Ella Podcasts
Tough times are hard to navigate. We share experiences, feelings and tools to cope and become resilient. Unpack what weighs us down - loss, grief, anxiety, panic, low self-esteem, disappointment, sadness and change. Feel less alone and take away ideas to lift that dark cloud and face the future. Sprinkled with humour.
Creator / Host: Ella Sherman & Clinical Psychologist: Dr Jonathan Marshall with Two Special Guests per episode.
Ella Podcasts
Child Abuse and Trauma: Why Survivors Stay Silent and How It Affects Adult Life
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This episode includes discussion of child abuse and trauma.
Child abuse is one of the most difficult and uncomfortable topics to talk about, yet it affects far more people than we realise. Many survivors carry the impact quietly for years, sometimes decades, without fully understanding how deeply it has shaped their lives.
In this episode of Ella Podcasts, we explore the reality of childhood abuse and its long-term psychological effects. From fear, shame, and silence to the way trauma shapes relationships, self-worth, and behaviour in adulthood, this is an honest and deeply personal conversation. We also challenge common misconceptions about abuse, including why children often don’t speak up and why it can remain hidden in plain sight.
In this episode I’m joined by:
• Dr Jonathan Marshall, clinical psychologist and former professor
• Dr Nina Stevens, clinical psychologist specialising in childhood trauma and family systems
• Simon J Littlewood, sharing his personal experience of abuse
Takeaways:
• Child abuse can take many forms, including physical, emotional, sexual abuse and neglect
• Abuse is often carried out by someone the child knows, not a stranger
• Fear, shame, and confusion are key reasons children do not speak up
• Trauma can affect relationships, self-esteem, and behaviour well into adulthood
• Many survivors struggle with guilt and feelings of worthlessness
• Healing is possible at any stage of life through support, therapy, and connection
Timestamps:
0:00:07 Introduction and trigger warning
0:01:44 Types of abuse and misconceptions
0:03:12 Why children stay silent
0:12:04 Long-term impact and family dynamics
0:19:44 Male survivors and silence
0:30:21 Repetition of trauma in adult relationships
0:41:19 Therapy, recovery, and support
0:53:05 Final advice and message
Conclusion:
What happened to you was not your fault. Survivors are not broken, and they are not alone. While trauma can have lasting effects, it does not have to define the rest of your life.
If you or someone you know is struggling, reaching out to a therapist, support group, or trusted person can be the first step towards healing.
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🎬 Suggested videos:
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#mentalhealth #trauma #childabuse #psychology #healing
Hello, I'm Ella, and this is Ella Podcasts. Today we're discussing child abuse and trauma, so be aware this episode contains disturbing content. It's one of the most taboo, hush-hush experiences to share. People are naturally repelled by the thought of it. There may be sympathy, but not much true understanding of the enormous struggle victims of childhood abuse carry for the rest of their lives. If you've suffered from any type of child abuse, we understand your pain as a survivor. I have with me today Dr. Jonathan Marshall. He's a leading clinical psychologist and a former professor. He's a Stanford and Harvard University graduate. He offers perspective and practical advice to help people. We also have Dr. Ronina Stevens, and she is also a clinical psychologist with extensive experience working with children and families. She specialises in working with parental abuse and childhood trauma, attachment problems, personality disorders, anxiety and depression. She works with families with complex needs who are hard to engage. And we have back in the studio Simon J. Littlewood, a journalist, business advisor, and Oxford University graduate. He's widely known for his business and economics commentary on the BBC World Service. And he's also the author of the business bestseller, Let the Cash Flow. Simon will be bravely talking about his personal experience of his boarding school abuse. Okay, let's go to Jonathan for our what are the different forms of child abuse and what are some of the biggest misconceptions people have about it?
SPEAKER_01Typically, we think of four buckets of abuse, although they overlap with each other: physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect. Neglect is the most typical form of abuse, and people think, oh, neglect, it won't happen in an upper middle class or upper class family. In fact, it it absolutely does. So it those are the four main buckets. And in terms of misconceptions, people often think, oh, my child would tell me if they were being abused. Actually, children are very good at keeping secrets. There would be physical signs of abuse on a child's body, but actually a lot of abuse that goes without any form of physical marking. It would be a stranger that does it, but actually it turns out it's typically someone the child knows well. So those are among the most typical misconceptions. Another one worth mentioning is we think abusers are evidently deranged. It turns out, again, that's really not the case. That's often someone well groomed, it's often someone who presents well, who does well in society, uh, not necessarily, but so it's very hard to detect and predict.
SPEAKER_04So they can look nice and like they have a good job and need a good life, and they're a nice person with a sense of humor, but behind the scenes they can be a monster. So, Dr. Ranina, what role does fear, shame, and confusion play in keeping a victim of child abuse silent?
SPEAKER_03I think it oh those three things play a huge role in keeping a child silent. So fear is is partly behind a lot of things that are used. Fear is used by people who abuse children to silence children. Children fear exposing someone in their family, breaking up their family. They fear they'll be told off, they may fear they won't be believed. And fear may have violence may have been used, or you know, other forms of intimidation to actually silence a child, that bad things will happen if they speak. So it is common fear.
SPEAKER_04And as someone, a child myself, when I was very young, I was raised in a very violent home with a lot of uh abuse going on, and I think when you're that young and it starts, you don't realise it's actually wrong. This is what you've been raised in.
