Join me at my new site, The Mental Health Detective — click on Zoom Room Enter in the main menu! Participants at “Coffee With Heidi” get a free, hand-painted coffee mug heat wrap from me — take good care, Heidi
I wanted to give something to my world family as an artist. A gift for those suffering from the Caronavirus and the effects of this pandemic, a song, “The Night The World Wept As One…”
Here is an art version of The Night The World Wept As One,” using Heidi Hansen’s own art. Lyrics are provided at the end of this post.
I wanted to give something to my world family as an artist. A gift for those suffering from the Caronavirus and the effects of this pandemic, a song, “The Night The World Wept As One…”
Here is an art version of The Night The World Wept As One,” using Heidi Hansen’s own art. Lyrics are provided at the end of this post.
Lyrics to “The Night The World Wept As One:”
Is it a dream, is it a poem, is it a prayer?
If I close my eyes, I know I’ve always been there…
Dear Darlin,’
When stars fall, and you can’t find North any longer,
find a river, and let it ride, a river is mother to the world.
It will ride with you, it will ride you,
A river will ride you back to me.
Dear Darlin’,
When promises fail, and you can’t find a friend any longer,
find the ocean, find the sea —
the sea is mother to the galaxy.
Let it fly you there, let it fly you there,
it will fly you home to me.
Dear Darlin’,
When stars fall,
and the world weeps as one and longer —
find the butterfly flyin’ on the mountain,
watch it send new breezes to the shore.
Can the love over here
Become the hope over there?
When I shout into the canyon,
and it echoes back with grace,
“what kings cannot control,
the artists already know” —
the world is one for you and me.
copyright2020heididhansen.
Please feel free to sing and share this song with others. Commercial or for-profit use is prohibited without artist permission. Copyright2020Heididhansen. Contact Heidi Hansen of Vancouver, Washington at email: dog.hotel.hansen@gmail.com.
Thank you!
Take care of yourselves, use this time at home to find your creative talents, make a world family of art — instead of sickness and fear — for future generations to identify who we are as one world, right now. — Heidi
A lot of people think that it is the physical and emotional abuse acts that define the trauma experienced by domestic violence. Remember, from my previous posts, that trauma comes with subtle, even invisible, undertows that are perhaps the most damaging and destructive over the long-term.
One of those undertows comes from how the people around the victim react and respond to the abuse, and how the perpetrator responds nd reacts to his violence.
There is such a thing as “normal.” A big player in a person’s mental health is the personality cog – wheel of empathy, ability to be authentically remorseful for causing pain and destruction, the depth and spontaneous degree to which the perpetrator experiences the pain of his victim, and being genuinely motivated by that pain to make amends, go through a deep and insightful reflection that leads to personality change such that he does not commit violent acts again.
But the undertows get in the way of all that.
Violent and sociopathic people do not have those capacities. Where we would expect to see that remorse and accountability process, instead, when we look closely, we see self-pity. We see how the perpetrator quickly and powerfully turns himself into the victim, needing justice for himself, requiring comfort and care and tending and succor to raise his self-esteem and make him feel valid, loved, even appreciated and respected.
Because these blog posts are chapters of the book I am writing on trauma, I draw from not only my clinical acumen and professional experience and observations and training, but from my personal perspective and experience as a victim.
When my son’s father, Aaron Stewart Heusser physically assaulted me at a mother’s day brunch at Cannon Beach, Oregon, I found him naked and curled up in a fetal position in the bathtub, trying to cry but without tears. He moaned and whined about being unworthy of love.
And, despite my years of training as a trauma psychotherapist, I found myself kneeling over him in the tub, patting his back, rubbing his shoulders with an outpouring of tender loving care, using a soothing, comforting tone as I reassured him and buoyed up his self-esteem, trying to heal his wounds.
Then I caught myself. The undertow was sweeping me out to sea and I knew better and was allowing it. I was comforting the offender. Wait.. Isn’t the offender supposed to be comforting me? Healing me? SAying he is sorry?
So I got up, changed my posture and told him I was insisting he go to a therapist first thing in the morning.
That psychologist diagnosed him with Anti-Sical Personality Disorder, Major Depression, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
The first thing Aaron Stewart Heusser did was call his mother. After that, he was enraged as was she, that someone had the gall, the audacity to say that her “golden boy” had a flaw.
Then Aaron Stewart Heusser’s violence and other forms of abuses towards me really took off, and no, there was no more therapy for him. I was stuck in the undertow, vulnerable and frightened, being pregnant with our son.
