For many of us, hope is what keeps us going forward in our healing journey.
To be inspired regularly with stories of healing adds to our momentum to keep doing the work. Many of our volunteers at FREA are licensed professionals that use the FREA techniques in their practice. All of us at FREA use these techniques in our own self-care practices. We have loads of stories! We are excited to share with you case studies from our team. We have changed details to protect privacy. If you have an experience of healing from sexual trauma with these techniques to share, please contact us - we would love to hear from you!
If you have been raped, abused, or assaulted recently, please get help immediately.
This story is from FREA's sister organization that covers the rest of the globe! I wanted to use it to introduce The Peaceful Heart Network. The liberation from tremendous suffering made such an impact on me that I wanted to share it here despite it's length. It shows how our suffering impacts those closest to us. This story is from a healing place called The City of Joy in Bukavu, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and was founded by Eve Ensler for survivors of sexual violence. I'm in awe of the places that Gunilla and Ulf have visited to spread healing. -note by Angela Clark, FREA Volunteer
CASE STUDY #3 - Sexual Violence and Trauma Melts with TTT in the City of Joy, Congo By Gunilla Hamne & Ulf Sandstrom, Excerpt from Resolving Yesterday - First Aid for Stress and Trauma with TTT, © www.peacefulheart.se / FREA's sister organization Fatumeh took part in a group training at the City of Joy where a TTT song was rehearsed over ten times. The remarkable part of her story, besides the actual healing, is that she was treated by the process of rehearsing the song and gestures that incorporate the Trauma Tapping. “It all happened ten years ago. We were together at home my parents and my three younger sisters. I was 14 at that time. After eating supper we went to sleep as usual, but that night the village was attacked by soldiers. They came also to our house and killed my mother and father and my three sisters in front of my eyes. They didn’t kill me but took me to the forest and kept me there for four nights. They raped me, and when they had finished they just left me there unconscious. I was saved by a shepherd who came grazing his cows where I was laying. He brought me to a health center in the next community. They tried to treat me but I was out of my mind. I was living in my memories like a crazy person. They sent me to the mental health clinic in Goma. I got some medicine to calm me down and for a while I felt a bit better. But after some time I got crazy again. They also found that I was pregnant. When I had given birth to the child I was in really bad shape. I could not breastfeed. Actually, I didn’t want to see the child, I hated that baby who was born from that violence. During several years I was in and out of clinics. On and off medicines, but the nightmares continued. I got crazy so many times. I didn’t heal.One day when my child came from school he said that the kids had bullied him for having a father who is an enemy and a mother who had been raped. I got so furious and threw a big stone at his head. You know, I could have killed him when I heard him say that. I thought it was the fault of the child that I felt the way I felt. I thought to myself: ‘That child is from the man who killed my parents and sisters. I don’t want him!’ He reminded me of all the bad things that had happened. I was full of hate for him, myself, and for the whole world. You know, by now I have been sick for so long. I have been living in my nightmares of what happened no matter what kind of treatment I got. Even now last Saturday, here at City of Joy, I was running around in the compound, tearing off my clothes, screaming and beating the others. I didn’t know what I was doing. But yesterday when we were having this training of TTT and you said: ‘With this technique you can help yourself’, it made me think: ‘I have been given so many treatments and nothing has helped me. If with this technique I can help myself then let me try! Let me do this seriously!’ And I did. After doing the tapping and learning the tapping song it was as if a wind came through me and removed all the bad things within me. What was frozen in me started to melt. The night after the training I slept well, so well that somebody had to wake me up in the morning. I felt like waking up to a new world. Now I feel well for the first time in a very long time. The heavy burden that I have been carrying in my head is gone. I can see things with other eyes now. I even feel I can love my child. I will fight for the rights of these children, like my son, who has no father, to be accepted as any other child in our society. I want to work for creating peace in our country. I thank you for bringing this treatment to us! We will give it to others.”