Tag Archives: flashbacks

Redirection

Sometimes things in life make me pause and focus on redirection. Being a creative and a passionate Pisces, I can easily become side tracked into projects which aren’t necessarily meant for me.

I can be like a hound dog, occasionally distracted by attractive scents, sniffing successfully until something redirects me.

Technology has changed me. It has created a false sense of urgency which has distracted me. Each time I sign into my brand, there are influxes of posts telling me how important it is for me to be present, every day! And if I can’t, I should be figuring out HOW or I will FAIL, FAIL, FAIL!! 😳

There’s pressure to figure out what day I should post; what content I should present, exactly what time to attract as many “likes” or “retweets” as possible, who my target audience should be, how to search for them, and if I can’t succeed in THAT, I should consider paying someone to do it for me.

I am rebelling. I am redirecting. I am watching the doers. The truth is, that for someone like me, nothing is more important than focusing on my creativity. Those who love me and support me will be waiting in the wings when I emerge from periods of hibernation.

I feel a great sense of urgency to redirect; to deeply travel the pathways into myself on a more intense level. I rise the highest when I am free of influence and distractions.

Having full control of my mind and my rhythm is crucial to feeding my soul. In these times, I call upon assistance and hand her my phone. I go dormant into the cave to do the work which must be done.

Redirection is pertinant to my current existence. Not everything is meant to be. It is up to me to discern these paths; to choose the best route and weed out that which is not contributing to my mission.

Somewhere in the corner of a cafe, a table awaits a girl whose fingers are ready to pound keys and tell the rest of her story.

Vennie Kocsis is the best-selling author of Cult Child and the hostess of Survivor Voices Show. She is an advocate, poet and artist.

What Happens When We Dissociate?

How does Dissociation work? Is it okay to Dissociate? What happens during Dissociation? So many questions are posed toward the phenomena of trauma Dissociation.

The scientific process of Dissociation is a brilliant function of a human being’s DNA ability. There are many aspects which could be deeply examined in regard to the phenomena of Dissociation.

  1. Where does the DNA brain and body energy go when it leaves?
  2. Is the ability to Dissociate related to how much torture/pain a human can endure?
  3. Can Dissociation be controlled by the carrier?
  4. What happens during the Dissociative process?
  5. Why do some abuse victim’s Dissociate and not others?

In my memoir, CULT CHILD, I go into great detail about my Dissociative memories. These are real experiences which are extremely clear and prevalent in my memory. They have never changed. They have only been verified.

My Dissociation process as a child did not disappear, but instead, evolved as I became an adult. When I begin to feel my energy separate from my body, a myriad of physical signals happen first.

Sounds disappear. My body feels as though it is floating. My heart rate speeds up. I begin to see my current reality in third person perspective, as an outsider looking in. This happens in a matter of seconds. Then in a blink, I am elsewhere in my mind. I, personally, tend to travel to a dimension outside of my current realm.

Because I dissociated so much as a tortured child, it seemed like a natural and smooth transition to evolve the methods I used to transition, into my own meditative states. If my environment is right, I am able to push through the physically uncomfortable Dissociation transition to access differing sectors of my brain. Now, it is a willful and purposeful action.

The most pertitant element has been grounding to insure I am not left with aftermath; that I can come back to my present reality and be able to function at my own current level. Therefore, before using this technique I usually hold an object in my hand.

For me, there are now two types of “Dissociation”. One, emerged out of a childhood fear, fight/flight instinct, which I used as I was universally assisted through surviving cult inflicted torture.

The other would emerge as a flipping of those ritual tools, utilizing the survival abilities of my childhood abuse as newly assistive methods through which I now freely access the other dimension.

So, from my experiences, there is no set answer to the “What happens when you dissociate?” question. There are too many mitigating factors.

  • a human’s level of pain tolerance
  • a human’s mental strength
  • an abuse victim’s environment
  • an abuse victim’s DNA
  • the type of abuse enacted

For instance, my Dissociations found me continuously returning to the seventh realm, as I know it, while another abuse victim I am friends with jumps to a planet within this galaxy. Yet another abuse survivor I know remains on the ceiling, watching the full extent of their abuse. One element I observe in regards to the extent of an ability to control Dissociation seems to also include a human’s personal evolvement. The more evolved human deals with less fear, thereby being able to travel easier.