SPEAKER_03And I think that's where the confusion part kind of sits, really. That um many adults that I meet that are reflecting back on things that have happened to them, they didn't know what happened in other people's families at this potentially if it was family or at a school that this wasn't common at the school, they may have known it happened to other children. So there's a there's a confusion there about what's acceptable and what's not acceptable in terms of boundaries. And then I think until recently, and it's really good that schools are doing this now. I don't know about you, Ella, but when I grew up, I didn't have language to talk about my body or you know, even the work anatomical words to describe things that might not be okay, and so I think there's a real push to kind of change that recently, but I think for a lot of people they they didn't even have the words or know how to put the words in place to explain what's happening, and then with with shame, um, I work with a lot of adults and young people who've been abused, and shame is huge, and I think this is something that's part of the therapeutic work really to shift the shame off of the person who's experienced the abuse and you know sit it where it belongs. But um, you know, abusers use shame as a tool. Um, they make children feel like they're part of something, perhaps it's a big secret, but they make children feel like they're allowing it or they're you know involved in it in some way, so in some way responsible.
SPEAKER_01So they're responsible for the abuse that they've experienced.
SPEAKER_03Potentially, and you know, some elements of abuse are very confusing, not always very, not always distressingly uncomfortable at the time. So it's confusing. I've I've worked with adults who are reflecting back, and when we say it, it sounds it sounds wrong to for an eight-year-old to feel it was their fault. But that that is something that we come across. I should have, I should have done something, is you know, I feel ashamed I didn't do XYZ. And and I think that keeps the silence.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and that fear is I think it lasts for a very long time because you know, if it starts when you're very young, you know, you can't stand up to a full-grown adult, you know, and uh and you don't feel like there's any escape, and and that's when your childhood feels like a very, very long time to have to, you know, take this constant abuse. And you know, one of my earliest memories was my father who really scared me, he would walk into my bedroom. I remember I'd be playing my dollies, and I must have been like four years old, and I would just stand there holding my doll, and I could feel myself peeing because I was just so scared of him. So yeah, he was just uh extremely violent, and uh it was it was very hard having that as your childhood. Um that's a model of normal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's hard to you know to not be resentful of having your childhood stolen from you.
SPEAKER_03Totally.
SPEAKER_04Okay, next question. Um let's go now.
SPEAKER_01Maybe there's also a medicine in that resentment, too.
SPEAKER_04You think?
SPEAKER_01I I think so. I think behind the resent that the anger there is in some way some light inside you saying, I'm acknowledging this was wrong. Because you probably still also hold some fear. And so to say, no, that fear is wrong, he was wrong. That I don't know, I think in the heat and anger that there is that sort of your body trying to protect you and comp to overcome the fear that could still be inside.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I remember as a kid I used to, he'd literally chase my sister and I because he always had this need to beat someone up. And I would run into the kitchen, I I would actually grab a knife out of the kitchen block and I would hold it here, thinking this would keep him away. And he would just take it off me, and then you know, the beating would start, and I couldn't ever use it. And uh, I used to see myself as being very weak and pathetic because I couldn't fight against it. Um but now I look back and think you're just a little kid.
SPEAKER_03You see yourself for the age that you were at.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but but um at the time you feel like you're quite pathetic for for not being able to do anything.
SPEAKER_03I think um it it helps to sort of understand our nervous system sometimes that we don't choose what we do, you know, in that fight, flight freeze. And I think quite often freeze, our brain just chooses to kind of freeze because that's actually survival. You know, that's actually going to be safer for us to kind of freeze because actually the other options aren't fighting, isn't going to be an option where you're going to win as a child. And I I think that people often feel like they could have controlled that when they can't control it.
SPEAKER_04It's not something that we can control what our body does, or you know, and it's easier as an adult to say, oh, I should have done this, or I should have told someone, or I should have spoken to a teacher, but that comes when you're older, yeah. And over time you're just kind of if anything, you're kind of getting more and more inside yourself and isolated and and not really talking.
SPEAKER_03Um so it's and people protect children so they don't talk about this, you know. In the general population, we're not talking about this. A little bit of stranger danger, but we're not it actually it often isn't somebody who's a stranger, so the messaging is a bit confusing. So children are don't have the words to talk about it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and you also think teachers, I'm sure they must be aware of a lot of things, teachers, but I'm sure with all the challenges. I mean, I went to a comprehensive school in Hounslow. We had a lot of kids in the class, a lot of social issues in that school, and I'm I'm sure the teachers weren't equipped to deal with all the things going on in people's homes. I mean, I'm sure it was hard enough getting through the day with 36 to 40 kids in a class, let alone, you know, dealing with all these issues. But um, you do look back and think it's amazing no one noticed anything because I was always covered in bruises. And I remember, you know, when you've been severely beaten up, your skin is on fire and uh it gets really tight as well. So you you literally I remember trying to get behind my desk as a little kid and I couldn't sit down because I couldn't straighten my legs, and and uh I'll be kind of taking a lesson sitting on one hip, and no one no one noticed or asked or anything.
SPEAKER_01So you know sometimes I think there's a not wanting to know, and and even when there is knowledge, like what do you do next? Is it better for the child if social services come and teachers get afraid? But it sounds like you were quite ingenious as a child in that you you took what you could, you know, a weapon which you couldn't use, you were smart not to use, because that could have been even worse for you. You did so much in terms of bravery and and by freezing you probably did the best thing you could.
SPEAKER_04That's nice to know, but I didn't feel like I was I was doing anything. And I you know, I feel I felt bad for a long time because my sister, who was like two years younger than me, I didn't protect her at all. And it was really a case if someone was gonna get a beating, I would make sure it was her, she would make sure it was me. And we went through our entire childhood feeling shame about and also hating each other because we'd be throwing each other under the bus. Yeah, and uh, you know, how can you be healthy?
