The Internet Connects Trauma Survivors
 
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2007 00:10:23 -0500 (CDT)


The Internet Connects Trauma Survivors By Kirsten Anderberg
(www.kirstenanderberg.com)

The internet is so new that we have barely touched upon its potential
creative applications. I stumbled upon a use of the internet, which
helped me heal from decades of trauma from child abuse. I used the
internet to locate other adult survivors of the state run child
protection institution in Los Angeles, Ca. called MacLaren Hall.
MacLaren Hall functioned as an insane asylum/containment camp/prison
for minors, although it was supposed to be a protective facility
for severely abused children in Los Angeles county. Since my family
were all either directly guilty, or guilty by association, or in
the dark due to my parents skewing the facts, no one would talk to
me about being in MacLaren Hall. But I used the internet to finally
find someone else *who was there* to talk to about it, and finding
those survivors seriously changed my life, and brought me a profound
peace where before I had only angst.

I have now realized this method of recovery could be used by survivors
of trauma in many areas, such as survivors of mental asylums, group
homes for troubled youth, war veterans, orphanage survivors, homeless
allies, etc.

This is not about locating old friends, even if some of the folks
were friends for some period in time. This is really about finding
other *strangers* who were in the same traumatic environment, often
at the same time, to get validation and healing within that frightened
memory you alone hold. When traumatized Vietnam vets came home from
Vietnam to ordinary American life, some went crazy from the lack
of others with a similar set of reference points. Some wanted to
return to the war, simply to be near others with a shared life
experience again, even when they knew that was sick. But this
phenomenon says a lot about how trauma works.

Once traumatized, you *cannot* go back to the pre-trauma view of
life.

My memories of MacLaren Hall were both foggy and also very clear.
I could remember certain things clearly, like the group bedrooms
with rows of cots, and bars on the windows, or the big group bathtubs,
or the children shrieking and sobbing all night. But I do not
remember other things, like how I got there, how long I was there,
what I did for hours, days, weeks, thereI certainly do not remember
*any* one child in Mac Hall. I made no friends and tried to stay
as invisible as possible to avoid beatings from the other children.
It was a jail mentality. I shut down emotionally, as I did not know
where I was. I also did not know if I would ever see my parents or
family again. I had no idea what was going to happen to me, one day
to the next, at age 8. And I was, and am not, alone. There are
thousands of children who went through MacLaren Hall under these
conditions. And many of them are now adults. They finally closed
MacHall in 2003. I needed to find other adult survivors of Mac Hall
for me to find true healing about that experience. I have perhaps
found no greater emotional healing thus far this lifetime, than the
healing I get each time I speak to a Mac Hall survivor.

Many feel why talk therapy can be an effective healing tool for
past victims of trauma is because it helps establish a different
time frame in the mind for the events. The trauma tends to replay
over and over in the victims head. And it is almost as if the
subconscious stays living in the place of trauma, trying over and
over to replay it, either to understand it or to come to a different
conclusion with it. I have experienced this myself, as I sat looking
at one of the houses I suffered my most severe childhood abuse at.
As I stared at the house, I cried, for hours, over and over, realizing
I do not live there now, that the abuse is over. I just kept emblazing
it in my brain, It is over, this is the house, empty, abandoned,
no abusive family lives there now So, talking to survivors now, can
help solidify in a trauma survivors mind, a time frame, of then and
now, that can really help at a subconscious level.

Due to secrecy about child abuse issues within families, many of
us never got to discuss important things as children, and we rarely
can discuss these topics in normal life as adults either, except
maybe with our most trusted lovers or a short therapist session.
The traumatic experiences are fuzzy and can easily be misunderstood
by children. Talking to other survivors of the shared trauma
experience can help you fill in the missing pieces necessary for
your healing. For instance, I was told my whole life that MacLaren
Hall was a juvenile hall, or a prison for minors. My family just
basically said that at age 8, because I was bad, I went to jail. I
asked what I did specifically that was so bad I needed to be in
that brutal jail environment and never could get an answer. When I
asked my mom why I was in Maclaren Hall, she said, To teach you and
your father a lesson. I got good grades in school, was never violent,
had manners, was a prissy little red haired girl with white patton
leather shoes. It just never made sense. It haunted me. What had I
done, at age 8, to put me in a scary asylum/prison? I needed to
know so I never repeated that mistake. At age 42, I put MacClaren
Hall into a search engine. It was the wrong spelling, but it pulled
up a mans article on MacClaren Hall.

