I Believe You

1. I Believe You What survivors have taught me about their journey, what actually happened to them, their incredible resilience, what got them through their recovery, and what they are doing today in their recovered lives. By Eileen Aveni, LCSW, LMSW, ACSW, BCD

2. My Background Professional Musician – Undergraduate degree in voice. Also Music teacher graduate. Learned child development and stages of learning and awareness. Some children in my classroom had problems! Couldn’t attend to them. Realized a call to work one-on-one with people who have emotional difficulties. Pursued 2nd undergraduate degree in Psychiatric Music Therapy. Worked with Vietnam and other veterans in a psych hospital. TRAUMA! NO fault of their own. Just trying to cope with a bad situation. Trained and have an innate sensitivity to nuance, body and vocal expression. I always look for the aesthetic, beauty, the meaning in life.

3. My Background [2] Pursued 3rd degree – MSW - to work with trauma. • Medical hospital work for 5 years. Oncology terminal care. Rehabilitation medicine. Head traumas in ICU. Critical heart surgeries that could end in death. • Hospice work. Death and dying for 6 years – part time. • Combined – experienced approx. 3 deaths per week for 9 years. Again – I was looking for what brought meaning to life. How did people cope with looking at death’s door, or with a sudden severe trauma? Started Private Practice - at first in Bereavement. With the impact of a death and the grief involved, people can automatically and suddenly begin to unearth earlier traumas – sexual abuse, childhood abuse, etc.

4. Realization • I began to see that everyone goes through the darkest waters, the deepest pain at some times in their lives. • But some go through more. Why? I didn’t know. • The interesting thing, though – some are thankful for those times, that they wouldn’t trade them for anything. • How could that EVER be? • Why were some who had endured the most brokenness I had ever seen until then, able to emerge stronger, more confident, and even victorious? • What did they have? What got them through? How did they find purpose and meaning to life? • Why did others seem to never arrive at that stage of development?

5. One Day…. • In 1988, I had a bereavement client suddenly unearth RA from the sudden death of a loved one. I did not recognize it then. But something was different. • By 1991, I had 10 RA/MC clients all at the same time! I was looking for similarities to other traumas but this was different. These people had something in addition to the qualities of other clients who were abused. • What was it? I had to know! And I had to understand this level of pain. How could anyone endure this amount of pain, continuously, and not feel hopeless and give up? What did they have? • These people didn’t know each other but their stories were similar.

6. Crisis for me – I had to know… • I knew somehow they weren’t lying. I had seen enough trauma register in the body, the mind, in facial expressions, in nuance, in voice tone, in startle reactions to know what was real trauma and when someone might be faking it. These people were not faking it. • Existential crisis for me. I HAD to know if this was for real. • Went to the police, sat down with crime scene videos and saw ritualized elements in them. Visited several crime and ritual sites just after cult holidays. • Traveled the US meeting with people more knowledgeable than me and together we learned from each other. By 1994, I joined an advocacy effort which brought me in contact with others advocating worldwide. The FMSF appeared on the scene then. • Helped run a Safe-House for people running from the cult on cult holidays. • Worked on legislation in Michigan and helped several other states.

7. I BELIEVE YOU! • What I have seen…. • You have something that I still cannot fully understand. • You have a beauty inside that screams - let me out! • You want to be different. You want the world to see that you are not the wounded soul, forever scarred. That you endured something that yes – almost took you down to the bottom. But somehow you were able to swim. What is it about you that your very soul screams to be heard, to be understood? • I hear you say – almost audibly – yes I have endured this terrible horror – but I am more than the evil done to me. I am a person who not only survived but I have wisdom. I have learned things about life, about evil, about goodness, that most will never know. • I have something to say to the world!

8. But How Do You Get There? You May Ask: • Why did this happen to me? I still sometimes hope that one day I will wake up and find it was just a bad trip, a bad nightmare! • How do I get others to hear me? Do I even want them to hear me? • How do I get others to help me? How do I trust anyone enough to get the help? • What will it take to get on top of this? • Do I have what it takes to survive this journey? • What will this journey entail? • What price might I have to pay? Will it be worth it? • Will I ever really get there? • What will it look like once I get there?

9. Here is What Others Have Told Me That Helped Them I had to know so I asked!

10. Make a STRONG COMMITMENT! What does it take to step out of this hell? MAKE A FIRM COMMITMENT TO YOURSELF, NOT TO ANYONE ELSE! • You commit to going on this journey – NO MATTER WHAT! • No matter what it takes to get there. • No matter what I may go through to get there. • No matter what setbacks I may endure. • No matter if people believe me or not. • No matter if I can’t believe it myself.

11. Make a STRONG COMMITMENT! [2] • NO COMPROMISE! • There is NOTHING I am willing to accept or give in to. • Can’t just allow some things to slide. • I have to feel my integrity, my principles. I want more than this for my life! • It has to be a 100% commitment to step out of this, no matter what the consequences may be.

