What A Persecutor Is: An Alter That Harms The System In One Way Or Another. This May Be To A Specific

Things we as a RAMCOA survivor want non-survivors to know

This is going to be emotional but this has also been a long time coming. Most of our 34 drafts on this account have been on this topic and today something happened that was just the last straw for us. If you are not a survivor sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. It's our turn now. You are privileged comparatively on this regard- whether you like it or not.

Do not silence RAMCOA survivors in favor of people with "false memories"

I have no idea why this is something that needs to be said because you would assume it would be common decency but apparently a lot of non-RAMCOA survivors seem to be completely unaware of how fucked up it is to say.

Not only has false memory syndrome been thoroughly debunked- but the only time someone has anything close is when they have a disorder that makes them prone to delusions. In which case that is a delusion. Stop blaming survivors who are working to recover and possibly save the lives of others who currently as you read this are actively being tortured, for a disorder that most people are born with and has literally nothing to do with us. Stop using "some people have delusions" as a backhanded way to harm RAMCOA survivors.

I am sick and tired of people making it clear they care far more about people with "false memories" than they do for real torture survivors.

Do not tell a RAMCOA survivor to their face you have had false memories of the torture they actively endured. It is incredibly insensitive and is a mockery of the torture they experienced.

And if one more "person" makes the claim that RAMCOA survivors talking about our experiences, the things that were done to us and others, is putting people with a disorder we didn't cause in danger- I will snap. We didn't give anyone a disorder- we didn't manifest your fucking delusions. You can work through your delusions in therapy- we have physical and mental injuries that will never fully heal from our REAL experience. It is such a disgusting and selfish thing to do. You are not allies- you are harming all survivors.

Stop telling RAMCOA survivors to never look into things

It's funny how this is often done in order to try and aid and help us, considering not having the terminology almost got us killed.

Non-ramcoa survivors telling RAMCOA survivors that talking about RAMCOA is dangerous and they should never look into it are actively harming programmed systems by triggering silence programs and making them self-destruct and get less access to aid, community, and terminology to be able to explain experiences to a medical professional and there has been little to no proof that learning about RAMCOA has ever killed a RAMCOA survivor.

People who push this idea that "it's too dangerous for you :((" and shut down all ramcoa survivors and then try to destroy our community terms like HC-DID (highly complex; this is used to described programmed systems that are polyfragmented and their complex structures) because of some idea of being a glorious savior to us- are just being incredibly selfish and insensitive. It has never been about helping us, not ever. It has been about you and people like you wanting to feel like you're oh so cool and good and special. That you "really care" about the likes of the poor weak incapable RAMCOA survivors.

We don't need to be babied. We fucking crawled out of the bowels of hell itself and have been through things that people often don't survive. Some of us have to fight programs every day- before and after knowing about our survivor status. Omega programming didn't start when we learned about RAMCOA- it first kicked off when we were nine years old. You failing to educate yourselves on the way programming functions yet insisting on speaking for us and people like us is infuriating. We are not children and even the ones that are do not fucking need you to baby them.

The only people we have ever seen proclaim talking about how "speaking on RAMCOA is bad and dangerous!!!!" are one of two groups; Non ramcoa-survivors speaking for us, and RAMCOA survivors with a program actively causing them to say this. In case you don't know much about programming, there is programs that make you try and silence both yourself and other people. This is one of the most well known types of programs. I am sorry to say this but we genuinely believe that most if not all RAMCOA survivors saying this are having a program run.

People pushing this message onto us literally triggered our silence program for so long we couldn't say much to our therapist until we learned terminology. It took that for us to be put on a disappearance watch list. This community idea could have gotten us killed. We were in literal danger because we could not manage to tell our therapist about our experiences because others had said the very same words our abusers did. "Don't tell anyone."

RAMCOA perpetrators do fucking everything they can to make sure we never speak. You are aiding abusers by contributing to our silence and you are possibly sending people to die. This is not a thing I can be lighthearted about. This is something that has made our system have alters that deeply hate and despise anyone who contributed to it with us and the same to anyone who may have done so to others.

Edit: For those who struggle to interpret this- no we never said you should randomly spur of the moment look into RAMCOA with no safety nets. That should be common sense. We also literally never said that anywhere. I don't know why people are so incapable to read what we say. We're autistic we say what we mean.

what does nccsa mean?

con contact child sexual abuse, its sexual abuse that didnt involve any touching, examples below

On days you feel exhausted but frustrated because you feel like you haven’t done anything to be this tired, think about these things:

How longe since you’ve had a good night’s sleep? No nightmares, no waking up multiple times, actually going to bed early, not having insomnia, actually waking up feeling rested and ready to face the day?

