In the year 2000, age thirty three, I started having flashbacks of being sexually abused as an infant and throughout my childhood. I was, at the time, living in a Buddhist meditation centre on staff and managing the office and IT systems. The memories that resurfaced were painful yet they helped me understand aspects of my behaviour that had never made sense, and to the extent they were painful that pain was released. I was more able to feel positive emotions such as joy and love without confusion. The amnesiac barrier that stopped me recalling my childhood before age thirteen, when the abuse ended, had began to dissolve. Prior to this I had few memories pre-dating that age – and no idea that to not recall one’s childhood was not usual.
When I returned to the UK in 2001 I approached local mental health services via my GP to ask for therapeutic support. Though Survivors UK – a London based charity – were providing time-limited counselling I felt that building a longer term therapeutic relationship to discuss and process memories and emotions around my childhood and to fully comprehend and heal resultant behavioural issues was appropriate.
It took a few weeks but I got to see a psychiatrist and after two sessions was told “Putting to one side everything you have told me about being sexually abused as a child, I am sorry to tell you that you have a narcissistic personality disorder”. The presenting factor “I need help recovering from being sexually abused as a child” had been set aside. This lead to a diagnosis both I and my friends knew to be incorrect. At the time I did not raise an objection – I simply hoped the diagnosis would help me access the therapeutic support I knew I needed. NPD being seen as untreatable, I was told to wait on an “extended time” waitlist at the Tavistock.
Survivors UK offered to continue support until I could access help through the NHS, which was generous of them, and immensely helpful. What I did not know was that the NPD diagnosis came with a label of probable hypochondria and that this would be an albatross around my neck in all aspects of accessing appropriate care – and particularly regarding my physical health.
In November 2004 I approached the psychiatrist again via my GP. I showed him the diagnostic criteria of NPD and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I pointed out the similarities – and the key difference; the presence of trauma in the PTSD diagnosis, and which had been “put to one side” in the original diagnosis.
Following two more sessions and some diagnostic paperwork, the psychiatrist told me, “Matthew – I am sorry – I owe you an apology. I did misdiagnose you – and I know it has cost you. You show no sign of suffering a personality disorder and you do meet the criteria for PTSD. I am ashamed and embarrassed”. I found his apology genuine and thanked him for the candid nature of his words. I told him it would be easy to sue for medical negligence – and that I would not. Mistakes happen and putting this right is what mattered. He wrote to my GP confirming no personality disorder.
In the meantime I had started therapy at the Tavistock. I was being “treated” for a disorder I did not have. The therapist refused to discuss anything regarding my childhood, the still surfacing memories,
and the behaviours I wished to challenge and overcome. She insisted that before discussing any of that I must admit that I “hated (her) and the fact I needed therapy”. The problem was that I did not hate her, and I knew I needed the support therapy might offer – so I refused this absurd demand, and discussed what was needed as best I could, whilst constantly meeting the wall of “you have to admit you hate me and hate that you need therapy”. After thirteen weeks of this ongoing theatre I decided that seeking help elsewhere was a healthier choice than continuing. I was not allowed to talk about the feelings I felt regarding the persons responsible for abusing me as a child and the things that were done to me. I was treated as if my childhood flashbacks were an invention. It was not healthy. I advised the therapist I would not continue and never went back.
Eventually, I did succeed in gaining access to appropriate long-term therapy through The Clinic for Dissociative Studies in Finchley, London. This was NHS funded twice weekly therapy which I attended from 2007 through to 2013. It was very helpful and likely saved my life, frankly. It took longer than one might hope – a full six years after requesting this help, and I am, nevertheless, deeply thankful to the therapist I worked with – and that the system, however faulted, got there in the end. Since that therapy ended I have at times felt a need to revisit the process of therapy and have worked with a locally based “core process” psychotherapist in Totnes for many years. It is the kind of therapy recommended to me by Adrienne Van Dorpen from “Devon Partnership Trust” whom I met when I moved to Devon. I do not need further psychotherapeutic or psychiatric intervention at this time.
I had also started seeking help for what I now know to be serious, systemic musculoskeletal problems that also had their origin in the physicality of rape – rape that started when I was one year old. Initially this was via physiotherapy and at a time when the nature and extent of the physical injuries was unknown and undocumented. The interventions offered were not particularly helpful, and perhaps to a small extent harmful, as shoulder exercises lead to the development of
haemorrhoids, which I had never previously suffered.
At the same time I was exploring asymmetries in my musculoskeletal system with a friend, Ben, who was training at degree level as an osteopath. I had become aware that there was an asymmetry in the psoas muscles affecting movement of my legs and lower trunk, with the left psoas shortened and inflexible. It had also been noted that there was an asymmetry in my shoulder girdle, with the
right shoulder elevated compared to the left – this was first noted when I undertook a one-month long silent meditation retreat. This asymmetry is visible in every picture of me as a child and had never been picked up on.
In around April 2004 Ben suggested an experiment. He had noticed that in turning my head and neck there was an obvious asymmetry. He suggested when turning to the right to allow my eyes to lead, head to follow eyes, neck to follow head and so on, and vice-versa when turning left. Bringing mindfulness techniques I had learned when studying Buddhism to bear with this exercise it soon became obvious that the movements of my head, neck and shoulders were indeed quite asymmetric. I carried on with the experiment.