The undertow of perpetrator manipulating the victim into providing him succor and self-esteem boosters continued ad nauseum.
Later in the process of child custody mediation, the mediator asked Aaron Stewart Heusser what he felt was the main problem in our marriage, and Aaron Stweart Heusser replied, “she doesn’t respect me.”
The mediator told me it was a lost cause, Aaron Stwart Heusser’s anti-social personality was not capable of insight or remorse or change.
During our divorce, I represented myself, Pro se. I subpeoned and deposed Aaron Stweart Heusser’s supervisors nd adminsitrators and financial officers of Timberline Software of Beaverton, Oregon, where Aaron Stewart Heusser worked.
I was aware there was a financial undertow occurring, but needed to provide hard evidence to the judge. And Timblerline would not comit perjury, and so revealed to me that Aaron Stwart Heusser had indeed solicited administrative decisions to hide his salary increases, bonuses, stock options, other forensic accounting matters revealing other hiding of assets from his son, by financially abusing me in the divorce.
When I revealed this in Multnomah County Court, and Timberline administration testified to all that, the Judge threw is pen down and struck his fist three times on his desk, yelling to Aaron on the witness stand, Do you know what a lousy thing that is to do to your wife?” Over and over, 3 times.
Aaron Steweart Huesser began to cry in the witness chair. The judge rolled his eyes, stared at Aaron and yelled, “those are crocodile tears. You are not sorry for what you have done to your wife, you are sorry you got caught. Do you need to take a moment to cry for yourself outside?”
Right there, the Judge stopped the undertow with a strong whiff of reality and sane perspective.
The Judge called out what normal should look like, and called out Aaron Stwart Heusser using the oldest trick in the book for domestic violence perpetrators, which is to make himself the poor pitiful victim who needs other’s pity and cossiting, manipulating his victim to buoy him up and ignore the bruises, broken parts, and carry the burden of the consequences of his actions that truly do belong to him.
Just like with my older brother Leif Hansen of Leif’s Auto Collision Centers, Portland, Oregon. On more than one occasion, Some friend of Leif’s would call our father to come immediately because Leif was actively suicidal, had a gun and a knife laid out and was going to comit suicide.
Being the designated caregiver in our family, I was dragged along and told to talk Leif down from suicide. I was in late elementary school-middle school at the time.
I found Leif Hansen in these times in a drunken state, with visible lines of cocaine on the dresser or bedside table, half dressed and filthy, reeking of booze in visible clouds of pot smoke, with weapons out beside him for suicide.
I did what I was told, used my innate counseling skills and talked Leif down. I was patted on the head by my father and mother and older sister Diana Hansen-Young for being such a good counselor and such a good girl.
But I had this nagging undertow making me seasick inside… I knew why Leif Hansen was suicidal — He had participated and supported the sex abuse his BFF committed against me in The marriage bed.” And Leif kept it all silent.
And I was comforting him, making him feel safe, loved, appreciated, valued.
There’s the real trauma for persons of domestic violence and child abuse — how victims are manipulated to caretaking and protecting their perpetrators.
See, if the statute of limitations was still in place right now, Leif Hansen of Leif’s Auto Collision Centers would be on the state Sex Offenders Registry.
There will never be true justice for many many victims of domestic violence.. there really cannot be true justice, even if the legal and our family systems supported the notion that it is the offenders who carry the consewuneces, not their victims.
But calling out these patterns to offer experience, hope and strength — and validity and setting the healthy and sane perspective straight, is well within our power.
Don’t swim in the undertow, post a sign to keep others out of the water.
————————-By Heidi D. Hansen, M.A. copyright2020, reproduction prohibited
. Contact Heidi: dog.hotel.hansen@gmail.com.
Do you have, or have had, a Vacuus in your life?
Are you a Vacuus in someone else’s life?
As most of my readers know, I am writing and publishing a tell-all trauma book about my own personal story living in a family filled to the brim with sex abuse, emotional and physical abuse, crimes, sex and drug addiction, deceit, exploitation, and manipulative games that destroyed my bond with my son.
If what happened to me as a child was happening now, several family members and siblings, some of whom are high profile public figures, would be in jail.
In my childhood era, my family got away with keeping the secrets and living in duplicity. One world, sordid, dirty, twisted, sociopathic. These same persons also created a simultaneous world for people outside the family to see — solid mormons, close-knit, service oriented, caring and compassionate, prominent politicians, big-name business owners, published and famous artists and writers — while actively participating in the abuses, and making decisions that kept my sex abuse experiences a secret that led to severe post traumatic stress and clinical depression in childhood on into adulthood.