To answer how one dissociates would be to speak with every abuse victim who has used Dissociation to cope. While our experiences and circumstances are all differing, what we do have in common are the physical signs, as described above.

Possibly, when we master the skill of traveling, not in fearful Dissociation, but in an ability to focus, using Dissociative abilities to access the levels of our own existence, we have come to explore our memories from a place of empowerment.

This takes work. It has taken me years to evolve my methods. I am still evolving them as I am determined to access more of my mind’s caves. It takes being healthy so the body doesn’t fall ill. One must be able to be in a soothing environment to do this work. Because it is emotionally laborious, most Dissociation carriers avoid the exhaustive journey.

Yet, I say that if one chooses to face the layers of their own dissected childhood, that through the exhaustion, tears and haunting images, learning to stay grounded and traveling into Dissociation has been one of my strongest developments.

Vennie Kocsis is the best-selling author of Cult Child and the hostess of Survivor Voices Show. She is an advocate, poet and artist.

Motherless On Mother’s Day

by Vennie Kocsis

I don’t quite understand these constant holidays, dedicated to moms and dads and bunnies and love. I see them as marketing scams, a way to boost economy almost every month, by throwing in a Holiday.

But hey, maybe I’m bitter.

On these days I am reminded of my absent mother. See, not only did she pass away in 2007, her mother’s soul was stolen when I was three.

Recruited by an ill-intended woman into a sinister cult, my mother was forced to be separated from her children, initially physically starved through food rationing. After years of brutal torture, all of our spirits were broken.

Emotionally, I never had a mother. In cult life, I was rarely allowed to express my feelings to anyone. This was considered to be self centered behavior, a feeding of the flesh and a sin in the eyes of God.!!If by some chance I caught my mother in a listening mood, my emotions were most often turned back around on me.

“Suck it up, buttercup.”

This was one of my mother’s favorite phrases.

These days feel so distant to me. Social media is filled with flowery and adoring words dedicated to mothers. They are loved and adorned with the flowers of sparkly attention.

I wonder if those mothers are supported every single day as they raise children, work and juggle schedules. I wonder if they have their own mothers to love them.

My mother is not here to love me. If she were here, she would most likely be in the midst of her Queendom, wearing her dark “Godmother” sunglasses which she’d taken to wearing for her glaucoma.

She would be the center wheel, the rest of the family mothers in her shadow, as she preened. There is a wince inside of my star heart, a little ache to return, back into the portal where my real home awaits.

I see the outstretched arms of my celestial Mother, her lips parted into a smile reflecting light from her pearly white teeth. She is waiting for me. She is proud that I succeeded in my mission.

“Welcome Home.” She says softly.


(Gif by Vennie Kocsis)



There is no banner or trumpets to celebrate my return. We are not a star family of false pretenses. She gives me the intimate connection which supersedes any material gift.

She holds me inside of her love, and as her arms wrap around my body, I sigh a heavy breath into her chest. I am home again.

To the mother in the starlight, who visits my dreams at night, soothing my cries, stroking my holographic hair, I am alight in your glory. We will see victory in this round.

Around My City She Sleeps

There are people who learn to trust the streets. I think of their lives, how they have made darkness their day and daylight their night so they can stay alive.

Where is the safe space when the alleys are teeming with the unloved at night, ravaged by the anger in their souls, screaming out their behavior and trying to numb the pain?

I understand why she sleeps in the day, quiet beneath an office building eave, on a porch never used. I watch the employers walk quietly past her, making sure not to wake her as they enter their offices.

This mixture of compassion and hopelessness fills my observation. She is sleeping soundly where she feels safe. Somehow, there is a silent understanding of this, and so she is left to rest.

I wonder of her story, who hurt her heart, body or both. I wonder when she gave up, how old she was and what would make life different for her.