About three weeks in to this experiment I was cleaning my teeth one morning in front of the bathroom mirror ad there was a slight click at the top of my neck/base of the skull where the atlas and occiput went into alignment. What followed from this was almost inconceivable — much of the anatomical language here I’ve learned since through the necessity to research these things. This click at the junction of my skull and neck set off a chain reaction. First some muscles at the back of my head engaged, then muscles in my left shoulder — the trapezius and the costal attachment of the sternocleidomastoid, and muscles behind my right shoulder engaged to balance, and my head lifted up, supported properly for the first time by the nuchal ligament which I felt engaged as the serratus posterior engaged, lifting my ribs and pulling down on the nuchal ligament.
My head was sitting properly on my neck and shoulders, and muscles in my upper back engaged. As my head, neck, and shoulders came into balance and proper posture, the left psoas muscle relaxed, my right hip rotated in it’s socket, and the muscles deep inside the hip attaching it to the pelvis and sacrum engaged. The lower abdominal muscle engaged, then I felt the internal anal sphincter and my rectum engage. After that the pelvic floor engaged — pushing my intestines and organs up from inside the pelvic cavity into my abdomen, and as this happened the transverse abdominal muscle engaged, holding my abdomen in place and creating tension through the lumbar fascia to support my lumbar spine. Other small and long muscles up my back and which I can’t specifically identify engaged.
I was shocked — suddenly the extent of injury and adaptation I had been bearing was clear. I looked in the bathroom mirror and realised I was taller. My head was out of the top of the mirror when I went to finish cleaning my teeth. A mirror I had fixed to be the right height for me to use. I looked at the bathroom floor — it was further away than usual and looking down gave me vertigo. I was definitely taller. This felt rather strange — all these muscles had not been fully working and engaged since infancy. The way I breathed had changed. The way I walked had changed. The way I held my head and shoulders had changed.
When Ben arrived shortly after and I opened the door to him he took one look at me and exclaimed, “what the **** happened? You’re taller.”
I recounted the experience described above. I was somewhat elated. I put my shoes on and we left my home to walk to his car. As we were walking I said, “gosh! This is a strange experience — I can feel that my head, neck, and shoulders are balancing the movements of my legs as I walk. My legs feel like pendulums swinging in balance — I’ve been fighting my own body to move all my life”. As we walked down the road I was lifting my right leg forward when my body instinctively turned to the left, starting with my eyes — the whole of my torso and neck spun left, and as my right leg hit the top of its swing, I was looking straight behind me, then started twisting round to the right as my leg dropped. When I shifted my weight to the tight leg my whole body spun round that way, and again I was looking straight down the road behind me. A bunch more internal abdominal muscles engaged (internal obliques I now know) and a whole lot of long and short muscles in my back engaged. It was, again, a surprising experience — and again I got taller. This was so surprising that both Ben and myself stopped in our tracks.
Ben looked at me and asked, “WHAT THE **** WAS THAT?”.
“I don’t know”, I said, “more muscles started working”. I looked again at Ben and said, “woah! I got taller again Ben – I’m as tall as you!”.
“No you aren’t”, he said, looking up into my eyes, “you are taller than me”.
In the space of around half an hour, from start to finish, I had gone from five foot eleven to over six foot two. At the age of thirty seven. This, according to some, is “medically impossible “, yet it happened, it was real, and there were witnesses.
My adult height has always been 5’11 – 181cm. Ben is 6’1½ – 187cm. In the space of about thirty minutes, not only had muscles throughout my body engaged and aligned, I had grown around 3 inches or 7-8cm taller. When we got to our friend’s house she was also visibly shocked at the wholesale change in my body.
I sat down in one of the chairs at Julia’s kitchen table, and my body collapsed like “Jenga” – everything that had started functioning stopped. I was 5’11 – 181cm again.
Over coming months I continued the exercise but this experience was never fully repeated. Parts of it were achievable within my conscious control, for example releasing the left psoas, which working with Ben we had come to realise was in permanent spasm. When I did this my lumbar spine lengthened noticeably, yet without the entire chains of muscles engaging I was left only with the knowledge of what didn’t work properly. At least with this I could ask for these things to be investigated — in the hopes of finding some understanding to lead to healing. My GP made referrals which resulted in the following conditions to be diagnosed: torn internal anal sphincter,
Three months after experiencing the possible healing in my body I was seated on the ground at a picnic when a friend’s young child ran up behind me and jumped on my head with all his weight. My neck was compressed and a bunch of muscles behind my right shoulder failed instantly. My scapula fell under my armpit. The pre-existing condition of my spine meant the impact of this was worse than might normally be expected. The junctions of the spine between my neck and chest, chest and lumbar, and between my lumbar and sacrum all collapsed forward — those problems are still palpable today twenty two years later. The right shoulder blade was hanging under my armpit so I hauled my shoulder roughly into the right place, and went to A&E.
There I was told there was nothing wrong. An orthopaedic surgeon shouted at the nurse, “give him a collar and sling and send him home”.
I now realise I had used the omohyoid muscle to drag my right shoulder upwards, and combined with the permanent spasm in the sternal attachment of the right sternocleidomastoid, which carries the weight of my head where the serratus posterior fails to hold the nuchal in place and the muscles at the back of my shoulders and head were not fully functioning. My body was more prone to injury from this incident than expected due to pre-existing neuro-muscular compensations. With no treatment offered at any stage, my injuries have compounded over the years. The CNS movement issues at the core will not be shown by standard testing methods yet the full recovery of posture and control, though temporary, showed that my body was capable of repairing and reorganising the damage it had been holding since childhood.
I do not have a personality disorder and I do not have functional neurological disorder – a diagnosis made repeatedly by ignoring known blunt trauma injuries and the obvious orthopaedic consequences of them. I also do not have Munchausen, as a foot surgeon accused me of last year, whilst giving an absurd account of my physical state, attempting to trash the reputation of a retired professor, and admitting he had not read my medical records.
