Tag: child custody as domestic violence

The Trauma for Throwaway People

by addogsunleashed, posted in aaron stewart heusser, aaron stewart heusser, valerie heusser bates, christy heusser, anxiety and panic attacks, community support, family annihilators, heidi d. hansen, m.a., loss and grief, mental health original art, mental health therapy, the trauma project, trauma recovery, trauma recovery acumen, vancouver washington therapist

When you walk through a city street and see homeless people, when you ride a city bus and see large immigrant families wearing raggedy clothing and carrying bags from the local food bank, when you see 600 – lb. individuals trying to ride a grocery store cart filled with cakes and chips, what are the first thoughts that come into your mind?

I would like you to consider marginalized persons– including those in and out of incarceration, drug and alcohol treatment, mental health hospitals, those whose highest paycheck is he amount on their disability check, those whose home pantry will not exceed what they can get from their EBT SNAP card, those who look healthy, young and fit but live on social security disability checks and in public housing, those who can’t get their kids into the good schools because they don’t fit the income bracket of the neighborhood — I would like you to go back in time to when these persons were young children.

There is a lot of very robust social science research going on right now on Adverse Childhood Events and adults outcomes of homelessness, addictions, incarceration, learning dysfunctions, mental illness, poverty and unemployment.

Social scientists have used this research to arrive at computation tables that itemizes and scores each adverse child event and show the higher the ACE, the higher the marginalization and disability and poorer health and economy of that person as an adult.

Adverse Childhood Events are basically traumas of early childhood — traumas that are sudden, acute, and intense, like abuse or death of a parent, and those that are more subtle, pervasive, and lingering like food scarcity and addictions.

As my readers know, I am using my own family system to show a number of the effects of trauma and traumatic family dynamics that alter not only the personalities and behaviors of the family members, but the culture of toxicity of the family as a whole.

As you all know, this is the basis for a book I am writing.

So now consider the “Throwaway People.”

I am in that class, and have been for much of my life since childhood, when my older siblings and parents decided to keep the sex abuse from the pedophile uncle Ronald Safsten a secret.

At that time, my family determined that I was expendable. My personhood and health and safety came second, or not at all, in lieu of protecting the sex offender who ate at our table, worked on my sister Diana Hansen’s Hawaii Senatorial campaigns, and was often putin charge of babysitting me.

Long before I was born, my older sister Melanie was sexually molested by Ronald Safsten for years when she was a young child. The family and the Mormon church knew something was going on, but chose to keep that a secret.

When I was two years old, and my older sisters were in their late teens, our family moved to Hawaii for a job offer for my father.

Guess who followed us, but the pedophile Ron Safsten, who was targeting the fresh meat in the cute little toe- head girl Heidi.

If Melanie had told someone in authority that Ron Safsten had molested her for years, and had that adult told the law, I would not have endured his sexual abuse of me.

Had the Mormon church leaders who knew of Ron’s molestations of Melanie told the law, I would have been spared.

And anyone who knows the loud, vocal, bulldozer of a personality of my older sister Hawaii State Representative Diana Hansen, who built her campaign on ”fighting for the little guy, the underdog,” and on holding the “fat cats” in power accountable can not possibly believe that she did not know about Melanie’s sex abuse — they were only about one year apart in age and together all the time. It is not realistic to believe that State Representative Diana Hansen was unaware of her campaign marketing artist Ronald Safsten grooming and abusing me, or that she was unaware that Melanie was being molested by him for ten years right under her nose.

Somewhere in all that time, spanning about 17 years, from being a close-knit, enmeshed mormon family in Bellingham, Washington, to Honolulu Hawaii, this “good mormon politically good” family decided that I was expendable. That I would be the Throwaway.

Later of course, it was Diana who wanted to get her screenplay read by a famous Hollywood producer that she was willing to trade me in to him for some sex time in trade to get her screenplay read by that producer.

By a hair, I escaped the molestation because I already knew what that train looked like on that track and I dodged it.

But when I heard the chillin word’s of Representative Diana Hansen tall me in the hotel elevator, “just don’t tell mom or dad I brought you here, okay?” I knew I was expendable. A throwaway.

So then as a pregnant woman asking my older brother Leif Hansen of Leif’s Auto collission center for protection from my abusive husband Aaron Steweart Heusser one night because he was hurting me and I was worried about the baby inside me, and Leif’s answer was, ” a man’s house is his castle, and a wife belongs in his castle, I can’t take a man’s wife out of his castle.” I knew I was expendable. I was a throwaway.

But I already knew that about Leif, as it was his friend David who took me into Leif’s bed as “man and wife,” while Leif watched with his friends and they all laughed, I knew I was expendable. I was a throwaway.

The only way I got mentally well was to get out of my family as soon as I could as a teenager, cut off all communication with them, and live my life as though they did not exist. I have to do the same thing now, today, at age 56, and the older siblings — the sex abuse enablers — are into old age — cutting myself off from them is again yielding me health, safety, peace, growth, freedom and independence from the grasp of these sociopaths.

If you talk to anyone of these older siblings, they will be all shocked and plather on about how much I was loved, spoiled, doted on as the precious youngest daughter.

But control over a family member is not love.

It is not love to create and maintain a throwaway person.

It is not love to make them mentally ill so that if she ever told about the reality of sex abuse rampant in the family, or domestic violence in her marriage, she would not be credible.

It is certainly not the legal way, the Mormon way — but these are the people who made the laws and saw to their Mormon flock’s needs, and became big business charitable contributers in the community.

Yet they abandoned me to a wife-beater, they abandoned me to a first-class manipulator in court without an attorney, they abandoned me to homelessness on the streets of Vancouver, Washington. Just like they abandoned me to a known pedophile.

They aided and abetted child estrangement by lying for and with Aaron Heusser in his use of child estrangement in an illegal custody play — which is illegal and unlawful at this present time and could mean prison time for them, as well as civil litigation to recoup the damages of parental attachment loss.

These people pretend to be so righteous and the paragon of virtue and success, but in reality, created an expendable person who became society’s throwaway person and represents a reality they go crazy trying to separate themselves from.

But they cannot escape the truths of what they have done and arranged to utilize to protect themselves from being caught. Just create an expendable person to carry that weight for you.

Control is not love. Abuse wrapped up in “This is for your own good,” and “you’ll thank me for this later” while throwing a vulnerable family member under the bus is not love. It is not strength. It is not sane.

Creating a throwaway person and sanctioning more trauma for that expendable person to endure — so they don’t have to face the music of their own behavior — is not love. Not family. Not church. Not safe, not admirable.

It’s immoral, sociopathic, and criminal.

And I’m calling them out.

——————————————–

Domestic Violence Undertow Trauma

by addogsunleashed, posted in anxiety and panic attacks, community support, dissociation, family annihilators, heidi d. hansen, m.a., loss and grief, mental health therapy, portland oregon therapist, post trauma stress, the trauma project, trauma recovery, trauma recovery acumen, vancouver washington therapist

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.

The Trauma of The Vacuus

by addogsunleashed, posted in anxiety and panic attacks, community support, dissociation, family annihilators, heidi d. hansen, m.a., loss and grief, mental health original art, mental health therapy, portland oregon therapist, post trauma stress, psychiatric service dogs, the trauma project, trauma recovery, trauma recovery acumen, vancouver washington therapist

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