E-Book, Englisch, 168 Seiten
Baker The Getting of Resilience
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-78161-127-2
Verlag: Hammersmith Health Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
From the Inside Out
E-Book, Englisch, 168 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-78161-127-2
Verlag: Hammersmith Health Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Sally Baker began her therapeutic training firstly in physical therapies working with women survivors of sexual abuse and domestic violence. She trained in EFT and became an advanced level practitioner, followed by Clinical Hypnotherapy and later added the English modality, Percussive Suggestion Technique (PSTEC). She was awarded PSTEC Master Practitioner status in 2014. She is the co-author, with Liz Hogon, of Seven Simple Steps to Stop Emotional Eating and How to Feel Differently About Food.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
My family background makes me think about all the things I am versus all the things I am not. One way to illustrate this is with my name: Sally Baker. I was born Sally Baker to a father named Harry Baker or Henry Jackson. He was born either in 1912 or 1914. He was the same man who just happened to have two names and two dates of birth on two different birth certificates. Over one hundred years ago, during the Edwardian period, confusion over family lineage was not unusual in the working class. So, although, in theory, there was a 50:50 chance of my being called Sally Jackson, I grew up oblivious to that possibility for a long time as Sally Baker.
In the Baker family, ambition was not encouraged. My mum took books away from me as I was growing up. She said I spent too much time reading and that nothing good ever happened to a girl who knew too much. Hey, who knew? I recall my father often telling the teenage me that what would make him proud was if I trained and qualified as a nurse. Note not a doctor, as that would have been unthinkable. He had me pegged to be a nurse, and that was that. (That is not to say that being a nurse is not a worthy ambition; it is an exceedingly tough training and of course much more professional and based on scientific knowledge now than it was when I was growing up. It was the lack of ‘either/or’ that was so limiting.) But what hurt me the most was his lack of stretch and the lack of aspiration for me. The fact he didn’t aspire for me to be a doctor made me believe there was something unworthy about me.
So, parental ambition to succeed at all costs wasn’t my pressure. I felt the inverse pressure from a lack of expectation that my parents had vested in me.
As it happens, this has been one of the most challenging subjects I’ve attempted to write about. Childhood trauma may require a lifetime’s vigilance to know how those experiences can undermine resilience building. The whole process of researching the latest thinking about resilience effectively highlighted where my old negative self-judgements lurked and where my lingering self-sabotaging habits hid.
Like many others, I’ve been challenged with ‘the getting of resilience’ for myself. I have had to find my way through the tangled web of negative feelings I developed growing up, including limiting beliefs I took into adulthood. I had also developed entrenched beliefs that I was never good enough or worthy of happiness. I’m a prime example of how growing up, even in a functioning and loving family, doesn’t always protect one from the outside world.
My seven-year-old self’s world fell apart when I was sexually assaulted by two teenage brothers who were the sons of friends of my family. There’s an old-school photograph of me in a summer dress, looking directly at the camera. When I look at that image of me, I try hard to determine whether this is a before or after picture. I still acknowledge that sexual assault changed my perception of myself and how I understood my place in the world.
In retelling this story, like many survivors of abuse, ingrained minute details of what happened are still vivid in my memory. Ask me which day of the week or year, and I’d struggle to be accurate. But everything I’ve written here is true. That kind of disparity typically double-binds abuse survivors in law courts and stops them from being recognised as reliable witnesses.
These family friends were unlike any other friends of my parents. My Dad felt an old allegiance to stay in touch with the boys’ father as they had fought in the same regiment in the Second World War. My dad’s friend had been disabled in conflict and had barely been able to work since he was de-mobbed. They were conspicuously poor in many ways. Their home looked make-shift, with a collapsed sofa, old curtains as throws over the armchairs, and the furniture worn and mismatched. Looking back, we visited them two or three times a year and probably neither my father nor mother wanted to, but it had become an expectation on both sides.
