Living an authentic life from your Core Self

One of the most troubling trauma symptoms is dissociation:  the compartmentalization of the self, resulting in the ability to give the appearance of normalcy while covering up the reality of hurt and shame. A Continuum of Dissociation established by Bennett G. Braun, M.D. (1988) includes the following progression: normal consciousness; dissociative episode; dissociative disorder; post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); complex PTSD/atypical dissociative disorder, dissociative identity disorder (DID).

Today much attention focuses on American soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. As many as 20% of these men and women experience PTSD. While PTSD is the result of a trauma situation (the mid-point of the Continuum described above), this category of client is not at the heart of whom Heartland seeks to address through your funding. [The U.S. Government is rightfully taking a lead role; recognizing and acknowledging the need; and responding with help and support.]

In addition, there are countless programs, foundations and other funding sources that rightly focus on children’s needs. We applaud their efforts to support childhood initiatives. They do so out of a desire to give these innocents a solid foundation for their future adult years. As a result, children and adolescents are not the center of Heartland’s efforts, either.

Rather, our primary focus is those whose response to trauma has taken them to the far end of the dissociation continuum, those suffering from complex PTSD to DID. These are most often adults that discover – in their adulthood – what had been done to them as children. In order to endure the atrocities visited upon them, they adopted a coping mechanism that permitted them to survive psychologically. This group is grossly under-funded, under-acknowledged, and under-served.

These are wounded, hurting individuals who often exist under society’s radar. They are the ones that polite society would rather ignore. They are disregarded, overlooked, often forgotten.

Many are adults who have survived the horrors of childhood violence, childhood sexual abuse, child pornography, and other forms of human trafficking. Heartland consultant Jim McCarthy noted, “As we worked with a broad spectrum of clients…it has become apparent that the atrocities perpetrated under the Nazi rule in the concentration camps were not isolated events nor did they end with the fall of Hitler.”

   In too many cases, truth has proven to be more horrific than fiction. In confronting trauma’s impact on a life, Heartland has viewed the depths of human depravity: experiences characterized by extreme ritual abuse, intergenerational sexual abuse, physical and mental torture, medical abuse, experimentation and mind control (in the name of science).