Total Surrender

From The Book Trauma and Recovery

Much of this section of the book relates to how i felt during my captive state with my abuser and it felt hard but healing to read this information.  For this reason i am posting this section of this book in the hope that it may help other victims to face and heal what they have been through. Once you get the knowledge you then need to feel the emotions of what you are feeling so that you can release and then heal from abuse and domestic violence that you have been through.

Terror, intermittent reward, isolation and enforced dependency may succeed in creating a submissive and compliant prisoner. But the final step in the psychological control of the victim is not completed until she has been forced to violate her own moral principal, and to betray her basic human attachments. Psychologically, this is the most destructive of all coercive techniques, for the victim undress duress participates in the sacrifice of others, that she is truly “broken”. In domestic battery, the violation of principals often involves sexual humiliation. Many battered women describe being coerced into sexual practices that they find immoral or disgusting, others describe being pressured to lie, to cover up for their mates dishonesty, or even to participate in illegal activities. The violation of relationships often involves the sacrifice of children. Men who batter their wives are also likely to abuse their children.

Prisoners even those who have successfully resisted, understand that under extreme duress anyone can be “broken”. They generally distinguish two stages in this process. The first is reached when the victim relinquishes her inner autonomy world view, moral principals, or connection with others for the sake of survival. There is a shutting down of feelings, thoughts, initiative and judgement. Prisoners who have lived through this psychological state often describe themselves as having been reduced to a non-human form. I become more and more frightened, scared of everything. The very thought of trying to escape was terrifying. I had been degraded every possible way, stripped of all dignity, reduced to an animal and then to a vegetable. Whatever strength I had began to disappear. Simple survival took everything making it all the way to tomorrow was a huge victory. In the year and half I spent under house arrest I devoted much thought to my attitude during torture sessions and solitary confinement. I realised that, instinctively I’d developed an attitude of absolute passivity. I felt I was becoming a vegetable, casting aside all logical emotions and sensations. “Fear-hatred, vengeance, for any emotion or sensation meant wasting useless energy” This state of psychological degradation is irreversible. During the course of their captivity, victims frequently describe alternating between periods of submission and more active resistance. The second irreversible stage in the breaking of a person is reached when the victim loses the will to live. This is not the same thing as becoming suicidal people in captivity live constantly with the fantasy of suicide and occasional suicidal attempts are not inconsistent with a general determination to survive. In fact, describes the wish for suicide in those extreme circumstances as a sign of resistance and pride. Suicide, in this state means introducing into your daily life something that is on par with the violence around you. The stance of suicide is active, it preserves an inner sense of control. The captive asserts his defiance by his willingness to end his life. It is an attitude of absolute passivity. Prisoners who had reached this point of degradation no longer attempted to find food or to warm themselves and they made no effort to avoid being beaten. They are regarded as the living dead.

The survivors of extreme situations often remember a turning point at which they felt tempted to enter this terminal state but made an active choice to fight for life.