SPEAKER_03The control of the abuser has set you up that way.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so it was only we only really reconnected in our forties, it took that long, and that's when we both realized we were just in an impossible situation, and you know, it wasn't that I wasn't being the big sister, I just I was self-preserving.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you were surviving it, both of you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I gotta admit, I'm kind of curious what happened in your 40s. Like were you able to connect?
SPEAKER_04Uh yeah, we did. I think it was when my father died. And uh interesting. Yeah, and for me, he had I hadn't seen him in years. I I I've made a big point of really cutting parents out my life, and uh and I heard that he had cancer, and I I really I heard as well that it was a a slow, painful death, and I know it sounds awful, but I was very happy to hear that. And uh I it does sound dreadful, doesn't it? But I was I just felt like that was some sort of form of punishment, and um I didn't go to his funeral, but I on the day he died, and I was told by my sister he died, I just felt this enormous weight off my shoulders. It was such a feeling of relief, and that's when my sister and I started actually talking properly and and realizing that the battle was not between us, which it did feel like at the time. Um it was actually the bigger picture. Yeah. Um okay, so we're going to go to Simon now. This is such a big topic, childhood abuse, because as Ranina said, there's so many different forms of it. And I know you've had your own harrowing experience, and you're being very brave today sharing that.
SPEAKER_05No, I don't think I'm being brave. I mean, I I um I think the first thing that has to be said, I'm 69 years old, and I think it's important to say that the cultural attitudes in the West certainly to childhood abuse and and particularly to providing a safe environment for children has changed entirely since I was in school. I mean, I was sent away to a boarding school when I was eight years old, where sexual and physical abuse was rife. Um, and um it was at the time not that uncommon in the boarding school system in the UK. Um, it has led to enormous trauma. Um, and I'm not speaking about myself, I'm speaking in general terms because as a as a lettered grown-up, you know, I've obviously looked into this and tried to understand uh what happened, why it happened, how it has affected me. And the impacts of childhood abuse carry on into your adult life. They carry on very much into your ability to have um healthy sexual relationships uh with a partner, you know, and that's something I I've grappled with all my life. Um and to be honest, you can't entirely uh put to bed the impacts of things happening to you when you're a child, as Ella, I think you've you've demonstrated. Um but having said that, um I want to be clear that um, because I don't want to send negative messages, if things are happening to you or have happened to you, you will find in today's world a listening ear. You will find that teachers will listen to you, you will find, and I found this through my own experience, that the police force, certainly in the UK, and I suspect in America, now have a very structured way of dealing with this and a very compassionate way of dealing with it, um, uh, in a way that has helped me. Um so um the you mentioned, you know, your father. Um my mother died age 92, uh 18 months ago. And the um that death has has, and I was close to my mum, she was a clever woman, she did her best in many ways after my father disappeared when we were quite small, and um, but she was a very powerful woman. And the really in many ways that one of the most traumatizing um elements of the abuse that I endured, having been deposited at this school where I didn't know anyone, and then discovering that it was routine to be uh pulled out, beaten, hands, legs, bottom, um, made to box other boys, um made to endure being having your genitals played with by by different members of the staff. Uh and to this day there are there are elements of that abuse that I that I can only really uh understand in retrospect. I mean, there was a strange ritual where one of the masters would get us get us all up out of bed at six o'clock in the morning and make us run around naked um doing calisthenics and all those kinds of things. I now think in retrospect that he was probably part of a gang of of of Pedophars, and I think they were probably watching us, um, you know, which is a strange thing, you know, because I was eight to nine years old. Um so my own journey, I'm talking a lot, is it okay?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So my own journey is um I I think the other thing that's important to say, and I've wrestled with this a little bit because we have we live in a strange world now where, if anything, we may have corrected a little bit too much the other way, because because um there are some claims that, in my view, are made for reasons of narcissism or reasons of politics. Um, and I know that's a very difficult topic to breach. Um, but in my own case, the reason I make that point is is that it's a very difficult area because it very often takes years for you to actually come to terms with what actually happened to you. In my own case, um I essentially I essentially buried what happened to me, and although I was carrying it with me, and although I know now in retrospect that it it its impacts manifested uh in not just in relations with the other sex, but also in, you know, I had big problems with drug use, alcohol, um, you know, general dysfunction, um, all the way through my adult life. Um, my wits and my enormous charm enabled me to uh to carry on being successful professionally whilst carrying all this nonsense around. Um where I where I hit a buffer was when I had my and I always vowed that I would have a family because I do love you know kids in a healthy way. And uh when I'd had um met someone, had two kids, my uh little daughter who is three, came home from her little school and in um telling a story of how she'd been threatened with the cane by um, and I would have been probably 40 years old, uh now, 42 maybe. Um, and um now I'm I never get angry. I'm very sort of moderate negotiating kind of a guy, because I'm not a big man, you know. I use tend to use my wits and my and my words, and I was consumed by black rage at the thought that that my that my daughter might be threatened. I got in my car. This is gonna, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do an L. I had to go to go to the little school, and I wanted to kill that fucking man because I thought he was threatening to do to my daughter what had happened to me. And it was very difficult for me to cope with that, you know. Um, and of course he wasn't. They were just a silly little school, and there was a there was a the teacher had just been silly and said, Oh, you know, if you're naughty, you'll get the cane, everything. But it but what it I suddenly thought, what the hell was that about when I regained myself and I realised it was about me. It was about unresolved issues that had happened to me. And that I was prepared to fight to protect my daughter, but but I hadn't been prepared to fight to protect myself. So that was that was the first step in in recognition, agnoia, as the Greeks say, recognizing you know what happened.
