Denial, My Superpower

Should you ask your abuser to recommend a therapist to help you get over his abuse?

In the psychology field, this is referred to as disassociation. You simply disconnect from an experience that is beyond bearing. But I didn’t forget Monsignor Fitzgerald’s assault. My feeling was more like what would become known as the Stockholm syndrome. Hostages in a Swedish bank robbery would side with their captors, even after being rescued, even in court. But then again, I wasn’t sympathetic to Monsignor. The memory of looking up into his horrid Roman nose as he shoved himself up against my teen-age body would stay in my head forever.

For me it was simple. Monsignor stood for the Church and the Church made sense of my existence. My relationship to him was the same as gravity. Trying to leave the Church behind would have been like trying to sprout wings and fly.

I could never have put any of this into words.

Catholics thought if you were anxious or depressed, you just needed to get a serious grip on yourself.  That’s what free will was for. When I failed at that, the family doctor prescribed tranquillizers, which wore off slowly over four hours. I could tell it was lunch time by how fast my thoughts were spinning. No need for a watch! (Snide humor was another Irish survival skill.)

When a co-worker walked into the Ladies Room just as I put a big fat pill on my tongue, I of course told her what it was. Catholics always tell the truth. When I said no I was not in therapy, she said “Gail, therapy works. Why suffer?” For some reason — maybe the increasing downbeat of the sixties– I had no answer for that.

There was only a crucifix on the wall in the small consultation room where I met with Monsignor. When he handed me a psychologist’s card and offered to pay for the first year of treatment, I didn’t connect his offer to the abuse. The year before, when my father drank the electric bill money, the parish had gotten our lights back on. I thought the parish was just helping again. When the first year of treatment neared its end, I mentioned Monsignor’s assault for the first time — as an aside. When the therapist’s jaw dropped, I frantically filled the silence: I hadn’t been hurt, I was fine, I’d gotten over it.

I was by no means over it. Instead, I had disappeared it. But I didn’t become an alcoholic or a drug addict, like so many other victims. I became a secretary. As decades passed, I let myself have more therapy, part-time college study, even grad school, circling around writing and finally zeroing in.  

My memoir, White Wife/Blue Baby will come out soon from All Things That Matter Press.

#childsexualabuse #eliminateSOLinCT #CatholicChurch #recovery