Safety and Reaccessing Tips
- as shared by ritual abuse survivors
These ideas have helped others. Some of them may be of benefit to you.
They are suggestions only. No one knows your circumstances as well as
you do. Safety planning is vital to survivors. Your safety is important.
Accessing is the deliberate act of communicating with an alter state
and causing it to emerge without the cooperation or consent of the host.
Accessing is accomplished by utilizing a "trigger" or "cue"
established at the time the alter state was created. The trigger acts
as a key to unlock the alter state.
A survivor who is healing, who is in therapy, will be safest from accessing
by getting to know their inside people, talking to them. Most survivors
of ritual abuse are accessed by their own families, closest friends, and
other people they have had close ties with all their lives. Most people
are reaccessed because someone INSIDE of them picked up the phone and
called their "contact person."
Try to see if you have recontact alters inside. They will usually contact
people that they are amnesic to being abused by, such as parents, siblings
or friends. When I lived in another state, all of my close friends, my
spouse, my entire family were cult active and I was completely amnesic
about this. I had to be willing to examine all relationships in my life
and give them up for a while. This is the #1 way perps get hold of people:
recontact programming inside.
Good therapy is essential, especially when a person is first making the
break. Create a safety plan and put it in place, then begin the trauma
work.
Develop a support team of safe people who understand your circumstances
enough to help you. Start with your therapist, significant other, clergy,
and/or a few friends. It's hard to reach out and stop isolating, but a
good support team can make all the difference.
Be aware of what your triggers are. If you are working actively with
a therapist, hopefully you will explore as many of your triggers as possible:
colors, numbers, door knocks, telephone rings, beeps of the horn or other
devices, fans, symbols, etc. Work with your therapist actively to deprogram
these triggers. Do a trigger assessment for each alter or part.
Take the phone off the hook so they can't leave accessing messages. Get
caller ID so you can screen your calls.
Although you must limit contact with loved ones who are still involved
in the cult, you can still love them. In order to protect yourself, you
must exercise certain precautions, but you may find that your loved ones
are in the same boat that you are. They are also victims waiting for change.
Show your loved ones that it's not hopeless. There is a way out.
Allow your personalities to remember information about the current ritual
abuse memories without the physical sensations or emotions. From these
memories, you must make decisions about how to protect yourself from further
victimization.
Don't alienate your personalities who seem to be willing participants
in the cult. It is important to remember your own victimization. If you
befriend these cult personalities, they can help you break free. If you
alienate them or disbelieve them, they will turn to the cult for support.
You don't always have to be aware of the behaviors of these cult personalities
in order for them to help you. If you have their respect, they can slowly
manipulate their abusers, loosening their ties to the cult. They can plan
their escape, while you learn to protect yourself from victimization.
As you are breaking free, if you have personalities that are still returning
to the cult, they will be reprogrammed and tortured. This will make you
especially fearful and confused. At this point, make the break as soon
as possible. Keep control of your fear. Manipulate your abusers however
you feel you must in order to make yourself safe.
Don't let fear consume you. Tell your personalities that you must control
your fear, until you are safe. If you become overwhelmed with your fear,
you won't be able to effectively protect yourself. You might become paralyzed
and give up. In other words, feel the fear and do it anyway.
I always had a protector blockade out in front when I had to go back
to my previous location and had any dealing with cult members. Protectors
are wonderful. They can become your best helpers in keeping you safe.
I also took an outside, safe accountable person with me.
The cult rarely, if ever, wants to be noticed by those who could expose
it. Therefore, they do not ever, 99.9% of the time, harass the therapists
of SRA/MC/DID survivors and hardly ever their significant others.
If the cult is going to harass therapists, significant others and friends
of the survivor, they will do it in covert ways. They may send people
into their lives to distract them from helping the survivor. They will
do things obscurely so that their involvement won't be detected, ways
that won't or can't be reported to the police.
I have safe people stay with me, especially at night on trigger dates
that my alters have told me about. I have a very supportive friend to
whom I am accountable for my time. I give her a schedule of my activities
outside of work time. If I start to lose time, she'll notice.
Have a couple of trusted friends or your therapist who can take turns
as check-in people. When you leave to go somewhere, let these folks know
where you are going. Be sure to give them the route you are taking. When
you arrive, call again. Never go out alone at night.
Document, Document, Document. Get copies of everything. Police reports,
medical files and social service case files can disappear. Also list all
visits, dates, times and people. Make a set of copies and keep the originals
in a very safe place. Keep a camera and/or tape recorder close by.
Cults don't usually kill members who were ritually abused as children.
In their eyes, such people are an investment, and they will wait indefinitely
to collect on their investment.
In time they will stop pursuing you because it reminds them that they
are losing. In an arrogant stance, they will leave you alone, still believing
you will come back eventually.
You don't have to punish yourself for freedom.
Each day your mind will become clearer and you will find they have less
control over your life. Someday you will truly know the meaning of the
word freedom.
Mr. Light &
Associates, Inc.
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