SPEAKER_04Jonathan, just to just cut in here, do you think men or boys find it more difficult to talk about in adult herders than women?
SPEAKER_01I think at the moment in our culture, it's uh I think of it as one of the big blind spots in psychotherapy. I think you know, one in five women were sexually abused as a child, but one in seven men were. So it's I mean, there are differences, but um when you look at uh the what this resources available, uh it's the the men side of it, it's very, very small, it's very unspoken. They might mention it in individual psychotherapy, but they really might not. It's uh one of the most hidden areas, one of the most quiet populations in psychotherapy is is men who were sexually abused as children. I think it's very hard. And I think what what what Simon is sharing is very brave.
SPEAKER_05Well, I yeah, I mean I I don't share to be brave particularly. I mean, I I I consider myself very fortunate. I have two beautiful, well-adjusted children. Um I was able to look after them, and I ended up as a single dad for a while, um a few years. Um you're not, as I always said to my children, you don't have to be like anyone else. You can make your own life, you know. But having said that you can make your own life, which is perfectly true, shedding the trauma that you've had to endure as a child is is quite hard. The second event, just to complete the saga of recognizing this, was that um I read on Facebook there was a guy who'd been to the same school as me, who'd emigrated to the US and who'd come back to England to give evidence in a court case against one of the masters at the little school I'd been at when I was nine years old, and the master had been sent to prison for six years. Now, what was interesting about this was that the the master uh was one of a whole bunch of masters. It was rife, as I say. And um he had been very recently arrived at the school when I was there. He'd been no more than 21 or 22, and he'd stayed until he became deputy headmaster at the school 40 years later. What do I infer from that? I infer that he will have abused hundreds of boys probably during that period.
SPEAKER_04Um And unfortunately, places like boarding schools, care homes, orphanages, even hospitals, it there is an attraction with you know by you know paedophiles and abusers.
SPEAKER_05Well, it's self selecting because you know, in those days you didn't get paid very much if you were a prep schoolmaster. You got given Somewhere to live, and if you were that way inclined, completely unconstrained access to little boys, little boys, you know, naked in the shower.
SPEAKER_04I mean, so I think were you living at the boarding school as well? Oh, absolutely.
SPEAKER_05I mean, sorry, you got dumped there and you didn't see your parents again for another six weeks. Some of the boys, um but boarding schools not to get comp complicated, but boarding schools were very much a product of empire. You know, if you if you were a family uh in Singapore in the days when you had to travel by ship, uh, you know, your your children, of course, had to have a good education in England so that the company that employed you would pay for it and they would be sent back and they would live with a with a relative and they would stay there because it took whatever it was, four weeks to get back to Singapore by ship, so that didn't work. So you had this culture where it got sent off, and you were entirely in the hands of of of semi-relatives or strangers, you know. But but just to conclude, so so so because I don't want to get this out. So so I was I was astonished by the bravery of this guy from my school who'd gone into court. So I contacted the police force that were doing the investigation and and I said, you know, it happened to me um and um and gave a series of of Zoom interviews um to the investigating officers. Um and um, of course, you know, I I was abused in what 1965, six, seven, by men who were already middle-aged, so of course they're all dead. Um so but so they they did investigate, they said we you know they're all they've all passed away. But and I was grappling with recovery from from other issues, alcoholism and drugs and things at the same time.
SPEAKER_04Maybe we'll focus on the need for revenge. Is that a common feeling for kids who were abused? Revenge. Revenge, or you know, seeing the perpetrators go to prison?
SPEAKER_01I think rather like the your your resentment against your father, that it's this we we might still carry inside a sense of fear of the abuser, but some part of you goes, that's wrong. That person shouldn't have that claim over me now. They might be dead, you might not have any contact with them. And so that anger is, I think, a healthy manifestation of that sense of this is not right. And so one manifestation of anger is the desire for revenge. And I think there's nothing wrong in that. But if you stay in that anger too long, you burn up. And so as a phase, as something to work through, as something to go past, I think it's it's medicinal. But the downside is if you stay in the place of anger for a long time, you get consumed, you get harmed by like the second arrow. The first arrow is the abuse that occurred, and the second is is the anger and the pain.
SPEAKER_05I think the the compensations that you make as a human being and you you hinted at this earlier on, Jonathan, very um perspicacious of you, um, is that the uh pleasure, there's pleasure in revisiting the place of the abuse. In other words, your sexual imagination and behaviour uh may be to a great extent triggered by the things that really, really hurt you when you were small. Um I think that's quite common. Um and uh it's very difficult to get past that, is to get past the comfort you have being in that uh horrible, ambivalent place where you are fear. You you are choosing a place of fear because somehow uh that's what you were taught to deal with. I I just want to say one other thing because I didn't finish this and it's important. Um when I came home from my little school at the age of nine, and uh in shock really, because I'd been you know fiddled with and beaten and um and I started to tell my mother about it. And my mother said I had to go back, right? Um, and it wasn't until she died 18 months ago that I really remembered that, and I remember processing the fact that somehow I was expected to go back to this institution and put up with this. And you know, as a as a child, how do you process that? You process it by deciding that you in some way you deserve it, right? Um and you know what that does, that has a profound effect on your um self-esteem. So so for me it's been you know kind of a a sort of rather strange dual path. And you you'll hear this a lot from people that you meet in recovery, which is, you know, I I did okay, you know, I went to Oxford, I'm on the BBC, I've got a good job, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And yet at the same time, your your self-esteem is is minute, you know, because you've been taught as a child that you're worthless, that that strangers should be allowed to do what they want to you, and that more it's more important to keep quiet than it is to tell anyone about. No, this is very dark, sorry, everybody. Um, but it but it's it's very real, it's important to acknowledge this, you know. Um, and um it's to if I tried to talk about this 10 years ago, I would have been blubbering, you know. I I I I've come to terms with it to some extent, but I never had that conversation with my mother. And one of the reasons why I'm still having to deal with it is because I realized that no, I took a decision not to, because I what am I going to say to a 90-year-old woman?