Caught in a moment around my city, I see the humanness of humans. I feel the dance of empathy and indifference from those who walk past. If they let her sleep, they’ve done enough.

And I feel a woman with a ghost story, thankful for a tiny porch and the chance to sleep in quiet, beneath a mound of blankets, escaping reality for a few short hours.

Around my city, she sleeps, the wind weeps and minds escape into dreams.

©venniekocsis.com

The Pages I Rarely Share: Why Trauma Journals Are Healing

I rarely share my personal, hand-written journal pages. They are private and raw, exposing trails into myself that I don’t necessarily want others to walk upon.

As I continue the journey of writing through trauma, I’ve connected with other survivors looking for outlets for their pain. I believe deeply in journaling, mainly because there are endless ways one can journal. There are no rules. We get to customize it to fit our own need, and it can look like anything.

I have differing journals for varying states of mind:being. One contains dreams I’m either lucky or unlucky enough to remember. Another contains childhood memories. This one is graphic in nature, and I would not share most of these pages publicly.

I write daily in my gratitude journal to keep my self-love balanced. Another journal is filled with letters written to a stranger. A slam journal holds pasted pieces of moments to remember, like movie tickets, a leaf shaped like a heart found on a walk, a cool newspaper clipping and so much more which has fit my fancy to save, glue and tape.

My “Letters to a Stranger” journal is a stream of consciousness ramble of mind dump journal. There is no necessary “reason” to the entries in it. Should someone pick it up, it may appear as the jumbled code of a multiple mind.

These are two pages from my Dump Journal to show an example of what might fall out of my head. I tend to write in this during a mind split moment where my hands need to move while my brain is on overload. I’m in random mode, just clearing subconscious thoughts out of my head. I tend to be lucid. I don’t critically think through it. I allow it to flow and have its own voice.

So, I hope you will dump the images which plague your mind, into words and the thoughts into pages. I hope you give it away, and don’t hold it in.

Dump, my friend, dump.

The Constant Ebb of Impending Doom

By Vennie Kocsis

To untangle the web of my current occasional States of Being has required a process of retracing the steps into my past through the portal of my present behaviors and emotions.

Growing up in an end-times cult, I was taught two main death concepts.

1. God was going to end the planet by destruction, and all humans would die.

2. The Communists would begin that process through a brutal American invasion, which would include the genocide of all Christians.

Therefore, from my beginning developing years, my mind was conditioned for a death event which could come at any time.

Although eventually an acceptance set in as I was put through survival training to live off of the remote Alaskan mountainsides in Delta Junction, existing within this mindset created a layer of doom inside of my childhood emotional state.

Life was not only lived in fear of my own death and the world ending, but of the adults around me. I feared the death of the handful of people I had come to love. I feared the punishment of the brutal adults who were always overseeing us like vultures. I had to watch every word I spoke. I walked on eggshells of fear; afraid to say or do the wrong thing.

I held the secrets of my sexual abusers. There was no safe place for me. There was no one I could talk to; no safe teacher, as they were all abusive, no school counselor, since we were schooled inside the cult, no police or 911 to call, no access to telephones, no ability to write un-monitored letters to my Grandmother or Father, whose addresses I was not allowed to have anyways. Not even friends could ever fully be trusted. I was indeed enslaved in body, mind and spirit.

The programming of mistrust ran so deep, the fear of death and saying or doing the wrong thing, always simmered within my mind. It weaved into my normal state of awareness. Simply put, it became a part of my operating wheel.

This doom morphed into a state of being which embedded itself into my body’s scientific chemical system, understanding that emotions derive from cells and brain chemistry, and became a permanent part of my operational system.

Ordinary day to day activities randomly awakened the sense of doom and fear. Going into public, it simmered in my stomach. It became the possibility of everything bad that could happen. It emerged in unexpected moments like grocery store visits where my eyes watched every stranger who passed me, untrusting and suspecting. Or when driving, where I was intensely aware of my surroundings, watching vehicles and noting who was inside of them. It held me often in isolation, not wanting to venture far from home.

It contributed to the choice of two abusive adult relationships, as I confused being controlled with being protected, believing the second time that I could even help an abusive person, although I could not help myself.