How long has it been since you ate a properly nutritious and wholesome meal?

How long since you’ve taken a break from work without thinking about all the work you will have to do later?

Are you currently fighting any illness? Remember your body takes energy to recover.

Are you really “doing nothing” if you are constantly overthinking the fact you feel unproductive, if you are constantly stressed with the things you do and don’t do?

Have you had bad/no social interaction lately?

Are you in any physical or mental pain?

Are you taking care of everyone but yourself?

Does trying to live during a pandemic and world crisis brings you worry and stress?

Are you feeling anguish over all the burdens you have to carry but don’t seem to be able to do everything you feel like you should be doing?

Are you constantly worried? Anxious?

It doesn’t feel like you have been doing nothing now, does it? It feels like you have a lot going on that you have to deal with daily, even when you don’t consciously notice it. There is a lot of stress inducing factors around you and struggling is okay.

It is not easy to be human sometimes, so please, don’t pressure yourself so much when you are already trying to cope. If it feels like everything is too heavy, please ask for help.

Please take care of yourself. 🌱

Thank you for running this blog. I was held in troubled teen industry facilities for all of my teenagerhood, and am severely traumatized as a result, and it's been extremely hard to find words to describe what I went through to other systems or to trauma therapists.

It feels "too much", like there's no way this could all have happened to me, and I've been accused of lying about the organized abuse that went on there. Sometimes it feels almost like i AM lying, though I know I'm not.

Although feeling like I have "too much" trauma is something that I have to continue working on personally, I want to say thank you for pointing me in the direction of a framework that I can research and use that fits me more than any other one I've seen before.

I wish that none of us went through the horrors we went through, but I'm glad that there's a community out there and people talking about the things that have affected me. Thank you again for what you do running this blog.

Before anything else — thank you. This is an incredibly kind message and I'm really glad that you could find solace in this blog. I aim to provide resources that may not be (physically or emotionally) acessible otherwise, and highlight lesser-discussed aspects of RAMCOA.

The troubled teen industry is definitely part of the wider picture of organized abuse, and I wish it was put in that context more. Unfortunately, most discussions of RAMCOA focus on early childhood manifestations, and situations primarily focused on adolescents, adults, seniors aren't as referenced. Basically, the older the victim, the less likely it is to be included in definitions of RAMCOA; which is a shame, because those perspectives are crucial. Abusive care homes & inpatient facilities, prisons, and yes, troubled teen facilities are all forms of organized abuse in my mind, but the strong correlation with pedophile rings and cults has... Alienated? Many people from describing their experiences as OA.

I totally understand the feeling of having "too much trauma", and I feel like many survivors in general, not just ones of RAMCOA, can relate to that sentiment. "It's just too unlikely for all these things to have happened," I'll say to myself, "I must be exaggerating." Something that's helped me is the idea that some predators can smell blood in the water, and if all you know is hardship, it's hard to break out of hardship. Experiencing layers of trauma isn't... Rare, and you're not lying about it.

Once again, thank you. If you need any resources specific to the troubled teen industry, let me know. There's not a ton of research on it in the context of RAMCOA like I said, but I'm sure I'll find something of use.

Wishing you a gentle and fulfilling recovery. Aisling

TW: DISCUSSION OF PROGRAMMING, CULT MENTION (RAMCOA), AND TBMC MENTION. STAY SAFE!!!

Being polyfrag and having programmed parts is so weird. Like one example, having layers is super weird because I don’t even who know the host or co-host are. I don’t know who most of the system is, as our area only has around 22 parts (small for us). Though, I suppose it’s probably for protection as most are programmed and all but one (I think???) has nothing directly to do with any trauma.

Speaking of programming, our host is in huge denial of it!! In our journal xe’re like “yeah we have parts that literally follow a mysterious religious figure nobody has ever heard of and we have parts that are like practicing extremely loyal sex cult followers and parts for enduring TBMC as well as all the symptoms of programmed aka HC-DID but I can’t remember any of it so it must be quirkiness” like ??????? It’s almost as if you’re a supposed to be like that XD

And that’s not even mentioning how large our system is!!! We have exactly 90 logged parts, a little over 3/4s of which are fragments. I know Ellie and probably some others are also questioning if they’re a subsystem (in the alter with alters way) because of slight amnesia and slightly differing roles. And I know that the 90 known, even if nobody known is a subsystem, are not all of us.

We have times where we black out and we don’t know who fronted, but it appears to be somebody who hasn’t been logged. There have been times where we are doing one thing and all of a sudden we’re somewhere doing something we didn’t know we would do, and nobody knows who it was.