SPEAKER_03I I think what you're saying is really important because uh I work with a lot of adults who've had trauma, and you would think that the majority of the trauma work would focus on the actual abuse, but quite often this the the additional trauma was the reaction of the adults when they did try and tell, and that feeling of being shut down, let down for betrayed, yes. Yes, betrayed is what we might call even gaslit when they've gone to try and tell people, and that shuts them down for ages. Um, and often, you know, it's a cycle of abuse within families, those generational, you know, abuses that have occurred, and that the person receiving it doesn't know how to manage it and uh is very clumsy with how they managed it, but that often leaves a bigger impact that you go to the trusted adult and they don't protect you, yeah.
SPEAKER_04And often you hate them even more. So my mother's case, she she let lots of things happen and uh she used to say to me because she went to boarding school from a very young age, and she said she was abused by the nuns who ran the school, and I feel like it made her into a very cold, bitter, nasty person, frankly. And uh, so anything that was happening to my sister and I, she she it was like she was not even present, like just and there was zero sympathy. And she would say, Well, you know, I was abused by the nuns, and my parents wouldn't even take me back for the holidays, so she was left with them.
SPEAKER_05I think I don't know. I mean, my you know, my mother's story was she was nine years old and a German bomb landed on the house uh in Birmingham and killed her father a few feet away, blew the top of his head off. Um, and um her mother had a nervous breakdown. My grandmother and mum was um exported to numerous households around the UK from the age of nine until the age of twelve, when Granny kind of recovered her wits, and things clearly happened to her during that that she's never talked about, and she came from a culture which said you didn't talk about it at a time when tens of thousands of young children were being fostered out to mainly working class homes because there was an income.
SPEAKER_04Um I don't understand Simon is is I mean, yes, something can happen to you in your life and it's terrible, but why would you then put your kids through a terrible time? Why pass it on?
SPEAKER_03But what Simon said earlier was is an interesting point. You know, this idea that we think if somebody'd been through, let's take uh, for example, physical abuse, or they've but they lived in a domestically violent setup. We can't work out why they end up then marrying somebody who's also going to do that to them and their children, but it is the devil you know, and you are used to your system being very aroused like that, it's familiar. Um, you know, you don't know a different way. A different way can feel very dangerous too. So I think, and people don't always consciously kind of they're not making conscious decisions, they find themselves, they are vulnerable. The abuser seeks out somebody who's vulnerable and they find history repeating itself. I I think it's not that conscious. Right.
SPEAKER_01I think often we familiarity is very attractive. Yeah. And familiarity to abuse is therefore attractive. So if you're abused, but that's normal, you're familiar with it, you go towards it, even if it's the very thing that harms you.
SPEAKER_05I mean, the fundamental mistrust that that for women, which my mother's rebuff engendered in me, and I've only really been able to talk about it since she passed away, has made it profoundly difficult for me to have healthy relationships with women. You know, where I've had relationships with women, it's tended to be with women who I can't be psychologically intimate with, women who are unconsciously chosen because they have kind of psychotic traits, uh, they're it they're strange, and and I can't really relate to them directly. And I can kind of see that intellectually, but I can't actually get past it because those um those compulsions are still there, you know.
SPEAKER_04Um it's really hard to break free from them because I'm always saying to girlfriends, you'll put me in a bar and I'll be full of guys. I have an antennae for picking out that one guy who is mean, cold, vigilant. Hyper vigilant for. But it's like, how do you manage to pick because it's familiar? Yeah. Even before you've even spoken to someone, it's just like this kind of energy that you pick up on and it's like a moth to the flames, and I find them exciting, and I you know want to conquer them and win them over and change them, try and get them to love me and all this, but it's it's a repetition of childhood.
SPEAKER_05I think it I mean that is one of the hardest things to cope with, I think, because because it if you face it and you realize it it's carrying on, you know, into your seventh decade. Um, am I ever going to get past this? Am I ever going to have a healthy relationship, you know, because I've been in this particular space for so long, you know?
SPEAKER_04Um I'm under therapy, you can still deviate to your this is what I like.
SPEAKER_03I don't think it's a one and done with therapy. I think it's um um I think you have to revisit it at your developmental stages. So again and again and again, you what you need when you're 20 is gonna be different from what you need when you're a 40-year-old parent. I mean, we see a lot of people come in the clinic when they when their children are the age that things were happening to them. It's a very classic time where people suddenly are like, How could this have happened to me? How could you know the people who trust and love me and they need to kind of recover it and go through it developmentally as a now as a parent. And so I do think it's not uh it's not a linear thing. I think you do have to revisit it and kind of make your meaning at different stages. Like Simon is thinking now about his mum having passed, you know, that's a new well.
SPEAKER_05I know other people that have been who've been I and and Jonathan mentioned this. There are quite a lot of women who've been abused as well. Okay, more men probably than women, but there are certainly quite a lot of women. And I had a girlfriend who I live with who who'd been sexually abused by her mother, um, and she was never able to deal with that. And she and and when her mother passed away, she was left with lots of unsaid things, and I could see how how hard it was for her, you know. Um I don't know. I mean, I have to be I'm positive by nature, and I think there are many things, many things to enjoy in life. Um I have two beautiful, well-adjusted children. I talk about this a lot, um, because it that's a bit of a mystery to me. You know, how how was I able to do that? How were they able to be healthy?