On one of these Sunday afternoon visits, the elder boy, who was around 17 or 18 years old, asked me to ride with him on his new motorbike. My mom categorically said no, but I must have bugged and annoyed her until, in a fit of peak, she said, ‘Oh, go on but stay on this road and come straight back.’ He took me to the rear of the house, where an old utility room had been roughly converted into a workshop with a workbench under the window. The room was littered with engine parts from motorbikes and cars. It smelt of oil and dust.
Once I was separated from my family, he acted quickly. I can’t remember if the motorbike ride ever happened. I can remember being lifted onto the workbench and his slightly younger brother holding me down as they sexually assaulted me. It could have been hours, but it was minutes. The older one spoke close into my ear so that I could feel his breath. He said this was what I’d wanted, and it was our secret.
I was mute and frozen in fear. My mum had gone to the front door to look out for me on the older boy’s motorbike, and when she couldn’t see us on the road, she began walking through the house, calling my name. She had interrupted them, and they lifted me back down from the workbench onto my feet and pushed me towards the door just as my mum appeared. She looked at the two young men and pulled me by my wrist. She was angry and confused about why I was in that room with them, but nothing else was said. I remember her saying I should stay by her side for the rest of the visit. I remember standing still and silent beside the over-stuffed armchair where she sat chatting with the adults. When I caught her eye, she looked away, obviously angry with me.
The incident was only referred to weeks later on one Saturday afternoon. I was in the living room while my mum finished some decorating. I remember her standing on a pair of step ladders when she casually announced that we would visit that family again the next day.
My bottled-up and unexpressed fear must have gushed out of me as I began to sob loudly. I felt inconsolable, almost unable to breathe, gagging with hysteria at the thought of returning to that house and those men. I remember my mother rushing down the step ladder and trying to contain my thrashing arms as she held onto me, trying to quiet and comfort me. She knew now that something had happened that day. In a raised, urgent voice, she asked, ‘What did they do to you? What did they do?’
I can’t picture what words I used to describe the assault. I was seven years old. I knew nothing other than the language of Mum and Dad’s tickles and hugs. I don’t think I even had a name for my vagina, but without words, my mother still understood. I know she held me for a long time. I know that she cried with me, and then she sharply held me away from her at arm’s length and ordered me, ‘Do not tell your father!’ At that moment, I told myself that it was because this had been my mistake and was my shame to bear alone.
My story perfectly illustrates how bad things can happen to anyone, but it’s the story we tell ourselves about those events that can cause the most harm. My mother must have dried my tears and told me to forget what had happened. She then said when we went to their house the next day, I was to stay close to her and not move out of her sight. I protested and cried bitterly, but the visit went ahead as planned. I remember how on that visit and many subsequent visits, I would stand by that same over-stuffed, collapsing armchair by my mother’s side and neither speak nor move until it was time to leave and return home again.
I created more of my story from being made to go on those visits. I told myself a dark tale about how no one cared about me and that I was just to be compliant and quiet. The judgements I made about myself at the age of seven were to colour my life for decades as the story I continued to tell myself played out in my actions and responses to reinforce my belief that I was shameful and to blame for everything wrong that happened to me. I can remember being that child and feeling that I wasn’t safe. It made me in such a rush to grow up. It was as if I’d discovered how dangerous it was to be small and wordless.
The sexual assault wasn’t spoken of again for almost 30 years, and much had happened by then. At just 17, I went to live with my much older boyfriend in Exeter, Devon. Although my mother and father tried to legally stop me from leaving home, the social worker they were appointed said it was too late to intervene as the family relationship had broken down. She said I’d probably run away if I were made a Ward of the Court.
Growing up, I habitually put my safety at risk with men I barely knew. In my mind, I toyed with imaginary headlines in tabloid newspapers that read ‘Girl Found Dead in a Ditch’, believing it was only a matter of time until it came true. In my mind, I almost wanted to fulfil the prophecy that it was all my fault and I was to blame – the very same story I’d been telling myself all those years.
It nearly did come true a year after I moved to Devon, and I was abducted and raped by a stranger. Falling into conversation with him as I walked home enjoying the afternoon sun, I foolhardily agreed to join him for a...