There’s so much to us, it’s like an iceberg except the parts of the iceberg don’t know the other parts, and the pieces of the iceberg above and below the surface don’t know the other exists. So strange!!!

Complex PTSD (C-PTSD)

Children

The diagnosis of PTSD was originally developed for adults who had suffered from a single-event trauma, such as rape, or a traumatic experience during a war. However, the situation for many children is quite different. Children can suffer chronic trauma such as maltreatment, family violence, and a disruption in attachment to their primary caregiver. In many cases, it is the child’s caregiver who caused the trauma. The diagnosis of PTSD does not take into account how the developmental stages of children may affect their symptoms and how trauma can affect a child’s development.

The term developmental trauma disorder (DTD) has been proposed as the childhood equivalent of C-PTSD. This developmental form of trauma places children at risk for developing psychiatric and medical disorders. Bessel van der Kolk explains DTD as numerous encounters with interpersonal trauma such as physical assault, sexual assault, violence or death. It can also be brought on by subjective events such as betrayal, defeat or shame.

Repeated traumatization during childhood leads to symptoms that differ from those described for PTSD. Cook and others describe symptoms and behavioural characteristics in seven domains:

Attachment – “problems with relationship boundaries, lack of trust, social isolation, difficulty perceiving and responding to others’ emotional states”

Biology – “sensory-motor developmental dysfunction, sensory-integration difficulties, somatization, and increased medical problems”

Affect or emotional regulation – “poor affect regulation, difficulty identifying and expressing emotions and internal states, and difficulties communicating needs, wants, and wishes”

Dissociation – “amnesia, depersonalization, discrete states of consciousness with discrete memories, affect, and functioning, and impaired memory for state-based events”

Behavioural control – “problems with impulse control, aggression, pathological self-soothing, and sleep problems”

Cognition – “difficulty regulating attention, problems with a variety of ’executive functions’ such as planning, judgement, initiation, use of materials, and self-monitoring, difficulty processing new information, difficulty focusing and completing tasks, poor object constancy, problems with ‘cause-effect’ thinking, and language developmental problems such as a gap between receptive and expressive communication abilities.”

Self-concept – “fragmented and disconnected autobiographical narrative, disturbed body image, low self-esteem, excessive shame, and negative internal working models of self”.

Adults

Adults with C-PTSD have sometimes experienced prolonged interpersonal traumatization beginning in childhood, rather than, or as well as, in adulthood. These early injuries interrupt the development of a robust sense of self and of others. Because physical and emotional pain or neglect was often inflicted by attachment figures such as caregivers or older siblings, these individuals may develop a sense that they are fundamentally flawed and that others cannot be relied upon. This can become a pervasive way of relating to others in adult life, described as insecure attachment. This symptom is neither included in the diagnosis of dissociative disorder nor in that of PTSD in the current DSM-5 (2013). Individuals with Complex PTSD also demonstrate lasting personality disturbances with a significant risk of revictimization.

Six clusters of symptoms have been suggested for diagnosis of C-PTSD:

alterations in regulation of affect and impulses;

alterations in attention or consciousness;

alterations in self-perception;

alterations in relations with others;

somatization;

alterations in systems of meaning.

Experiences in these areas may include:

Changes in emotional regulation, including experiences such as persistent dysphoria, chronic suicidal preoccupation, self-injury, explosive or extremely inhibited anger (may alternate), and compulsive or extremely inhibited sexuality (may alternate).

Variations in consciousness, such as amnesia or improved recall for traumatic events, episodes of dissociation, depersonalization/ derealization, and reliving experiences (either in the form of intrusive PTSD symptoms or in ruminative preoccupation).

Changes in self-perception, such as a sense of helplessness or paralysis of initiative, shame, guilt and self-blame, a sense of defilement or stigma, and a sense of being completely different from other human beings (may include a sense of specialness, utter aloneness, a belief that no other person can understand, or a feeling of nonhuman identity).

Varied changes in perception of the perpetrators, such as a preoccupation with the relationship with a perpetrator (including a preoccupation with revenge), an unrealistic attribution of total power to a perpetrator (though the individual’s assessment may be more realistic than the clinician’s), idealization or paradoxical gratitude, a sense of a special or supernatural relationship with a perpetrator, and acceptance of a perpetrator’s belief system or rationalizations.

Alterations in relations with others, such as isolation and withdrawal, disruption in intimate relationships, a repeated search for a rescuer (may alternate with isolation and withdrawal), persistent distrust, and repeated failures of self-protection.

Changes in systems of meaning, such as a loss of sustaining faith and a sense of hopelessness and despair.

thanks! i was wondering what helps you safely deal with/ resist callbacks in general? i hope i worded that ok, if it‘s too triggering to talk about please don‘t.