SPEAKER_04Um I guess you consciously made the decision not to repeat history like that.
SPEAKER_05I think there's something else as well, um, which is that we as human beings are nourished by taking care of other people, and uh and having children gave me the opportunity to do that.
SPEAKER_03Um reparent yourself a bit.
SPEAKER_05Well, yeah, I heard that term quite a lot. I don't think I've managed that I I I I I don't take care of myself, I take care of others, you know. That that's the compulsion, um, uh to the despair of my friends. Um, but and and my kids have had to kind of deal with this because I've had to share with them you know parts of what my journey were, because they'll have children. My daughter got married, she'd be having children. Um it's important that these things are out in the open. When the kids are adults, they need to understand these things, you know.
SPEAKER_04Um I don't know if people do understand unless they've really been in the thick of it.
SPEAKER_05And that's something else that I want to say. And please, I know we have two therapists in this gathering. I mean, my uh you know, I what has helped me most has been in a one of the anonymous, you know, the AA or the NA space. Because the difference, and and I've been to lots of psychotherapists over the years, many of them have been profoundly loving and supportive and helpful. But there is something uniquely valuable in sitting in a room with somebody that has the same madness that you have. Yeah, survivors expression. That you have uh I you know there's there's an authenticity to that which with the greatest of respect, even the finest physician who's learned his or her trade um through clinical work or or through reading um cannot necessarily match. And I don't mean that in any way as a criticism, it's just an observation that when I see men and women getting better, it's very often because because they're with other survivors.
SPEAKER_04Well I've found with relationships. If I meet especially in my early dating years, if I met a you know, well-adjusted, nice guy and he came from a happy family, I I just felt so out of place with them, like a complete fraud, and like I wasn't good enough to be with such a lovely family. How did that feel? Well, I I think you know, when you've had the ship beaten out of you for many, many years, and and I was also locked in cupboards on a regular basis for many hours at a time in a dark cupboard. So I think it, you know, you're you're not a normal person after that experience. You tend then to go for people who also have a lot of baggage, and you know, it was always a relief to meet someone who was completely screwed up and had a terrible childhood because I could relate and I felt comfortable with them, and I felt like I didn't have to pretend to be you could have your vulnerability, and I didn't have boyfriends saying, Oh, you should make up with your parents, or you should forgive. It's like I'm not forgiving the unforgivable. I've tried it, I've tried it for so long, and I've come to the conclusion I'm not forgiving them. I forgive myself for being in that situation, but I'm not forgiving them. They were monsters, and so for me, the guys I've been attracted to have had so many issues that put two people together and you've both you're both a mess. You know, two wrongs don't make a right, and that's what's I've kind of learned over the decades that it just becomes a car crash. But I still can't seem to find that Mr. Nice normal guy attractive in any way. Which uh that's interesting.
SPEAKER_05I I I do relate to that. Um I think as you get older confronting that.
SPEAKER_04And it's weird, I find it boring as well. If I meet someone and he's terribly nice to me, or he's very loving and he says, I love you, I feel suffocated. And I don't believe it, but I feel suffocated by it, I can't deal with it. But give me someone who's moody, anger, you know, very angry, walking on eggshells. I'm totally at home.
SPEAKER_01Literally, literally.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, but that's not a healthy health relationship.
SPEAKER_00Not a healthy home.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, my I don't want to bring other people into this, but I have a sibling and and she went through a very similar experience to me, and she has had a series of violent and abusive relationships. Um and sort of now forsworn men, she's the same age as me, more or less, it's forsworn men entirely because she is only excited by dangerous, aggressive, unpredictable men. Uh and she kind of admits it. She she admits that sexually it's exciting. Uh that um but it's unsustainable because it involves violence.
SPEAKER_04Maria and how you cure that because it's such a it's just in you, you know, it's so ingrained, it's so part of you.
SPEAKER_05It's through you like a stick of rock, isn't it? Yeah. I don't know. Sorry, that's a bit dark, isn't it? I have a good life, just to be clear to anyone listening to this. You know, there are worse things. Um lots of friends, um, and the ability to talk about this with people that care. So I think rather than leave might make this dark, it's it's important that that anyone out there that's feeling that has dealt with these sorts of issues, and I hope you haven't, but if you have, um get get to talk about them as soon as you can to somebody that you can trust. And I think you can find people that you can trust. I think it's much easier now. I mean the reality is that if age nine I'd gone to a teacher at school and said, Oh, this is happening to me, I would have been in real trouble. You know, I would have been in real trouble. The police wouldn't have wanted to know. Uh the the um the now whereas now they have a very specific protocol, I mean, uh which was amazing. Um, and um so there wasn't any option. There are options now, there are very much options. Uh and you know, and and there is abuse. I mean, you know, I because I remember sitting in the restaurant, the Mandarin Oriental, and some local uh was about to slap his little son. Little tiny boy was just running around. So, you know, and I leapt up to my feet.
SPEAKER_04So we have to identify the difference between discipline and abuse.
SPEAKER_05And I think hitting children is not ever acceptable, in my view. Um, I mean, I know it is here because I've seen it happen. But you know, I intervened in that instance. You know, it's different level.