I wrote him, telling him the experience of Mac Hall haunted me and
disturbed me my whole life. As we talked, he talked about all the
battered and bandages kids, with black eyes and broken ribs in Mac
Hall. And he kept referring to Mac Hall as a Child Protection
Institution. I argued when I was there it was a juvenile hall, my
parents said so. But he was there when I was there and he is my
age. He finally proved to me that Mac Hall is indeed a child
protection institution and has always been that.

All my life I thought I was in juvenile hall at age 8 because I was
bad, but it turns out my parents were bad, not me. All those guns
and guards and bars and uniforms and fences and barbed wire were
not there to keep me and the other children away from society. They
were there to keep society away from us under heavy guard. It both
healed me and killed me to find that out. It was healing to my self
esteem to finally realize why I was there, what the place was, etc.
But it also broke my heart to realize my parents had scapegoated
an innocent little girl (me) by branding me as being in juvenile
hall, as a criminal, to my whole family, to save their own humiliation.

Upon finding out that Mac Hall was a child protection institution,
many things began to make sense, which really helped me heal. Part
of why it kept rerunning in my head was me trying to understand the
experience. I had been traumatized by the nurse upon arrival. She
insisted on inspecting my naked body. I sobbed asking I not have
to strip and be inspected, but she insisted. Now I understand. She
was looking for broken bones, etc.

from child abuse. She was not trying to humiliate and scare me, she
was trying to help me. I wondered why no one visited me there. I
now see there were restraining orders on my family visiting, etc.
Mail was also withheld from me in Mac Hall due to restraining orders.
Just getting closure on some of these issues is quite a relief.

A woman wrote me recently saying she read one of my articles about
MacLaren Hall and that she was a survivor too. She said she agreed
Mac Hall was terrifying and dangerous, but that she was glad to be
there and away from her parents finally. She talked about the good
parts of Mac Hall that she remembered. And that, too, brought me
more clarity, more ability to see it as being in the past, yet being
real. She talked about the TV room, where they would only let you
go if you were good, meaning you caused no commotions in there. I
immediately flashed back to me in that room. She was right. That
did feel like the safest place there, mostly because they kept the
scary kids out of that room, as it was a privilege room as a reward
for good behavior. I felt safe in the TV room. This woman is my age
and was in Mac Hall when I was. We realized we may have actually
been 2 girls sitting quietly, in Mac Halls TV room, in 1969, together.

When I saw the movie Sybil, with Joanne Woodward, which was based
on a true story about a recovering survivor of child abuse who had
gotten into schizophrenia as a coping tool, one part of the movie
broke me down and I could not get it out of my mind. It is a very
symbolic imagery for me.

Sybil drew pictures of a wooden shaft shed been hung from in her
kitchen by her sadistic mom. Shed go into her child personality and
scribble furiously with a purple crayon in psychotherapy sessions
while talking about the shaft. Sybil would draw pictures of her
house and tell the therapist about her torture as a child. Finally,
the therapist drove to the house Sybil was raised in. She went into
the abandoned kitchen and saw the lights and counters as Sybil had
drawn them. Then she saw the shaft.

She climbed up to look into the shaft, and there, on the wall, were
purple crayon marks. The therapist ripped some of the wood with the
purple crayon off the wall and took it home with her.

During the next session with Sybil, the therapist told Sybil she
had visited her old house of childhood abuse. And she handed Sybil
the piece of wood with the purple crayon on it. This was a turning
point in the movie for Sybil. She changed after seeing the crayon
on the wood. The crayon on the wood took the abuse out of the present
and put it into the past, properly, physically. The crayon marks
told Sybil she no longer had to convince anyone of anything. It
told her the therapist knew, and believed her and it validated her
anger and pain. The piece of wood somehow demystified the whole
thing, made it real, not just a bad dream. I wonder if we do not
even try to keep convincing ourselves that the abuse did not happen
and we, ourselves, imagined it. But something like that piece of
wood with the purple crayon marks, in hand, makes it all real, and
clearly separates the two times periods, as you are not making the
marks now, they are already made, from the past. Somehow the physical
evidence from the place of abuse can validate a victims feelings.