My new book will feature the sly, hidden destructive dynamics of my siblings Leif Hansen of Leif’s Auto Collision Centers in Portland, Oregon, Diana Hansen-Young of Hawaii State Legislature and painter-writer fame, Melanie Silvester, professional genealogist in the Mormon church, evangelist for the Mormons, and others.
How these individuals became Vacuus is unknown to me, as they are all about 14 years older than me, but I will be speaking directly to the choices they made that knowingly allowed sex abuse to run rampant in my young life, and the sadistic manipulations they used to cover it up, and assist in helping my ex-husband, Aaron Stewart Heusser, to get away with domestic violence in the marriage, and extend his domestic violence into child custody and get away with turning our son against me with dark lies about me that has caused my son not to want to talk to me or see me in nine years. He is 22 now.
The Vacuus.
Vacuus is a term I have given the vile, viscous villains in an imaginative tale I wrote called “The Muse Academy.” (www.themuseacademy.wordpress.com).
But Vacuus are not entirely fictional, in fact, they exist and thrive in hiding in plain sight in realtionships, settings, tasks and contexts of all variety.
Vacuus are persons who steal your narrative, or manipulate it to suit their own sadistic needs, the lust for drama gossip, the pornography of fabricating crisis, conflict and chaos, the evil of splitting close bonds apart, splitting people apart and sowing contention just for the sport of getting a drama fix — that would be sibling Melanie Silvester and Diana Hansen-Young.
Hard to believe, given Melanie’s presentation of the supra-righteous poster woman for the Mormon church and its holy values, that she would destructively align herself with my ex-husband, Aaron Stewart Heusser to fabricate high drama and crisis for her own drama fix, while partnering with him in such a way that he could lie in court testimony to underhandedly and illegally seize custody of our son.
Hard to wrap my head around, how Leif Hansen and Diana Hansen-Young can deceive the public, their voters and constituents and customers and advertisers and vendors — with such sly duplicity, and keep all their dark, twisted behaviors a secret from all of them.
This is the passive-aggressive, sneaky, depceptive and duplicitous way in which the Vacuus work their wiles.
You wake up one morning and your life is turned upside down and you don’t know how that happened, but then you spot the stink of Vacuus footprints all over the home and you know, Melanie and Aaron and Lei and Diana have been at it again.
For what purpose? So Melanie could get her drama high, and Aaron could control her to the point of making her lie to the judge because he didn’t want to share our son, he wanted to own our son. Our son was a possession for Aaron, and a game pawn for Melanie.
Like any addict, the drama fix, the gossip fix, the crisis fix, the power fix, the control fix, the ownership fix, must get bigger each time to get the same addicted satisfaction.
Its how Vacuus get their jollies.
I cannot get back what was lost, and likely to remain lost, with my son from the sociopathic duo of Melanie and Aaron, but there is a legal option for me to sue them both for child estrangement. I am actively researching that as a point of my recovery from their trauma, which is restorative justice.
So, there is The Dramatist Vacuus, the Gossip, the Empty, the Void, the Sadist, the Destroyer, the Stomper, the Bully, the Thief.
The Bully and Stomper would be Leif Hansen.
You’ll have to buy the book to find out how.
Do you have any of these Vacuus in your life? Are you secretly hiding and denying the fact that you might be one of these to other people?
Ammends must be made, accountability taken, consequences allowed to take their natural course and the burdens and pain put back on the shoulders of the perpetrators, not any longer on their victim’s backs.
Persons of trauma learn to suspend their judgement, to mistrust or second-guess their inner voice, their gut instincts, so they tend to go along with the Vacuus instead of claiming and displaying their own truths, the facts that Vacuus want to deny.
My encouragement is to trust your Self, your perceptions, your initial judgement-calls, so the Vacuus don’t have a void to fill. You’ve claimed your space and are outwardly making it known that the Vacuus no longer have a seat at your table.
Know that speaking your truths, or simply acting with choices based on your truths, will bring some blow-back. The Vacuus do not like paradigm shifts. Not only do they not want to give up their power and control, they are deathly afraid of being exposed. Shining a flashlight under the bed poofs away the boogey-man. Shining light on dark secrets will bring you peace, ultimately, because you are no longer allowing Vacuus to rent rooms in your head and heart and soul without paying rent while destroying your property.