SPEAKER_04I mean, discipline is very different to abuse. Yes. You know, I'm all for disciplining your kids so they're well behave, but I'm not into abusing your kids. Yeah, and there's a massive difference. And I do, it does annoy me when people say, Oh, you know, my mum used to whack me with a wooden spoon. Well, I'm sorry, you know, that doesn't that's not abuse. You know, try having your dad slash the top of your head and your blood is pouring down your face into your eyes, and your mother's saying, Okay, if you go to hospital for stitches, it's gonna hurt even more. Get to your room. That's abuse. Not being tapped with a wooden spoon.
SPEAKER_03I I think being hit with an implement probably is abuse, but what you're talking about is abuse off the scale. Yeah, they're both abuses, but you know, it's I didn't find it necessary to hit my children to turn them into decent human beings.
SPEAKER_05I think I agree absolutely the discipline is necessary, but that that that it that starts with you setting the right standard in terms of your own behaviour.
SPEAKER_04Well, I think that's a different part, Simon. So let's let's stay on topic. So so Renina and Jonathan, you know, nowadays what what do you do to help kids who've been abused? And and how early do you start such treatments?
SPEAKER_03I think we can start quite early. I mean, with young children, this is assuming it isn't their parents who've done the who've you know in carrying out the abuse, you would work with parents because parents are this is why abuse is is so significant if it is your parents. Your parents, you are completely dependent on your parents, or in your in your case, if you're at a boarding school, you'll you're you know dependent on those adults who are in parentus. But so I think with very young children, there's a lot of kind of play therapy and things that can be done with their parents to contain and re-establish the safety because when you've been abused, your whole body has you know has been dysregulated, and so you've got to have lots and lots of opportunities to re-establish safety you know in your here and now, and parents are key for that. So I think you know that any kind of therapy needs to involve the people who are raising you to kind of help with that because they're the they're the people there day to day dealing with it, and you know, maybe supporting teachers as well if if children are having big emotional outbursts, you know, how to kind of tackle that in a kind of non-re-traumatising way. So I I suppose that's the start. I mean, there are there are lots of different therapies. I mean, there's C B traumatra CBT, there's EMDR, there's some somatic therapies, so there are options, um, and with children, they learn a lot through play and they act out through play. So we're using using tools that we know children are familiar with and comfortable with.
SPEAKER_01I think sort of starting as soon as as possible, but also we we're our brains are plastic, they we have neuroplasticity, we grow, we change. It was believed that by age 20 it's fixed. We know that's not true. And so while patterns may be very hard to change, and some people may not change certain fundamental patterns, that we can grow and that be it therapy or other means are are venues for even even later on in life for overcoming trauma and for trying to establish better ways of relating.
SPEAKER_04So you don't think there's an age limit for getting the help? No.
SPEAKER_01I think if you've got the hunger and the interest, no.
SPEAKER_04Because it's hard not to feel like a write-off. Yeah. I mean, I feel like my whole life I've felt like damaged goods, dirty goods, yeah, not quite right, something wrong with you. And it's you know, I've found it very hard to move beyond that. And uh, you know, a lot of the time I feel like I honestly feel like I'm just existing and trying to get through to the end without topping myself, and uh but. But it's it's n it's existing, it's not really living, it's like watching everything is happening, but I feel rather disconnected from it all.
SPEAKER_01And that's very sad because you know there might be wonderful things and yet you can't feel or see them or experience them because you're maybe a few distances, you know, a few metres from your body, as it were, as you're going through life just waiting for the end. But and I think that's not an unusual experience.
SPEAKER_04Well, I think as a kid as well, I think having your you know what should have been a happy childhood being the absolute opposite. I I just feel like sometimes you didn't survive it. You might be a grown-up now, but you didn't survive it. And uh, you know, it's like parts of you didn't survive it. It's like being a a glass vase that someone's dropped and had to stick back together, but there's massive gaps and and it looks all messy, but it's kind of there, but it's well, you know, Japanese think that have reassembled.
SPEAKER_05I've written about this. I mean, I think that's a very elegant trope, you know, that if you can reassemble yourself. But but on this topic specifically, I think one of the interesting things about um 12-step recovery, which is I think an interesting process, whether you're whatever, whether you're talking about addiction, sex addiction, drug addiction, whatever it is, um, is you know, there are many nostrums. One of them is um if you want to feel self-esteem, then do esteemable things. So if you if you're tiny inside, uh one of the things that you can do is you can go and help other people. Getting out of your own skin um in order to go and spend time listening to other people's troubles, I think is extremely useful if you're trying to get beyond that feeling of uselessness.
SPEAKER_04Well, for me, I've always been, as you know, big animal lover, and I've put all my love and care into rescuing a lot of animals and doing a lot of animal rights things, and I think that kind of reflects the fact with abused animals, it's it's like being a kid where you've got no voice and you can't get out of that situation, so maybe that's why it's a repair piece, maybe.
SPEAKER_03You've got power to change things there.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Did you have pets growing up?
SPEAKER_04Um I I did have um yeah, I had a stray cat. And uh yeah, I mean I I definitely love my cat and until she was put down without my knowledge, but no, no, but um yeah, for me animals has always been the easiest way to love and feel loved back, it's unconditional in a different way.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05It's not I mean I have other friends who traumatized who focus very much on pets rather than people. Um I kind of understand that. Raised on a farm with dogs, I understand that. My father was like that, you know. He he hated human beings, he loved labradors.
SPEAKER_04Um so what can society and and schools be doing more of to protect children from abuse?