I have known Mac Hall happened to me since I was 8. I have felt
that no one believed me that Mac Hall existed, or that it was as
horrifying as I said, or that I had even been there. At a family
reunion in 1993, I found out a cousin of mine worked at a job that
had her making contact with MacLaren Hall. I said to her that *I*
was in MacLaren Hall as a kid, and she said, You were not, as if I
was nuts. Things like that make life weird, juxtaposed to me sitting
up in bed some nights, in a cold sweat, waking from a dream where
I am in Mac Hall again. I would wake up to terrifying nightmares
of children shrieking in horror and fright all night. It got so I
wondered if I had imagined Mac Hall. No one in my family would talk
about it. You never heard about Mac Hall in the news or the press.
It was as if it did not exist. I tried to get my records from Mac
Hall as an adult but it was impossible.

In 1993, I was accepted to law school. For the first time in 15+
years, my family invited me to their yearly family reunion. At that
reunion, my dad told me that my stepmom had found some items of
mine in their photo albums, so he had thrown them in a manila
envelope and then he handed them to me. Inside, I found letters
addressed to me in care of MacLaren Hall, from my cousins. As a
matter of fact, one was from the cousin who had contact with Mac
Hall through her work and said I had not been there. I have since
sent her a photo of the envelope and letter from her to me at Mac
Hall and she now believes I was there. Getting some kind of validation
that these abuses occurred is important, it seems.

Between the envelope proving I was in Mac Hall in 1969, and finding
out Mac Hall is not a juvenile hall, and meeting survivors who
validated my testimony that the place was horrifying and no safe
place for a child, I was well on my way towards healing from a lot
of the trauma of the Mac Hall experience. The final icing on the
cake was finding, via Googling the correct spelling of MacLaren
Hall, more articles, written by the mainstream press on Mac Hall.
For me, it was a freedom to see, in print, esteemed journalists
saying exactly what I had said about the frightening insides of
that place. And I am feeling a resolution, as well, in the fact
that they closed Mac Hall, finally, in May 2003, the year I found
other survivors and peace.

Through the internet, I literally found peace over an issue that
was a monkey on my back for decades. I was able to find others to
look at the trauma with, others who were there. I was able to find
outside validation about what Mac Hall is and feels like inside. I
was able to see how others integrated that experience into their
lives. In all, I was given a piece of wood with the purple crayon
on it. I think the same process could be used for other victims of
trauma from institutions, etc.

By posting ads for adult survivors of an institution, be it a mental
institution, an orphanage, or a state run facility such as Mac Hall,
there is a possibility of finding others who shared the experience
and have a unique understanding and perhaps you can find some peace
together on the matter. It seems veterans could use this tool for
healing as well. I posted ads on looking for adult MacLaren Hall
survivors on www.craigslist.org in Los Angeles, and also on Los
Angeles Indy Media (IMC) (http://la.indymedia.org) and San Diegos
IMC (http://sandiego.indymedia.org). You can post such ads on Indy
Media sites in the area the trauma happened, go to www.indymedia.org
for a list of cities with IMCs. Besides the ads, other survivors
found me because I wrote an article about Mac Hall and they read
it. I encourage survivors of these types of trauma to write and
self-publish articles about their traumatic experiences, and also
to seek out others from the trauma time and place. Finding survivors
from MacLaren Hall has literally changed my life for the better.

For more information about MacLaren Hall, read my article When Child
Protection Looks Like Jail at http://www.zmag.org/0031.htm. Or check
out Ed Humes 10 page article about MacLaren Hall in the Los Angeles
Magazine at
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1346/is_1_48/ai_96195433

-- You can receive Kirsten's articles, as they are written, via an
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