Memoirs of A Healer/Clinical Social Worker: Autobiography of Bruce Whealton

Chapter 48: Conspiracy Theories, Satanic Ritual Abuse And Unusual Beliefs

[Disclaimer: I have used aliases to protect the confidentiality and identity of clients or patients. No other names have been changed.]

Toward the end of the last chapter, I had mentioned that I was speculating on the impact that words and ideas can have on a person's mental health. I was referring to the situation in which Tracy had been confused about her diagnosis or her mental health condition.

I noticed a theme that was developing in the "memories" and flashbacks or "triggers" that were being presented to me. Triggers are things in our environment – something we see, hear, or feel (a tactile sensation) that trigger certain images, thoughts, and feelings.

Sadie had finished her therapy and Patricia, who had started therapy at the same time as Sadie, was not coming very often. But she had believed for a long time that she had Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) because she had been aware of different personalities.

I had two other clients that had DID and they both were coming from the Myrtle Beach area named Vanessa and Michelle. They had not previously known each other. Vanessa had been in therapy before with different therapists and she had a psychiatrist that had agreed that her diagnosis was DID. She had been the only client of mine who had been in the hospital for her condition before she started working with me.

I felt bad that others had failed her, and I had a release to speak to her psychiatrist as well. Michelle had not started working with me until some time in 2000, whereas Vanessa had started working with me in 1999.

At that same support/therapy group they had all met one another, and I would learn from them that they exchanged telephone numbers.

Patricia was the only one who had DID or a dissociative disorder who never came to the group sessions. That would turn out to be good for her. She didn't know any of my other clients and they didn't know about her.

I mentioned that there was a theme to what they were beginning to report. I don't have all the facts to prove how this happened or who is to blame. I can only speculate on what was happening at the time.

What Jessica and Vanessa were describing had a religious nature to it. They were both very religious. Jessica was a member of the Pentecostal religious denomination – a protestant Christian denomination. She described how in church services people would speak in tongues – a language that God would understand.

Jessica also spoke of a baptism of the spirit where one has a spiritual experience that sounded to me like a hypnotic trance. Both she and Vanessa were very religious in their sessions. They both described healing services where the movement of God or "the spirit" through them would heal them of certain problems. They might see people fall to the ground as if in a trance and something miraculous was happening as they believed.

They brought in drawings they made. It seemed like a child had drawn these. I had no idea if they were talking about these matters outside of therapy. But I saw that both were presenting images of upside-down crosses and what they described as "the people in the cult who wore robes."

Like me, you're probably wondering "what cult?" and "what does this mean?"

I started looking online for more information. The words of Louise Coggins came back to me. "Ritual Abuse." Louise had offered the workshop on DID in January of 1999 for clinical social workers.

I had some keywords to use in my searches. DID, ritual abuse, cult(s), child abuse, and trauma. It was some time in mid-2000 when I ventured down the proverbial rabbit hole. With the internet so much a part of our lives in the 21st century it's hard to imagine a moment's delay between hearing something unusual and doing a Google search on it.