SPEAKER_03I think people have to be open to seeing it and not deny it its existence. And I think there's a discomfort for people. I think we we would like to feel it's something of the past, but it's not, it goes on currently, and we have to be aware of that. And I think maybe this is television or you know, film portrayals. I think that people are often looking for something more dramatic in a child, and of course, the sort of slightly more obvious dramatic things probably wouldn't take place in school, they would take place at home, like for example, bed wetting or nightmares or those things. You wouldn't see them if you were at school. And um, I think that the signs are far more subtle, and I think that they can be just mistaken as ordinary childhood things. Like we wouldn't necessarily think overcompliance in a child was a sign of we just might think, oh, they're a nice, easygoing, compliant child, whatever very well behaves. Exactly. So we're not I think that it's about training people to look for look at the bigger picture, add up the small pieces, and talk more with kids. Because I think most children haven't been asked how they are doing. You know, what's going on for them, making links, noticing them a bit more.
SPEAKER_01I remember one client saying to me, uh, he he told me how uh he was sexually abused in his own home by a neighbor. And I asked him, Did you ever think to tell your parents? And he said, I I don't think my parents would have been interested. And um I was like, really? And he said to me, as an adult, I realized that's madness. But as a child, it just wouldn't have occurred to me to think that they would have been interested.
SPEAKER_05They might not have been interested. I mean, it sort of depends what they were like and the culture that they'd grown up in, you know?
SPEAKER_01In in what he described, he said as as an adult looking at it, he could see they would have cared. Okay, but just in his perception as a child, because they were somewhat neglectful, not not wholly neglectful, that he just felt like And I think the the providing an environment where children feel they are responded to, somebody is interested. There may be people interested, but where the child can feel that is important.
SPEAKER_05Well that starts off in the home. I mean, with the with the you know, whether you engage your child. I mean, are you interested in your child or are you not? It might sound like a stupid question, but there are quite a lot of parents who spend quite a lot of money in order to keep their children at a distance, you know.
SPEAKER_04And a lot of parents who are quite resentful of them, I think, for costing money and taking their way their freedom. I mean, that's what I was always told as a kid that oh, it's so expensive to have a child, and you know, you're just a I've just felt like a complete pain in the backside and totally not wanted.
SPEAKER_05And and and children, you know, they may be reluctant to tell you things if if another adult's involved. Uh, my own experience, and I'm not a therapist, is you you can create conditions where they will speak to you by creating rules. Um, you know, it's not unlike the professional environment, you know, of a consultant. You you create a a space where if you go into that space, everything you say is a secret, there's no attribution, you can say whatever you want, no one's going to tell you one, those kind of things. And this is these are the kind of techniques that I use when I was a single parent.
SPEAKER_04But what do the kids do who have got no one who cares? Because a lot of kids, I think, who come from abusive households, you know, you find that they there's no one around them.
SPEAKER_03I think that's when we really need the school environment to care. I think that's key. I think school can be incredibly protective for children. You know, having adults that champion them, having adults that pay attention, notice their strengths, you know, nurture that a bit.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but I I think that's a certain type of school, and unfortunately, when you look at a lot of the inner city schools, you know, there's there's nothing. I mean, it wasn't even career advice, let alone any pastoral care. So it's you know it's a big problem.
SPEAKER_03But then as a community, I think we're a bit responsible as well. We should care about what's happening to our the neighbours and I think we've opened up our eyes a little bit.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, people do turn a blind eye because it's uncomfortable, isn't it? Yeah. Who are you to tell someone how to discipline their kid or or to mention that their kid is covered in bruises? I mean, what do you do with that?
SPEAKER_01Um I remember I had a I was working in an aquatic sport with children with different disabilities, and there was one um one guy who couldn't speak very well, and he he was black and he had all of these strange marks on his body. And I said to his the person who worked with him, I was like, that's not a skin condition, that's cigarette burns. And she's like, huh, I think you're right. I was like, you've worked with him for three years. I was like, but people don't want to see what they don't want to see.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Well, if it's not with the I don't know the circumstances, but if you're not familiar with it, it's not within your own zone of experience.
SPEAKER_04Right, right. But I think you're not. It's like they don't want to go down that road of being embroiled in it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's that's that keeps people quiet. Their instincts tell them something's up. And I think we do have to trust our instincts a bit and kind of wait for data sometimes because we can't go accusing people of things with no evidence. But I think sometimes when these um cases have been looked at afterwards, there were a lot of people who, if they'd have talked to each other, they knew everybody knew a little bit of something. Yeah. And then you put it together and you have a bit more of a picture.
SPEAKER_04Well, thank you for broaching this really difficult subject. We've got um the last twenty seconds to give some positive thoughts to victims of the.
SPEAKER_03Ranina? Oh goodness. Um there's so much it there's just lots of different ways to work on this, and I think um what Simon said is important that you could start in a recovery place with other people where acceptance might feel easier. I think that's there's lots, and online allows people to test the water a bit anonymously to begin with. Yes. To build up their confidence to talk. Johnny then.
SPEAKER_01Um, our brains change even later in life. We can still develop and grow. So even when there's a sense of I'm dysfunctional, I'm traumatized, I'll never change, I've tried and failed, actually, we can still change. And so know that you're not a lost cause. Like try and find a place where you can continue to grow.
SPEAKER_04Okay. On that hopeful note, thank you for joining us today on Ella Podcasts. If you're a survivor of childhood abuse, please don't blame yourself in any way, as it wasn't your fault. You were just a little kid. There is no shame to hide from. You're not tainted or dirty goods. You are a survivor. It's unhealthy to bottle up these memories and emotions. So do join a support group, speak to a therapist, a helpline, or your doctor to get the help you need to move forward. You're not alone. You can lead a good and fulfilling life. If you want to suggest a topic from our next episode, please join our Facebook group at Ella Podcasts and message us. Please subscribe, rate, and share this podcast. Sending you a very, very big hug.