12. Memories – What to Do, How to Think About Them • When memories come – I feel hopeless. I want to give up. Right? Not again! Not more to deal with! Will it ever end? What if I can’t cope with what is coming? • Need TOTAL COMMITMENT! Once you have decided on TOTAL COMMITMENT, you fall back on that decision when the times get really rough. You DON’T BUDGE! Like commitment in a marriage. • I cannot compromise my values – even if I find that others who abused me possibly made me do bad things. I know myself. I am someone who can never compromise my values. I know who I am. I am not bad. They were the bad ones if they made me do bad things. • You HOLD ON TO THAT TRUTH – that THEY were the bad ones. I am good. That takes holding on tight because you will navigate waters where you were told in many sinister ways that you were the problem.

13. Memories – What to Do, How to Think About Them [2] • I can’t go by anybody else’s opinion. These are my memories. • I cannot be doing this for anybody else. • When others can’t believe it, I have to hold on to my truth, my memories – even though I would prefer to doubt myself and make it all go away!

14. Recovery Expectations • No time limits! • Nobody really knows the work ahead. • Don’t go into recovery with an expectation of anything other than 100% commitment, no matter what the consequences. • Recovery usually is just a bit more complex that you figure in the beginning! • Learn to be patient with yourself. Patient with your support people. • Learn to be patient with your therapist. They are usually trying their best.

15. Getting Support and Help • It’s hard to find someone – friend or therapist – who will walk with me on this journey. • Doesn’t take long to realize that the majority of support falls on me to try to navigate my recovery myself. • If you cannot find someone who knows much or knows what they are doing – build on who you do find – educate them. • Present general information. Don’t overwhelm them. Then gradually educate them as they stretch to meet the incredible demands of dealing with this kind of evil. In this way you can test what they are made of. Will they stay with you on this journey? At least some of the way? • One survivor told me – “I have never met one person we did not educate. We developed our own support. It didn’t get handed to us. We dealt with it. We still do…. But be warned – it’s pretty much a lonely journey.”

16. Other Forms of Support • Online support – chat rooms, blogs, poetry postings, creative outlets to express yourself. Be aware – there can be infiltrators in groups. • In bigger cities there are sometimes DID support groups. • Reading books especially “Becoming Yourself” by Alison Miller, PhD designed for the survivor to help recover themselves if they don’t have professional help available to them. • But be careful. You want to discover your own memories. • Try to refrain from reading much other material until you have recovered most all of your memories. But Alison’s book is a good choice to consider nearer to the beginning of your work in therapy.

17. Your Family – Decisions to be Made • Were they involved? Are they alive today? • In the words of one survivor – “What is there left to salvage if they were involved?” • But you might have a decent family outside of the few bad ones. But do you chance crossing paths with the bad ones to relate or visit the good ones? Will the good ones inadvertently convey information about you to the bad ones? Risks involved. • Be prepared. You need to make some decisions. Will you stay in contact with your family? This involves your decision to be FULLY COMMITTED TO RECOVERY. Being FULLY COMMITTED may mean you must leave, have no contact. This is perhaps one of the hardest decisions you will ever have to make. • You need to be honest with yourself.

18. Educate Yourself • Learn about flashbacks, how memories are triggered, what to expect with nightmares & night terrors, what is programming, etc. • It is inevitable that you will be getting memories that you never ever heard of, much less could conceive of going through. • How do memories work? What is memory retrieval work? How to handle dealing with memories you don’t believe. • Not everything will happen to everyone one. • What the heck is going on with me? • Avoid feeling freaked out when memories come by educating yourself on the process of how recovery works. • So you must not only educate others, but also yourself. Otherwise both of you will be caught off guard.

19. Spiritual Support? Problems with this one! • Most all survivors were victimized by people either posing as spiritual people or those who were actually spiritual people (priests, ministers, etc). • A lot of people were also traumatized by spiritual support people who tried to help. Their lack of education and understanding of the real issues hurt the survivor even more. • Now the survivor shies away from spiritual support of any kind. • Need to rethink this one. How should YOU handle this? Do you need to perhaps test more people in religion and find someone that you CAN trust?

20. What actually happened to some of my clients?What they are doing today with their lives? Confidentiality will be maintained

21. Client #1 (random order, selected list) • One client lost her husband soon after she recovered. She had relied on him fully during her recovery. Because of her recovery, she was able to stand up and move ahead without him. It was interesting that because he died, she was forced to launch ahead and make a new life, a very empowering thing for her. But she maintained that there is no way she would’ve been able to do that if he hadn’t been there during recovery. He helped her see into her family and make the break from them that she needed to finally recover. She works and volunteers now. She chose to be mostly integrated.

22. Client #2 • Was heavily into activism and occult activism. Lived a bisexual life. After a lot of recovery, realized she was really heterosexual. Has a child. Made choices to not live with the father since he was not in recovery. Watched her raise her child for a number of years. She is a very good mother. Cut off her family who were involved in her abuse. Made a good life for herself and her child.

23. Client #3 • Realized she was one of the rejects of the MkUltra program and that she was also an RA survivor. Most of her life memories haunted her but she just thought this was just something she had to put up with. She had tried to get help before but nothing helped. We worked, uncovered the roots, and today she is pursuing her own successful business, has a busy, emotionally healthy family and is doing well.

