Ella McCrystal - Child Abuse
Ella McCrystal is a psychotherapist, clinical hypnotherapist, and EMDR practitioner with over 20 years of experience, specialising in trauma recovery. As a survivor of childhood se...
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Who are you?
My name is Ellen McChrystal, and I am a psychotherapist using hypnotherapy and EMDR in my practise, which are great trauma treatments. And the reason that I was drawn into this area of work is because I myself, am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse that happened to me within the home, and my dad was the perpetrator.
Can you share your earliest memory of recognising something wasn't right in your home?
Going back through my history and my traumas as I've done many, many times now. And so I'm really comfortable to talk about this with you all. Number one, because I want to be able to take the taboo away from the subject of intra familial childhood sexual abuse. And number two, I want you to feel safe to be able to open up about your experiences too. My earliest childhood memories I've recognised actually later on, more than I did at the time. And the reason being is that when you are a child, you don't have a framework of reference for what's normal and what's not normal. Particularly in the early foundational years between North and seven, you don't really have an idea of what other people experience. Your only way of knowing the world around you is through your parents and your community and your school and your friends. And obviously most people aren't talking about certain things like sexual abuse when you were a child. One of my earliest memories was around about five, and this directly links to sexual abuse. So one of the things that reasons I talk about this particular memory is, is because I want people to be aware of it going on within homes and communities as well. And just one of those things to really look out for. So for me, it was being taken to the toilet by my dad and my dad helping me clean myself afterwards. But doing it in ways which I now know were very intrusive and not necessarily about keeping me clean, but more about pushing boundaries. And what I would say is like a testing phase to be precise, just to kind of see what I would respond to and what I would be able to take without saying anything or without reacting. So that was one of the first memories of the sexual abuse. But other than that, there was quite harsh punishments used. So I was belted often over nothing but just those memories of control and power. And again, that testing phase.
How did the abuse affect your sense of self as a child and into adulthood?
For me, the way that the abuse affected my sense of self was that I ended up feeling very, very responsible for other people. A lot of people that have been abused in childhood will often talk about feeling a sense of being dirty or blaming themselves. For me, it was really taking responsibility for my dad's feelings. I can't really explain why other than I think I'm a sensitive person anyway, but also with sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is not usually delivered in a violent way, not when it's in the home, not when it's a family member. Usually done in a way where the person knows what they're doing is wrong and they're not forceful or shouting. That happened with other things being told off and the belt being used. But with the sexual abuse, it was more of a vulnerable side, I think. And so I would often feel sorry for him, and he would ask me not to tell my mom because she wouldn't understand, and it was said in a way of vulnerability. So I think early on, my biggest adaption was that I felt responsible for his feelings and I felt sorry for him. So at that early stage, really from five, and then when I sort of understood this was sexual abuse, I was around about seven. I started to feel that I had to now look after him and that my feelings didn't matter. So the self abandonment was probably the biggest issue early on, and that's gone through into adulthood in many different ways. You become a chronic people pleaser, somebody that fixes everybody else, and I'm a therapist. You have to learn to manage those maladaptive traits and turn them into something that's useful. Empowering for yourself and empowering for others. But it takes quite a while to figure that out.