You write about not wanting to repeat your abusers’ behaviors, and we often frame abuse as a “cycle” that repeats. I tried to be matter-of-fact but accessible. But my editor was like, “Look, nobody’s gonna buy into your healing story if they don’t understand what you’re healing from in the first place.” I probably wrote those first 50 pages something like 30 times, just trying to get the tone right. I think it’s really important to normalize that, but I also really wanted to show what it feels like to actually heal. I really wanted to focus on the adult-healing aspect, and there are so many stories and memoirs that focus on the childhood aspect. In my first draft, it was actually really, really brief. Writing the childhood-abuse section was definitely the most difficult part of the book. What was that decision-making process like for you? You write that you struggled with the decision to detail your abusive childhood in this book, as it could be triggering to other survivors.
The Cut recently spoke to Foo about writing and reliving her childhood experiences, trauma as reason versus excuse (particularly in the case of Joss Whedon), and the benefits of found family.
Still, as Foo tells readers early on, though her journey was long and painful, the book has a happy ending. When she was finally diagnosed, Foo applied her journalistic rigor to researching C-PTSD and its treatments, many of which provided only temporary relief. I have thousands.”īecause Foo was a well-behaved student, and later a successful journalist, she was able to hide her illness from others - and, to an extent, from herself - for many years. “If I had traditional PTSD,” she writes, “if, let’s say, getting hit by a car was the one foundational traumatic moment of my life, I could learn to isolate and resolve the triggers from it … but unfortunately, I do not have one foundational trauma. Though many mental-health organizations and professionals make use of this distinction, C-PTSD is not recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM-5).Ĭ-PTSD is characterized by prolonged, repeated trauma, as Foo says she experienced throughout her childhood.
Foo has C-PTSD, or complex post-traumatic stress disorder, a diagnosis first established in 1988 by Judith Herman, who argued the effects of long-term trauma required a term distinct from ordinary PTSD. In her new memoir, What My Bones Know, author and radio journalist Stephanie Foo details her painful experiences with childhood physical abuse - and the long, indirect path she took to healing in her adulthood.
0 kommentar(er)