Self-care is a necessity, not a luxury. Self-care includes setting boundaries, maintaining your privacy, disengaging from persons who do not respect these. Distancing your Self from destructive person’s manipulations, stop being the focus of their possessiveness, get out from under their ownership, dodge their compulsions to write your narrative for you.
Build yourself a place of peace in your home, and inside your Self that you can carry with you everywhere you go, and quietly dwell in there, and communicate with others from that space, everywhere and anywhere.
This place of peace is still, it is reasonable and from that posture life becomes reasonable.
It is both a refuge and a shield from Vacuus storms.
Your mind, you heart and personality are yours and only yours. You are a child of creation, creativity is innate within you — so go on and create your Self the way you want that artwork to be.
Thanks for reading,
Heidi D. Hansen, M.A.
email: dog.hotel.hansen@gmail.com
There are five masteries — high life-affirming skills — to learn in our recovery and resiliency of traumatic experience:
I am hosting another Trauma Project workshop to provide safe, private and renewing education on these 5 acumens — and I really hope you’ll join us for this. It’s on Saturday, September 28, 2019, at 9 a.m. in Vancouver, Washington.
It’s free, and I’m bringing the coffee — the good kind!
Journals and sketchbooks will be provided at no charge, and good pens.
Email me at dog.hotel.hansen@gmail.com to RSVP and confirm location details.
Remember, trauma changes us, but we get to say how.
So until then, rest, restore, and renew.
— Heidi D. Hansen, M.A.
cash.app/$doghotel2018 is the link to donate a tad of cash to help fund The Trauma Project. Heidi is an experienced clinician and understands the necessity of providing truly excellent mental health care to those who can least afford it, and everything about the Trauma Project is free to all. So, donations here at this link go directly and exclusively to fund the overhead and upkeep of The Trauma Project, and I will write and sign a receipt for your tax purposes and also express exactly where your donation went — was it printing costs, or stamps for mail-outs, was it to pay for the meeting space, the sketchbooks/journals we use in our workshops, was it for refreshment in the workshops — I’ll let you know. That’s Heidi’s promise, your money goes exactly where I say it goes. Thank You!
I made this dog-story art-song video to represent that living creatures, including people, can only thrive when they have environments to live in that are permanent, safe, secure, predictable and nourishing as well as in their control. This is also a segway to a mural I am starting that represents some insights around the experience of homelessness that the typical stereotypes don’t capture. I’ll be posting the progress of that mural, with photos, and there will be a charitable auction for ownership of it when it is completed. Thank you for your time, your energy, and motivation to upgrade our city neighbors who do not have secure, safe, predictable homes in which to grow and thrive as persons. And their dogs.
‘the dandelions bloom at midnight’
this was the secret password my son and i used when he was young, used in cases when we were not able to communicate directly but a change of plans needed to be made, for example, if someone else was to pick him up after school at the last minute. the password was used to let him know the situation had my permisssion, my knowledge, and was safe.
but the phrase is more than a secret code — it is true that some flowers and plants bloom in the night hours.
this is also a metapor, that some persons bloom in adversity. in times of our greatest despair, we can choose to act out our troubles, or do something extraordinary with them.
we are all children of creation – creativity is innate within ourselves. we are capable of innovating solutions, finding new ways, summoning up coping skills we have not thought of before.
trauma changes us, but we get to say how.
if you find yourself in a spot in life when everything has crashed around you, the things you normally hang onto for sanity have abandoned you, you feel frightened and alone and shaking in your boots — but yet you are still standing — shout out loud in celebration, ‘i’m still standing.’
the one hidden blesing of trauma is that it clears the decks. when everything is lost or damaged, everything becomes a new blank canvas upon which to paint something new and different — perhaps this is the opportunity for you to become a version 2.0 of yourself — a self you always imagined you might want to become someday – and since all is lost and theree’s nothing left to do but re-create yourself, perhaps you can strategically create that self you had previously only imagined, but now you can make it real.
trauma is mesy, it is unpredictable, it will sneak up and bite you from behind when you least expect it. but truma is not an illness. it’s an event that has caused great pain and fear. the side order that comes in tow with that is shame, guilt, rage — even though you have nothing to feel shame or guilt about, we do anyway.
that’s where restorative justice comes in. ‘putting the monkey back on the back of to whom it belongs.’ within lawful limits, a person must make some justice happen in order to be whole again.