24. Client #4 • Besides RA and MC, she was involved in a pagan religion. She was early in my understanding of RA and MC. She was clearly programmed as a messenger – would bump into people and trigger them to wake up parts and go to rituals, etc. • She was flamboyant, exuberant. We uncovered RA and MC. She was able to tenderly help her teen son somewhat who was also suffering. But she left before we really got into the treatment. • I always wonder where she is, what she is doing. I wonder if I could’ve helped her much more if she came to me today.

25. Client #5 • Was physically disabled. Family not involved. Because of recovery, she became empowered and now helps others by volunteering in mental health settings.

26. Client #6 • Noted scientist discovered RAMC memories. She was very high up in the cult. After recovery, she is much more focused, and also confident in her leadership abilities (which she had been terrified about because being a leader in the cult meant killing). Lives a quiet life now with husband and young adult children. Continues to lead in her profession. Enjoys life.

27. Client #7 • Involved in government mind control at the top. Got out. Had to endure surveillance for years by cult members who continued to pursue her. Family involved. Now lives with a new family. Cult has now backed off. She lives a quiet, peaceful life.

28. Client #8 • Memories of sexual abuse started – sought therapy with me. Later discovered RA and MC memories. Extended family involved. Immediate family OK. Her own children have suffered some ill-effects being raised by a mother who had RAMC in her background. She is gradually helping her children to recover without professional help. It is a choice that she must make due to the cost of therapy. In our last contacts, she was doing much better and getting back to living life again.

29. Client #9 • Discovered RAMC in mid life. Professional married woman with children at home. Once I totally removed the programming, she returned to a local therapist closer to where she lived and is gradually getting more memories back, getting back to life, and getting freer with time.

30. Client #10 • Professional woman with 2 degrees. Discovered her RAMC memories when the person in her family who protected her from her main perpetrator died. This launched her therapy journey. Today she is recovered, happily married, and doing very well.

31. Client #11 • Early in my career. I knew very little about RAMC. Woman struggled with eating disorder, various obsessions. We plodded along together as she tried to teach me what was going on with her. She was patient but cult programming kicked in over and over and I didn’t know much about that. She faithfully came to see me always seeking answers. She was a learner. She was determined even though I was green. Until then she reported that the mental health community never considered DID. Once we identified it, she steadily got better – no thanks to me because I didn’t know much about what to do in those days.

32. Client #12 • Young woman, high level cult controlled. Had to sever family ties. Today she is recovered, is a wonderful nurse in a large medical center.

33. Many others along the way • Some were clients for a time. Or I consulted for them and their therapist. • Some recovered. Some made significant strides but didn’t finish. • Some didn’t because I didn’t know enough back then. I feel bad! • Some didn’t have the TOTAL COMMITMENT for the recovery process. • Some didn’t have the support they needed or the means to navigate because either their groups were actively pursuing them or the memory work required more support than they had. • Others had high level groups after them. Some clients reasoned that the punishment for leaving was worth it for eventual freedom. So they pushed on. These survivors defied their groups. One even preached to some in their group. The groups seemed to be in disbelief that a survivor could have recovery enough to think for themselves. In several cases, the cult dropped back, perhaps out of fear that they might be discovered to be abusers. In one case, the cult continues to pursue.

34. You have had a view into darkness, into evil, that most of us will never know. You clearly know emotional health – goodness - because you have been surrounded by unhealthy people. The contrast is starkly clear to you. In the words of Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor, and author of Man’s Search for Meaning: Those who experience little or no pain and suffering in their lives tend to be superficial and—dare I say it?—rather self-absorbed. They tend to have little care or empathy for the struggles and feelings of others. Those who have suffered, on the other hand, often come out the other end softer, more thoughtful, more compassionate, more spiritual people than they would have been if they’d never experienced the darker, more painful side of life. In short, as Frankl says, it is through the crucible of pain and suffering that we humans achieve our greatest humanity.

35. The world needs your wisdom. I sit at your feet and constantly learn about life, about how you survived. I try to glean courage from you. What is it that you have that is different? • The cult didn’t figure on you emerging not only as a survivor but as someone with a higher calling, a purpose that sets you high above the rest of us. All of us admire you for persisting. We are amazed that someone could endure like you have and be here, that you are a nice person despite the horrors done to you. • What have you been set apart to do all along? What was it that you were supposed to do that all the gates of hell came against it to prevent it from happening? • You need to ask. You need to start stepping into that role and trying it on for size – because it is what you were meant to be all along. • “THE STRENGTH OF THE ATTACK IS EQUAL TO THE POWER OF THE CALL” (Eileen Aveni)

36. I don't wanna hear anymoreTeach me to listenI don't wanna see anymoreGive me a visionThat you could move this heart, to be set apart.I wanna be differentI wanna be changed'Til all of me is goneAnd all that remainsIs a fire so brightThe whole world can seeThat there's something differentIn me

37. Q & A