Body Language – Satanic Survivors

Reviewing some of the older ones. Mandy, you really have a solid understanding of the minds of abuse survivors. You are spot on about the ones that become abusers versus those who are capable of escaping the cycle and fighting against it. Early in my career, I worked in a psychiatric hospital that housed a program run by a famous/now notorious psychiatrist who specialized in treating people diagnosed with MPD employing highly questionable treatment interventions including regressive therapy, lots of drugs and hypnosis. Those of us on the other units refused to interact with the staff who worked there, because we thought they were all crazy and reinforcing “repressed memories” which were artifacts of contagion among the patients, competition among them and basically ruining the lives of people who were already very confused. Meanwhile, on my unit we specialized in treating abuse survivors, some of whom were ritualistically abused and sent to us from other states for their own protection, probably during the same time frame your mom was telling you to stay in the house. Your analysis brought back memories of the small body language movements that many of them displayed, along with the cognitive dissonance of some of the staff, whose belief systems could not let them sort out the totally true cases from the ones where they clearly had been abused, but were having delusions, or had therapists who inadvertently were reinforcing memories that were not 100% accurate. The small body language was often used as a reason not to believe their accounts as you accurately described. I often got the same reaction from law enforcement and state agencies when I made my legally mandated child abuse reports. Glad that you are giving these poor individuals the voice and validation they deserve. You probably would have made a great therapist with your perceptiveness, but I am glad you are doing what you are doing.