A Hidden Factor in Teen Suicide
by Jerry McMullin
Child protection may be more important in preventing teen suicides and
suicidal impulses than most parents realize. Child abuse can result
in depression and other mental disorders that correlate with suicidal thoughts
and feelings in the teen and young adult years. An additional factor,
typically left unmentioned in literature, is that child predators may intentionally
program their victims to commit suicide. This article is based
on information from abuse survivors.
Child predators plan their crimes carefully. They court the
trust of parents and others to obtain private access to victims.
They typically know how to perpetrate assaults on children in ways that
leave no visible evidence. A
key component of their crimes is making sure that their victims
don't report them to anyone. Their methods of influencing the minds
of their victims to cover their crimes are psychologically sophisticated,
suggesting the possibility that they have been trained.
Regardless of their source of information, it is evident that many
predators know how to manipulate the minds of their victims. Instead
of merely intimidating children into silence with threats of physical harm
to them and their families, many predators make the abuse so horrific that
children block the memory of the event from their conscious awareness,
a mental process sometimes called traumatic forgetting.
Predators who use traumatic forgetting as a way of covering their
crimes often supplement it with the verbal assertion "You will not remember
this." Children, while experiencing the intense pain and/or terror
of an assault, are highly suggestible. This suggestible state is
analogous to a hypnotic trance. Statements given during the abuse
can become embedded deep in their subconscious minds and have the effect
of post hypnotic suggestions. Therefore, memory suppression statements
such as the above can further hinder the victim's ability to remember what
happened.
Traumatic forgetting, even combined with the assertion "You will
not remember this," may not last indefinitely. The human mind is
very resilient. As the child grows and heals to some degree from
the abuse, the memory may begin to
surface. Remembering the abuse, coupled with releasing out
the emotions and pain embedded with the memory are natural healing processes
of the mind that many therapists encourage.
To further suppress memory of the abuse, some predators will combine
the first assertion with the added threat, "If you do remember this you
will kill yourself." The confusing inconsistency in the two assertions
probably heightens the suggestibility of the victim. This second
statement is also buried deep in the subconscious mind along with the memory
of the abuse.
To understand how this programming can lead to teen or young adult
suicidal thoughts, consider the following hypothetical situation:
A little girl between ages five and seven is accessed a number of times
by members of the predator community. They use a combination
of threats, traumatic forgetting, and programming (e.g., "You will not
remember this. If you do remember, you will kill yourself.") to cover
their crimes. Mercifully, she does forget. However later in
her teens depression sets in. Her parents take her to a therapist
who helps her stabilize her life.
The subconscious mind seems to hold traumatic memories below the
surface until a person is strong enough to deal with them. As she
stabilizes and becomes stronger, memories or flashes of memory of the abuse
begin to surface into her awareness.
However, the surfacing of her memories triggers the embedded post
hypnotic suggestion "If you do remember this you will kill yourself."
Because the statement is coming from her inner mind, she perceives it to
be her own idea.
She begins to have suicidal thoughts and feelings accompanied
by flashes of traumatic memories. She is caught in a conflict between
two forces. The natural healing processes of her mind are bringing
the memory to the surface so she can release the associated emotional and
physical pain. However, the post hypnotic suggestion that she will
commit suicide if she remembers causes her to become suicidal. As
she suppresses the suicidal thoughts and feelings she also suppresses the
memory. Thus the predators' secrets are kept. Mental health
professionals are sometimes so focused on treating the disorders that accompany
abuse that they overlook the role of programming.
Those who have seen stage hypnosis may have witnessed a more benign
form of the mental processes involved. The hypnotist tells the volunteer
while in trance: "When I bring you out of trance you will not remember
this conversation. I will touch my tie and you will bark like a dog."
The volunteer is awakened from the trance. An "hypnotic amnesia"
is in place, for awhile at least. Then the stage hypnotist touches
his tie, thereby triggering the entertaining response, and the show goes
on. In the case of survivors, remembering the abuse is the trigger
to having suicidal thoughts and feelings.
Those who have been programmed this way can choose to not act on
the suggestion. Releasing their feelings of sadness, terror, rage,
betrayal, etc. prior to remembering what happened may reduce their distress.
It may also
be helpful to them to know that some of their suicidal impulses
are merely responses to statements made by the predators in an effort to
cover their crimes. Just as remembering the conversation with the
stage hypnotist
empowers the volunteer to more easily counter his suggestions, so
assuring survivors that they do not need to act on impulses that accompany
their memories may empower them to give less credence to such impulses
during the process of uncovering what happened. |