Land of the Free?

For folks in the USA, it’s the July 4th holiday weekend.  Barbecues, picnics, swimming parties, and fireworks are happening all over the country.  Red, white, and blue stars and stripes are visible in every direction.  It’s a fun holiday – most people are in festive moods.

 

 

The point of the Independence Day holiday is to celebrate freedom. 

It’s about being free, living in a land that is free, feeling free and all kinds of good stuff like that.  Freedoms do exist in all kinds of ways – there’s no doubt about that.  Life can be good.  Most of us here in America have the freedom to live our lives in ways that we choose for ourselves.

But is everyone free?

Unfortunately, no.

People get trapped and stuck in a variety of ways.  When this happens, their life feels anything but free.  Sometimes the traps are made by the people themselves.  Sometimes traps are made by societal views, racial hatred, poverty, language barriers, etc. Sometimes the traps are made by mental illness.  Sometimes traps are set by other people, especially in situations involving chronic trauma and abuse.  Sometimes traps are made with mind control.

This weekend, while I am enjoying the chance to make decisions for myself, I am thinking about people who are not feeling as free as I am.

 

1. Trapped within their Compulsive Hoarding

Have you seen any of the recent flurry of television shows about compulsive hoarding?  Titles such as “Hoarding: Buried Alive” (shown on the TLC channel) describe exactly how trapped people become when they suffer from compulsive hoarding. 

Their own home becomes their jail, and far too many compulsive hoarders are stuck in their lifestyle, with no clue how to free themselves from such heaviness.

Hoarders do not feel free. 

They do not have a sense of freedom in their own homes.  They are often laden down with many extreme obsessions, compulsions, anxieties that may not even be rational, but still claim total ownership to their mind and lives.

The more someone hoards, the less space they have to move.  Eventually, even the freedom to walk around their own home becomes nonexistent.  They become complete prisoners to the items they are hoarding.

 

2. Trapped with Fears and Phobias

Fears and phobias can imprison a person in a very extreme way. 

Fears of talking to people, fears of leaving the house, fears of trying new foods, fears of eating in public, fears of riding in cars, fears of the unknown, etc. can all keep a person stuck into a very limited life-space. 

When people are too frightened to venture out of their status quo, they are stuck and trapped in whatever place they are in.  The more fears they have, the more traps they live in.  Their living space can get smaller, and smaller, and smaller.

 

3. Trapped by Obesity and Eating Disorders

People that are obese are trapped within their own bodies. 

The lack of freedom to move, or walk, or bend, or stretch can feel very entrapping. 

Eating disorders, including anorexia and bulemia, can also create a prison with the body.  When the body becomes the prison, every minute of the day feels trapped.  There is no freedom since the prison goes everywhere.

 

4. Trapped with Ongoing Abuse and Trauma

Unfortunately, there are far too many survivors of trauma and abuse that are still current victims of trauma and abuse. 

This includes anything from child abuse, domestic violence, incest, and date rape, to human trafficking, prostitution, sex slavery, cult groups, etc. 

When people are controlled by other people through violence and pain, they are often too beaten down to see a way out.  They are not allowed to see or believe that they can escape from their abuse, and they are typically not given or allowed the resources to leave. 

Any efforts to leave require an incredible depth of personal strength since the external controls and risks of violence are excessive.

 

5.  Trapped with Mind Control

Mind control is the invisible jail. 

Dissociative survivors of chronic, severe abuse have elements of mind control that effect every essence of their lives.  Survivors of organized or ritual abuse will absolutely have parts within their internal dissociative systems that were purposefully made and created in order to contain elements of mind control and programming. 

DID survivors with mind control issues will have parts in their systems that have been expertly trained to do tasks that are opposite from what the host personality / day parts are willing to do. 

Amnesia and dissociative walls (blocking off the sharing of information) can mean that a dissociative survivor can have missing time and minimal (if any) awareness that certain events happened.  DID survivors may have no awareness of what is going on in their own lives.

Mind control can dictate what dissociative survivors say, where they go, who they talk with, who they interact with, what they do, what they tolerate, what they feel, what they think, etc. 

Having internal system parts that are controlled by mind control means that there are certain elements of the life (and certain times of the day or night) that your life is being completely controlled and manipulated by someone else. 

Other parts of your system will take over the body and they do exactly what they have been told to do by the abusers who are using the mind control tactics.  This can be very scary, and the people whose lives are “taken over” by mind control certainly do not feel free.

 

Creating Freedom within Your Own Life

When you are trapped by any of the above-mentioned areas of life, it will take a lot of hard work to get out of those traps.  It is possible.  Yes, in every single situation mentioned above it is absolutely possible for the enslaved people to get out of all the traps.  But freedom for any of these people does not come easy.  It takes a lot of consistent work, typically for years of time.

• Do you want real freedom in your life?

• Do you want the ability to walk, move, think, decide, and believe for yourself?

• Do you want the freedom to be your real, authentic self and have a life completely under your own control?

 

Freedom is to be your true self is an absolutely wonderful thing.

And yes, that’s an option for you too.

Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.

You might have to fight for it, but yes, absolutely, you can have freedom too.

 

Warmly,

Kathy

 

Copyright © 2008-2017 Kathy Broady MSW and Discussing Dissociation