It assisted in taking away my ability to have a reality based thinking, or build self-protecting boundaries, a life skill I was never taught. It led me away from my own intuition and eventually replaced it, until the act of living was filled with a thin layer of expected doom, even if it was undefined by any specific event.

As I became older and experienced more abuse, the hyper-vigilance and fear became my fuel. My mind was constantly on the run and in defense mode. I behaved as hunted prey, always on the lookout of my surroundings. I trusted no one. Yet, naively trusted everyone. My trust abilities were reversed, convoluted and tangled.

However, there had to come a moment where I was living my life, not from a sense of doom, gloom and fear, but through an empowering awareness, wisdom and critical perspectives.

While I still have certain thought patterns that I am working through, when survivors of abuse explain an adult life of feeling impending doom emotion, I hold a true understanding. I feel with them and understand why. Especially those victimized by religious abuse.

To carry the layers of who we are as abuse survivors is like carrying a book which must be read, should someone care to know us. Within the pages, cracks created by a multitude of breaks, are clearly revealed.

I require understanding. I want to feel safe around the people I am with. Not just safe emotionally, but physically as well. It is at the top of my requirement list to be a part of my life; loyalty and safety. It only takes once for that to be broken for me, and I either say goodbye or change my interactions.

To love us survivors is to know us. To reassure us. To look out for us. To help us know without a doubt you will never hurt us. Until we can feel that completely, patience is required to help us trust you. When you show interest in giving us that support, in return, you will receive a deep love.

Vennie Kocsis is the best-selling author of Cult Child and the hostess of Survivor Voices Show and her live Sunday broadcast Off the Cuff. She is an advocate, poet and artist.

My Childhood Is a Graveyard of Ghosts

I wonder if my mother ever felt the rejection and pain of her children. Did she ever cry? I can’t recall in this moment, ever seeing my mother cry.

I wonder if she’d care that I love pictures of my family; to document moments of happy, because no one ever did that for me. I have no childhood photos to look back on, laugh and say, “Remember when?”

My childhood is a graveyard of ghosts.

I wonder if she ever knew what she would leave in her wake when she took us to a place where they would dole out nothing but pain.

She could not have known how it all trickles down, settling into behaviors and DNA cells. It leaves behind a hell between which I feel sandwiched; a vice grip of the past and the future. I am a spinning wheel. No matter which direction I turn, it seems it could be the wrong one.

So, I stand still. I take leave. I return to where at least, I can love myself. I no longer wish to falsely smile when I am hurting inside. I’d rather come home and cry.

Tonight, I felt triggered back to being a kid in the cult, wishing the other kids would like me. Until one day I stopped trying. I accepted that they would never really embrace me, and they never did.

It makes a soul feel cold to be alone inside repentance to which I can only give myself. I look in the mirror. For all the times I have failed, I tell myself to let go of regret and live again.

Tonight, I feel damaged. I cannot both mend my heart while trying to make up for the hearts I’ve torn apart. I am a thinly woven web of tangles. I feel fragile. I feel that a slight mistrodden step could be the one which makes everything shatter and break.

Tonight I gained more radical acceptance, that accountability doesn’t matter. I no longer pine for my mother’s lost accountability. I never received it. I thought maybe it would heal me, but accountability as a healing tool is a farce. My accountability has not healed anyone I hurt in my past. It doesn’t matter. It is nothing but a ride in a confessional for which there is no pennance paid to right the wrongs.

Even as I hold ownership of the times I fell, it is received as a mirage. People choose to hate or choose to love. I have no strength to beg or vie for love any longer. I have suffered for it to no avail. I am tired. No… I am exhausted.

I wonder when it will end, the generational cycles of pain. Even as I try and heal my own, I know that no matter how whole I become, I cannot glue together shattered pieces someone else is holding.

I sit alone. I am not lonely. These are the times I take flight; when the pain’s too much to bear; when I need the right people to care, but there’s fleeting shreds of empathy there.

I am gripping gravity like it’s the last string of an ending orchestra performance, hoping to stay tethered for the sake of my love.