caused our distress. Our distress then matters, because it communicates that something is wrong in our community and it needs to change.

This article has been reprinted here with the author’s permission, you can read the original blog here: https://blogs.canterbury.ac.uk/discursive/ive-been-waiting-for-this-since-i-was-a-child/

You can also read more about the Power Threat Meaning Framework here: https://www.bps.org.uk/news-and-policy/introducing-power-threat-meaning-framework

Nell Butler is a writer and library technician, and is currently studying for a Master of Publishing and Communications. Her award-winning documentary film Winnie Girls, along with the research archive created in the making of the film, were admitted as evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in 2015. You can follow her on Twitter @Erythrina5.

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Someday The Sun Will Shine Through

MORE Tips For Having Conversations About Trauma

Talking About Trauma series and related fact sheets and infographics

Fact Sheets and related Infographics supporting the “Talking about Trauma” series, released by Blue Knot Foundation have garnered a lot of interest from community members and workplaces since they were released in April.

A record number of shares on our social media channels recently reflects greater community awareness around the prevalence of trauma and its devastating impacts. Blue Knot Foundation, National Centre of Excellence for Complex Trauma is committed to supporting a trauma-informed Australian community.

The whole community can communicate with a trauma-informed approach if it acts according to the five basic trauma-informed principles: safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration and empowerment.

If we all endeavor to make all of our conversations trauma-informed we can create a collaborative safe environment in which people feel empowered and the risk of re-traumatisation is greatly reduced.

“If they feel cut off or not heard or patronised or interrupted or unsafe in any way, they’re more likely to be triggered if they have trauma and to disengage… So it’s very high stakes. This goes for well meaning family and friends as well. We hope you find the fact sheets, info graphics and paper useful.”

Pam Stavropoulos, Head of Research, Blue Knot Foundation stated recently when she spoke with PROBONO about the recently released Talking about Trauma publication for services.

In 2017 Blue Knot Foundation released the paper: Talking About Trauma - Guide to Everyday Conversations for the General Public.

Blue Knot Foundation recently released a number of factsheets which support the conversations members of the general public may have with colleagues, friends, families or strangers. They also include infographics.

Talking About Trauma with a Colleague 

Save the date!

Blue Knot Day – Monday 29 October 2018

Blue Knot Foundation’s annual awareness event, Blue Knot Day, will be held on Monday 29 October 2018, with events and activities happening throughout Blue Knot Week, Monday 29 October – Sunday 4 November.

Blue Knot Day is Blue Knot Foundation's national awareness day celebrated in October every year. On this day, we ask all Australians to unite in support of the 5 million Australian adult survivors of childhood trauma and abuse.

If you would like to organise a Blue Knot Day event in your community, volunteer your time or find out more about Blue Knot Day, please contact Fundraising Manager, Cath James on cjames@blueknot.org.au or 0466 788 371 or visit https://www.blueknot.org.au/BlueKnotDay for further information.

Grill'd restaurant supporting survivors

This month Blue Knot Foundation was selected as a charity recipient in Grill’d restaurant’s Local Matters community program, raising funds and awareness for local community services.

Each month Grill’d restaurants select three local community groups to support, with information about each group displayed on three separate jars in the restaurant.

“We are delighted to support Blue Knot Foundation through the Grill’d Local Matters program”, said Rebecca, Store Manager, Grill’d Neutral Bay. “The work of Blue Knot Foundation has obviously hit a chord with our customers, with the organisation receiving so much support throughout the month”.

Thank you so much to Grill’d, Neutral Bay and all the customers who supported Blue Knot Foundation.

Beyond the Blue Hair…

Blue Knot Foundation supporter Kirsty Pratt has been dying her hair blue for years in support of survivors, during her campaign to remove the Civil Litigation Limitations Period in Western Australia. Now that the legislation has passed, Kirsty is fundraising to support more survivors through the ‘BEYOND THE BLUE HAIR’ fundraiser, where she will be dying her hair back to its natural colour!

To support ‘BEYOND THE BLUE HAIR’, visit Kirsty’s fundraising page at:

 https://give.everydayhero.com/au/beyond-the-blue-hair-1

Our congratulations and thanks to you Kirsty.

 

 

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SELF CARE RESOURCE

In this section, we will review self care/help resources our Blue Knot Helpline counselling team collects to share with people who call the Helpline. We are delighted to share these ideas with our Breaking Free readers. What is helpful for one person may not be right for someone else so please experiment, explore and find what suits you.

What is Self Care?

Self care means looking after yourself - treating yourself as a person who deserves care.

Many adult survivors of childhood trauma and abuse find self care very challenging. Many traumatised children grow to adulthood believing that they do not deserve love, care or warmth.