trauma can make us feel as though we’ve gone dead inside. that is why it is so important to fill up our lives with life-affirming actions. things that are creative — you are a child of creation, remember — so fill your days with creative things — anything of your choosing, it does not mean artsy or crafty things although those are great too – it can be anything — making up a new song or joke, walking through the library and picking books at random off shelves you haven’t been to before, and reading one paragraph out of the page the book opens to. it can be creating your own coffee specialty item at your local coffee shop — you might want to tip them for this. making a friend froma different culture and listeinging to their family stories. throw yourself into anything and everything that is life-affirming and validates your sense of self, safety, and sanity.
the self, our personality — is a trememdous gift. trauma will try to rob you of that. but remember there is only one person who owns your self, only one person who can make the decisisons for the development and healing and thriving of that self — you.
you’ll need someone to talk to about the pain, the awfulness, the horrors, the ‘world has caved in on me’ experience. one who can use life-affirming strategies to help you re-connect with your sense of self and esteem in a manner of your own choosing, finding a center of joy that you can trust.
find a trauma-skilled therapist. not everyone has the training and expertise to this field. i happen to be a therapist who is, and my trauma project workshops will provide you with a knowlege structure around three types of trauma — the trauma of abuse and violence, the trauma of abandonment and neglect, and the trauma of dehumanization. i’ll also teach you five specific masteries that will help you grow through and even thrive after trauma and throughout your life development.
so call or email me and let’s talk and set up a trauma workshop for you, or individual therapy sessions to addres more personal needs. i want you to be well, mentally and physically, and i’m here to help you do that. thanks for listenting, and let’s talk soon — bye for now..
Are you a health care professional? Work in social or human services? Legal services or law enforcement? Sales? Are you in a management or executive position where you train, supervise, organize and motivate employees or departments of the business? Teacher or educator or in childcare? Do you work in non-profit or philanthropic organizations including churches or are you thinking of starting one?
everybody has a story. there are many types of traumas, and they show in up in the workplace, classroom, sales calls, and in patient/client/congregational care. the more you understand how trauma affects a person’s way of relating to their environment, the people and stressors around their environment, the more effective you will be in helping them, and your organization, achieve their goals..
let’s start with the basics. empathy and perspective.
sense of security, personality structure, and esteem are damaged by trauma in invisible ways.
except they are not invisible to the person of trauma. a person of trauma goes to great lengths to hide their dysfunctions so as to appear as normal as can be, because for all intents and purposes, they are normal. they want to work, play and love just as much as everybody else and most persons of trauma are just regular, average people who are skilled, educated/trained, available for relationships and hobbies and life adventures. normal.
except that we know now that the more trauma children and adolescents are exposed to, the more problems they will have in later life with rocky relationships, trouble with the law, with homelessness, domestic violence, unemployment, substance abuse, and mental illness.
we now know that in adulthood as well as childhood, trauma alters the structure of nuerons in the brain that are not reversable. these nuerons are responsible for the chemicals that produce anxiety, depression, impulsivity, low frustration tolerance, poor decision-making.
as a professional, you may have more contact with these individuals struggling with these risk factors than what you see on the outside.
trauma survivors live in a world invisible to most. it is a lonely, isolated world of fears and needs and a sense of being so very different from everyone else sometimes that alone-ness itself is a barrier.
the cure is to be able to connect deeply in life – affirming ways with other people, meaningful work, making the world better for others, but the symptoms of traumatic stress handicap people right at that point — it can be a sensation of living in a tupperware box, almost able to reach out and touch what they see others doing – not being afraid, not over-reacting, not withdrawing or being aggressively controlling but able to really honestly enjoy being with each other, engaged in the moment and find find joy in the day without self-punishment. but they can’t get past the fuzzy tupperware wall. how to live like that is just too foreign a concept for trauma sufferers.
you can begin to assist your people move past those barriers by deepening your empathy for what is happening inside a person of trauma — in a world you are not experiencing. a world which is invisible to you. the following chart will show two columns that may help you see and hear the invisible reality of the person your chosen profession has given you stewardship.
to set up a workshop for professionals, or a private consultation on how being more trauma-informed can help you be more effective in your work, email me at dog.hotel.hansen@gmail.com, or call me at 360-600-8745. thanks, and be well — heidi
please take advantage of this coupon to upgrade your acumen on trauma and how that can help you and your work be more successful. I accept payments made to ally online bank, via western union money transfer services, or by money order.
the trauma project 