Content Warning: This article deals with some tough issues as the writer talks about his experience with childhood sexual abuse.
I nearly chose to end my life, but I made a good choice that day when I didn’t!
Life is full of choices.
But then there are the times when we have no choice whatsoever.
I didn’t choose to be sexually abused when I was a very small child, but it happened and I was powerless to prevent the actions of my childminder.
All I had was my survival instinct. So, I disassociated, meaning that I distracted my self, mind and body, from the insidious and depraved manipulation that I was experienc-ing, and I buried it deep in my unconscious for almost 20 years.
I had no idea that I had been sexually abused until I was 22 years old when I had my first flashback.
It was late September 2005. I had just flown into Delhi with Hannah, my girlfriend and best friend, who is now my wife. Delhi is for many people an assault on the senses and the smells, sounds, the heat and the crowds were overwhelming for me. We booked into a nice hotel as a treat to recuperate.
I slept for a few hours but I woke to an uneasy feeling. I turned on the TV and watched the Oprah Winfrey Show on the only English-speaking channel available. The topic of discussion was child abuse. I watched with intrigue as Oprah spoke to a panel of about 10 men who shared their experience of being abused. At the end of the segment, Oprah looked to the camera and reminded her viewers that we need to remember that women can be abusers too and its not just men who commit these awful crimes.
At that very moment, I felt like I couldn’t breathe as if someone knocked the wind right out of me. I started to bawl crying and I couldn’t stop. I have no idea how long I was like that, it could’ve been 5 minutes or 2 hours. I had no idea till then, that I had been sexually abused until Oprah uttered the words, ‘women can be abusers too’ and now I was reliving those moments when my female childminder sexually abused me.
Hannah woke up to find me in the throes of my first flashback. She was amazing. She listened to me and supported me and suggested we go home as I was clearly trauma-tised and needed help. Hannah nearly had me convinced but by that evening I had done what I did best, and I buried my reality deep into the pit of my being and contin-ued on as if nothing had happened. I thought to myself, “I told someone now, meaning I’ve talked about my problems, right? And now I’m fine, right? ”The truth was that the reality of remembering what I had experienced was too much for me to handle or ac-cept. And from that moment on I hit the self-destruct button.
The feelings of shame, guilt and pure disgust at myself caused me to slowly but surely eat away at myself until I believed that the sexual abuse had to be my fault and that I wasn’t worthy of anyone’s love, I hated myself and the pain that I felt was crippling.
This continued for the best part of 10 years, and in 2012 I reached the point of want-ing to take my own life. I felt like it was the only option. If I didn’t exist, the pain would stop. I seemed to have no control over how my pain was manifesting and did all kinds of crazy things that made no sense to me. In an effort to gain control I chose to harm myself, physically and mentally. And I believed that if I took my own life, that would also prove that I had control and that I had a choice.
It never dawned on me that I also had the choice to live and to be kind to myself and take control of how I was responding to my pain until I met a kind and wise elder psy-chiatrist, known for his opposition to medicalising mental illness and the use of drugs to mask pain.
I had been in therapy for about two years and had done a lot to unpack and under-stand how I was experiencing the trauma of my abuse and how my personal relation-ships were being negatively affected because of it. I began to bring positive change in-to my daily life. One of the most powerful strategies my therapist helped me to develop was the skill of displacing a negative feeling with a positive response. For example, any time I felt shame, guilt or lack of self-worth, I would pick my fingers until they bled, which I now know was a form of self-harm. So, any time I noticed myself doing this, I named it as self-harm and asked myself why was I doing this at that particular mo-ment, identifying the cause so that I could understand my behaviour. Once I had taken those steps I then tried to replace this negative behaviour with a positive one, such as call my mother or a friend, go to the gym, doing something productive around the house etc. I knew that this would not work every time and it didn’t, but I learnt to be kind to myself, even if I couldn’t take the positive step. Over time I was able to imple-ment this strategy more and more often, thus changing my behaviour from self-harm to self-care.
While this, along with other strategies helped me most of the time, I still lived with the feeling of shame and guilt and any time something went wrong in my life these were the feelings that took over, even when I had nothing to feel guilty or shameful about. One night it all became too much and it felt like no matter how hard I was working at it, I couldn’t get rid of the pain. I walked into the kitchen of my apartment and pressed the blade of a kitchen knife against my wrist, ready to make the final cut. Before I did I said to myself that I would reach out one final time for help on Facebook and if there was a silence that was I sign to me that I was alone and I really was worthless. I waited, curled up in the darkness waiting, the phone rang and it was my mother. Exactly the person I needed to support me, which she did and still does.
My therapist had introduced me to the eminent, but very down to earth psychiatrist who worked with her at a clinic in Dublin. A few days after this, I walked into his room and he gave me a hug with pure empathy, compassion and love. He listened to me as I explained how I felt and how I was treating myself and others, and how it was causing me so much pain. Then he said that he could only help me with one condition. That was that I didn’t harm myself or take my own life. But he was very clear that it was up to me to choose.
I just wanted the pain to stop, but after our discussion, I realised that no one else was making me do what I was doing, that was all my choice, and I actually had the choice to stop. I had the choice to live and flourish and I had the choice to be happy if that was what I wished for myself.
So that’s what I did! I took control, recognised the root cause of my pain and accepted support from my family, friends and professionals. I chose not to feel guilty or ashamed any more as I began to understand that those feelings should belong to the woman to assaulted me. In time, I have even begun to consider how damaged a person she must have been, to do these terrible things to me, and have come to a point of view which takes this into account.
I now choose to live a happy and fulfilled life. I have a wonderful family, great friends who are hugely supportive and I love my job as a Garda, which allows me the privilege of helping people in situations where they themselves may be powerless or feel they have no choices. I then started to think about how I could help people in the area of online protection, to make their online experience safer and more enjoyable.
I began applying what I learned through my own experience and through my training as a police officer and I realised that education is key in order to empower young peo-ple to become better decision-makers. I then evaluated the key components of what I myself had learnt in order to make safer choices when I was in crisis and I started to apply those principles to online safety. I decided to put all of this knowledge and expe-rience to good use, and have developed an app called ME as I had noticed that one ar-ea where people need help, particularly young people, are navigating their online en-vironment safely.
The aim of ME is to provide education in order to recognise risks and dangers. It also aims to enable people to build a support network, encourage them to engage in pro-social activities and also to provide easy access to professional supports if needed, so that people can have safer outcomes when they are in risky situations.
There is much we can and can not control in life, as I have learnt. We cannot control the internet, but we can choose to respond in a positive way that increases safety and wellbeing online and this is the purpose of ME.
Help information
If you need help please talk to friends, family, a GP, therapist or one of the free confidential helpline services. For a full list of national mental health services see yourmentalhealth.ie.
- Samaritans on their free confidential 24/7 helpline on 116-123, by emailing jo@samaritans.ie
- Pieta House National Suicide Helpline 1800 247 247 or email mary@pieta.ie – (suicide prevention, self-harm, bereavement) or text HELP to 51444 (standard message rates apply)
- Aware 1800 80 48 48 (depression, anxiety)
If living in Ireland you can find accredited therapists in your area here:
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