Survivors who learn to practice self care can develop a new way of perceiving themselves – as someone who has the right to feel comfortable, safe and worthwhile. Many survivors are coping with the burden of the past, feel anxious about the future and can find the present overwhelming. By finding ways to care for yourself, you can find ways to live in the present, and enjoy the moment. This in turn promotes emotional and psychological health. Acts of self-care can short-circuit spirals of distress, anger or shame. Good self-care improved an improve our mood and reduce anxiety,  as well as foster a good relationship with ourselves and others to help us live a balanced life.

You Have Permission

Self-care involves very simple, day-to-day acts - small actions you can practice when you feel the need or regularly to keep you feeling good.

Some think of self care as pampering like massages, pedicures and holidays. Pampering provides a break from hectic lifestyles. In this article, however we are exploring self care strategies which can be readily accessed to become part of our lifestyle. Actions around self care can have a positive impact on your body, mind, mood, soul and on every day life.

You may actually already practice a number of self caring actions without realising. Self care can simply consist of good habits. You may choose to create a “no” list, of things you know you don’t like or you no longer want to do. One way of exploring your own self care practice is to record the following 7 categories and make notes against them as to what actions you can take for each of them.  You might be forgetting some aspects of your self care,  and this exercise helps you focus and create more balance.

·         Physical self-care 

·         Emotional self-care 

·         Spiritual self-care (nature, awe, rituals)

·         Intellectual self-care (creativity, career etc)

·         Social self-care (outside family)

·         Relational self-care (significant others)

·         Safety & security self-care 

We all make excuses which can prevent us from giving ourselves permission to practice more self care - time, money, competing priorities, putting others first, tired, depressed and so on…  You have permission to prioritise your own well being.  If these words are not enough to encourage you then here are a few quotes that may inspire you:

Self Care Quotes

“Solitude is where I place my chaos to rest and awaken my inner peace.” – Nikki Rowe

 “The most powerful relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself.” – Steve Maraboli

“There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” – Aldous Huxley

“Invent your world. Surround yourself with people, colour, sounds, and work that nourish you.” – Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy

“How we care for ourselves gives our brain messages that shape our self-worth so we must care for ourselves in every way, every day.” – Sam Owen

“I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.” – Audre Lorde

“It's not selfish to love yourself, take care of yourself, and to make your happiness a priority. It's necessary.” – Mandy Hale

“When I loved myself enough, I began leaving whatever wasn’t healthy. This meant people, jobs, my own beliefs and habits – anything that kept me small. My judgement called it disloyal. Now I see it as self-loving.” – Kim McMillen

“Put yourself at the top of your to-do list every single day and the rest will fall into place.” – Unknown

“With every act of self-care your authentic self gets stronger, and the critical, fearful mind gets weaker. Every act of self-care is a powerful declaration: I am on my side, I am on my side, each day I am more and more on my own side.” – Susan Weiss Berry

“One of the best ways you can fight discrimination is by taking good care of yourself. Your survival is not just important; it's an act of revolution.” – DaShanne Stokes

Self-care is “something that refuels us, rather than takes from us.” - Agnes Wainman

“There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by myself.” – Brian Andreas

Share Your Ideas

What’s on your self care list? We would love to hear some of your practices – something you’ve discovered recently, or an old favourite – please share these with us.  If you can’t come up with any ideas we hope that you continue to read the Breaking Free newsletters for the ideas that we generate from our Blue Knot community.

Email newsletter@blueknot.org.au

Facebook 

In preparing this article we referred to the following: 

https://blogs.psychcentral.com/weightless/2011/05/the-7-vital-types-of-self-care/?li_source=LI&li_medium=popular17 

https://www.blueknot.org.au/Survivors-Supporters/For-Survivors/Resources-for-Survivors/Coping-Strategies/Self-Care-Strategies 

https://psychcentral.com/blog/what-self-care-is-and-what-it-isnt-2/ 

https://www.developgoodhabits.com/self-care-quotes/

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IN THE NEWS

Adelaide Archbishop found guilty of concealing child sexual abuse

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Child sex abuse survivor shares how she learned to heal

After her father committed suicide when she was 16, Raquel decided to start sharing her story. Two years later, her abuser was found guilty. Raquel credits the act of speaking out as part of her healing process, and part of the reasoning behind the decision to launch her podcast. Read More

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Cardinal George Pell trial a 'turning point', says survivors' rights group

 

A survivors’ rights group has hailed as a “turning point” an Australian magistrate’s ruling that Cardinal George Pell, one of the most senior officials in the Vatican, will stand trial on historical sexual offence charges. Read More

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