learning disablilties and abuse

[nielslynne]

Hi Guys.

I am looking to exchange emails or letters with others who have learninng differabilities or are on the autism spectrum like myself, and are not able to process information by words but rather through thinking in pictures. I have recently been diagnosed with high fuctioning autism which has finally made me understand why i did not learn in school, have trouble learning from words, process things from natural sensitivities and cannot figure things out from words alone. being abused so often i now believe was made easy because of being force fed a learning method that I did not have the capacity to comprehend. am just now coming to understand that i can only work things out through images rather than words, which might make me able to finally figure some of this out. I have not been able to recover much as not thinking in words kept me from understanding words, and thinking in pictures helped me be able to see the falseness of body postures and sighs.

any know of learning disablilties and subsequent prep for abuse?

 

[nielslynne]

hi gang.

am not sure if what i posted is a recovery issue or a non-related topic. might not be educated enough to know what would make soemthing a recovery issue or not. i figure everything related to helping live life without the impact of the actions done to me is an issue, but have not used that term before. hope it is ok to post here with some ease of knowing i will not be judged for being uneducated in terminology. the attempt to say it right is all i can do not being able to think in words.

 

[Yves]

Could this please be moved out of the Male Survivor forum? Lynne, please read the instructions on this forum. Thank you.

~Yves

 

[Lloydy]

I've moved this topic over to the Family and Friends forum, and if anyone can help with this important issues please go there and join in the discussion.

And I'll re-open it here as Nielslynne is a male Survivor, sorry for any confusion.

Thanks
Lloydy

 

[Lloydy]

to get back to Niell's original question about learning disabilities, it's something that I became fully aware of only a few weeks ago.

At the charity I work for we provide therapy for CSA survivors, and obviously we get all manner of people though our doors with all kinds of problems.
But recently we have had a new client who has what I would call fairly serious learning disabilities.
I don't deal with her directly but I do get to meet her and talk to her therapist.
Being new to the job I'm keen to learn what I can so I often discuss methods and theory with this particular therapist. ( client confidentiality is strictly adhered to as well )

The therapist is very good with a great deal of experience and handles all the harder cases, and she explained to me the difficulty in choosing the right kind of language to use with this client, and the near impossible task of explaining concepts and theories to her.

I have dealt with clients who would be considered poorly educated, but with careful and patient explanation they nearly always understand the concepts that most people grasp quite quickly, things such as the way we are raised before our abuse makes us the way we are, and that can include vulnerability which is seized upon by the abuser.

By gaining some understanding of the psychology that governs our lives we can begin to see what happened to us in a clearer way, and then alter things such as our thoughts and perceptions to bring about healing.
But what happens if the client just can't comprehend what the therapist is on about?

Our therapist then uses a lot of physical things such as sea shells, stones, beads, paper and crayons, doll figures and imaginary stories.
She creates a 'picture' of the concepts, without using psychological jargon.
Most of this is done by getting the client to express themselves through these various props.

It might sound a bit hit and miss, but it's remarkably effective. In my training our tutor covered this technique and used me as the client to demonstrate to the class how simple and effective it can be.
She had a box of stones on the table and asked me to do nothing more than choose a stone to match the important people in my life, I included my abusers because the effect they had on my life was important.

I chose the stones, to represent myself I chose a river pebble that was worn smooth but had broken leaving a rough side. I chose the rest to suit the other people using rough, smooth, big and small stones. I also considered the stones colours and feel.
She then asked me to place 'my' stone in the centre of the table and then arrange the other stones around it, but at a distance that signified their closeness to me now, and explain who they were and why they were placed close to me or far away.

In front of the whole class I was sat there totaly engrossed and in floods of tears, that's how powerful therapy can be without going throught the classic exchange between client and therapist.
This was purely a visual and touch technique, but it explained my place in my world perfectly.

So please don't think that therapy has to be a intellectual challenge that's only suited to those people who can deal with the verbal methods commonly used. A good therapist will have many methods at their disposal, but it's up to the client to make sure that the therapist knows about their abilities; therapists aren't mind readers.

Dave