From Powerlessness to Empowerment — Part 1/3: The Lost Child
This is the first installment of a trio of blogs from Sarah Douglas. These articles form an intimate and thoughtful autobiographical account that traces what Sarah calls ‘a Neurodivergent meandering of trauma and hope’.
When Jill Corbyn at Neurodiverse Connection generously asked me to write a series of blogs to accompany their online summit about Neurodivergent experiences of coercive control and grooming, I was alexithymically assailed by confusing and conflicting emotional and interoceptive responses that have been a challenge to recognise and unpack. Of course, I was genuinely chuffed at being considered to be someone who may have something to say on this subject, having my own lived experience to draw on as well as the research I am involved with and the work that I do, but I have also detected visceral feelings of imposter syndrome, more than a little fear at the prospect of revisiting painful memories and amongst the fog of “I have no words for any of this,” an overwhelming sense of sadness and anger that my story is but one of far too many.
I am aware that my framing and understanding of my experiences may not chime with everyone, and also that because my perspective is that of a late diagnosed, white, middle-aged, middle-class, cis woman, I cannot speak about what it is like to experience grooming and coercive control for people who have more complex intersectional experiences than me. I am not trans, a person of colour or non-binary. I am also now not vulnerably housed and am in a supportive and loving relationship, so I know that what I am tentatively offering here is written from a position of privilege as well as partial recovery, and that many survivors of abuse and trauma have to face even more barriers and challenges than those that I have encountered and may not be in an environment that is safe enough to begin to heal. Nevertheless, I suspect that there will be universal points of contact and shared understanding and my hope is that as more survivor stories are heard from our myriad perspectives, our silenced, violenced voices will build into a change-making crescendo.
I was an undiagnosed AuDHD girl brought up in the 70s and 80s in a judgemental, cruel, and emotionally stunted family and was subjected to the traumatic fall-out from my father’s infidelity, divorce, and remarriage. Decisions were routinely imposed upon my siblings, with no input from us. Nothing was ever discussed and there was a strong patriarchal emphasis on obedience; an expectation that wives were there to serve husbands and that a daughter’s role was to look after her father in his old age. It was also a time where ideas about bodily autonomy or consent were non-existent and so my bullied and friendless younger neurodivergent self was not only confused by being different and not knowing why, and feeling unloved and emotionally neglected by my family, I had no idea that I could have thoughts, feelings and needs of my own, or that I mattered in any shape or form.
It was a perfect storm that had left me lost, alone and dangerously primed for predators. I had no idea of who I was, what I needed, what I wanted and my people pleasing, fawning trauma responses combined to make me an easy target. I rarely realised when I was being coerced, controlled, or groomed and from an early age and throughout my teens experienced multiple instances of CSA, sexual assault, rape, and spiritual abuse. I did have a fleeting moment when I recognised one occasion where I had been raped and disclosed to my mother, but was then branded a liar and a whore by my stepfather. That small spark of naming the abuse done to me was extinguished and replaced with the crushing self-belief that I was indeed a liar and that everything that had happened to me was my fault. My situation worsened when I fell into what can only be described as a cult and ran away from living with my stepfather and mother. I bounced between bouts of homelessness, living in a flat on my own or staying with my late brother while doing my A Levels. I went to university, got married after my first year and was then subjected to six years of a coercive, controlling, and violent relationship. It was a mess. I was a multiply traumatised mental health mess, and I remained one, even after sixteen years of being married to my kind, patient and loving second husband
