For much of my life (teens and twenties) I had suffered/exhibited high risk behaviour, this was exacerbated by my time in the military and security, I was plagued with angry out-bursts, self sabotage, self hatred, self loathing, drinking, fighting, suicidal ideation, hopelessness, depression and so on…
I started a journey of personal change in 2009 as a result of the breakdown of my marriage, I gradually over the years invested in CBT, NLP/hypnosis/time-line therapy, EMDR, Somatic Therapy, circling, Person Centred Therapy, Somatic Experiencing and other spiritual modalities (Buddhism, mythicism, mindfulness etc..) on a desperate quest to heal and become whole and make sense of my life.
In my normal memory I recalled my father shouting at and hitting me and my mother, in my normal memory I remember being terrified as a child, in my normal memory I remember wanting to die as a child… after one particularly intense timeline therapy session in 2009 in which I came to out of the trance with foot long trails of snot hanging out my nose and inconsolable tears, my mother later reported over the phone that as a new born babe she had used me as a human shield to protect her from my raging father, she had also previously reported that as a babe I was left to ‘cry it out’ so as not to become spoilt…
In my job in 2019 on a particular training, we did the ACE test, and my score was VERY high. Including for some reason me ticking that I had been sexually abused as a boy while having no recollection of it.
The only pointer I had at that point of my life was a blurred memory from 2011 after a particularly heavy night of drinking and feeling very hungover, I experienced a period of time (approx 10 minutes) of complete/seeming paralysis in which I had some kind of flashback of being molested at school by a teacher on a school trip, something that had risen and then slipped beneath the surface again just as quickly.
In 2020 I underwent underground alternative MDMA therapy for treatment of CPTSD, a ‘sickness’ I’d suffered with since childhood (and no not from military service), although there was nothing that I could remember that would make it make sense as to why my symptoms were so severe
Treatment one:
Laid on my back with a eye mask on, after a while I started moaning and crying out, louder and louder, until it reached a fever pitch of noise and crescendo… ‘was this me having my tonsils out at two years old’ I wondered…
After this stopped I started moving around, taking various positions, this went on for some time, as I was laid on my front, legs splayed and hands crossed in front of me, my jaw continually feeling as if it was being forced open, I realised two things. One – that I was reliving being raped, Two – that the boy that I once was – was a hero – and NO WONDER Id struggled so much in my life.
Treatment two:
Laid on my back with an eye mask on, so the medicine took effect, gradually I started moving once again, as as if by clockwork, by some hidden force which moved me like a puppet on invisible strings, so I started reliving being raped once again…. After an hour I started speaking in a voice that ‘was not my own’ the following language patters followed over the rest of the six hour treatment.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it’s not your fault”
“I’m sorry its not your fault, I just couldn’t help it”
“you made me do it, but its not your fault”
“its not your fault, but I’ll kill you if you tell anyone
“this is our little secret”
“I will kill you, if you can’t keep a secret”
“dont tell anyone okay?! <strangled me>
“Its all your fault, you made me do it”
“Its all your fault you made me do it, you dirty little boy”
“You like this don’t you” <strangled me> “yes” I replied to stop the strangulation.
“If you tell anyone we’ll kill your mummy and daddy, and well do this to your brother, then kill him as well”
“You don’t want that do you?” <strangled me> “no” I replied to stop the strangulation.
“you wont tell anyone will you?” <strangled me> “no” I replied to stop the strangulation
“there’s a terrible darkness in you Daniel, we’re trying to help you by getting the darkness out, so you can be a good boy again, so you can go back to your mummy and daddy”
and on, and on….
This was all spoken in an incredibly psychotic, practised and manipulative voice. It was heavily ritualistic and practised in the manner it was carried out. It became clear that there was ONE face that I recognised at this ‘special party’, which allowed me to pinpoint an approximate age and location, I was five and a half and it was in Nigeria where we used to live as expats.
In the interim between the second and third treatments, I started reliving the rapes on my own at home away from any influence of the medicine, common themes that played out was that of them using a Polaroid camera, and tying me up/holding me down, and forcing my brother against me in compromising situations… they tried to make me abuse him, or partake in some way, and they would show me Polaroids at a later date saying “look Daniel you’ve already done it, why not do it again” which I would refuse, but which was extremely distressing and brought up a lot of shame and self hatred to work through.
Treatment three:
In the run up to this treatment, I was having dreams and nightmares about my father for some reason, during the treatment this became clear.
An hour or so in, I had a terrible half an hour where I moved with a layer of experience of incredible lostness where I was certain that I had abused other children including my brother, vowing silently to myself to kill myself IF this proved to be true, (I no longer hold to this vow even if the worst were to prove to be true, IF I did crack under such pressure it would be understandable, I can give myself that grace now), after a while this gradually receded and I realised that I hadn’t done any such thing, and as clarity and sanity returned to me I saw him, the face of my father came into focus, his face leering and lustful, and so in all the previous gestalt’s I’d relived where they were trying to get me to abuse my brother, so the face of my father came into view and I realised he’d been there all along. But blanked out, an impossible truth for my mind to try and integrate….
And so as the coming months went on I relived much more, and unfortunately gradually descended into psychosis at the overwhelm of what I relived, after much recovery and healing I am left with THIS the core of my story that I believe to be absolutely true.
That I was abused from a very young age, from the age that I would have smelt like a baby. That my father was the main perpetrator and who adored and loathed me in the same breath, who was jealously possessive of me and also keen to share me about with his ‘friends’ and network to try and win favour. That I was raped my MANY over the majority of my childhood. That at some point my mind split and the dissociated part of my mind hid my story COMPLETELY from conscious recollection. That when I was five and a half (approximately) I was sent away to this ‘special party’ in Nigeria where we lived at the time, where these terrible conditioning rituals were performed on me as outlined in treatment two.
My name is Daniel, and this is my story, thankyou for reading, thankyou for bearing witness to my testimony. And I say this to you reading this, perhaps as another survivor, I believe in you, your story carries power, and together we can change the world for the better, we are all heroes.