It's not triggering at all! Don't worry one bit. We took a while because we were vacationing (and getting used to my boyfriend snoring like a chainsaw directly into my eardrum)!

Callback is tricky for us because it's one of the few well-executed programs we have. Our situation was poorly planned, so most of the attempted conditioning ended up messy. Teenage ad-hoc groups aren't exactly known for their consistency.

Something to keep in mind is that programming does not come from nowhere. It exaggerates and warps common trauma responses. It is a common experience in abuse survivors to have the urge to return, and that means there are lots of resources on this topic! Yes, a survivor of extreme conditioning presents differently than a ""normal"" DV/abuse survivor, but at its core, it's the same mechanisms.

For us, in particular, though:

Identify material barriers. This is things like not having enough money, being in a location where you can't really leave freely (work, school, etc.), not having access to transit that will get you to a location, etc. Locking our credit card is example of introducing a material barrier ahead of time.

Identify nonmaterial barriers. This is social consequences like people missing you & having responsibilities that need fulfilling in the time frame, or less physical things like not having a method of contact (like lacking a phone number) or address.

Let someone be your accountabili-buddy. This doesn't have to be telling someone about programming, but it could be as simple as "can you please call me at x time" or "I will call you when my flight lands". This goes into nonmaterial barriers, but here, instead of passive "what if people miss me" or something, you are instead actively introducing someone who will be checking on you.

Good ol' grounding. Whatever method works for you(/y'all), it will help. Programming is a return to a time period, a way of thinking, that is incongruent to the current moment. Reminding yourself that it you are not in that place anymore (through whatever means you like) will help. Our favorite is music, especially newly-discovered stuff.

Mild reminders to how bad that trauma period was helps us. Fighting a program with flashbacks isn't ideal, so we try to keep the reminders abstract. "It was very scary back then and things are better now. We should not go back." That sorta thing. Our partner helps a lot with this, as he is not going to be specific (he does not know the details of course) but still reassuring and supportive.

See if switching will help. We come armed with many sensory-based triggers (a plush or two, music playlists, jewelry, access to food & drink) so we try to drag someone else's sorry ass into the mix, especially a non-conditioned part. Blake, a physical protector and top layer resident, is our default "walking in potentially dangerous area" headmate and he ended up escorting us through the airport a lot!

We did all of these while we travelled last week, and we ended up perfectly fine. We were on the phone with our partner nearly the entire time, kept ourselves fed & watered, and honestly? Enjoyed it. We like the odd liminality of airports and despite an hour delay for one of our flights, we actually had a great time travelling.

We wish you luck!

hope this is okay to ask but how would a system who suspects RAMCOA figure out what their programming type is if they show signs of a few different kinds? alternatively; are different techniques sometimes programmed together?

(Warning ahead of time; I will not be censoring any words or topics here. Also, I talk a lot.)

I want to emphasize ahead of time: most cases of RAMCOA do not involve programming. RAMCOA exists on a wide spectrum, and programming is extreme conditioning, starting as a young child, that specifically creates dissociative barriers (thus, creating a system) which requires consistent access and organization. Most cases of RAMCOA do have some levels of conditioning, but well defined programs are considerably less common. You can be a RAMCOA survivor without programming (or, in our case, loosely defined and poorly executed programs that border on "normal" conditioning).

Anyways...

I've recommended this before, but track your symptoms. RAMCOA relies on patterns & consistency, but especially programming. Track emotions, internal system happenings, switches, and their triggers the best you can (whether using a digital medium like Notion or a physical journal). Being able to correlate specific dates & stimuli to symptoms will make a huge difference. Part of how we figured out we have some sort of proto-Delta (aggression, fearlessness, emotional detachment, etc.) programming is through noting how we reacted to wounds/blood, both ours and others'; how specific parts front or come closer to front during times of stress or fear; vague memories of forced perpetration being triggered by certain weapons, scents, or bodily positions; etc.

It is honestly way rarer to find a system with one kind of program in this context. This because nearly all have some sort of basic obedience training, often referred to as "alpha" programming. Another near-universal program is some sort of access program: basically, a way in for programmers to call alters to the front, modify & implant programs, etc. Other kinds of programs are stacked on top of this, relating to whatever the victim's "specialization" would be. For example, sex trafficking that utilized programming would result in a victim probably having some sort of transport program (often to fall asleep on command so they do not know the route or location), one or multiple of the many sexual related programs, an amnesia on command program, and typically, some sort of therapy & abreaction interference program. And that's just the bare bones.

Additionally, some victims may not have a singular specialization, possibly because they were some sort of experimental ground for new programs or new combinations of programs, their group was not very organized or changed focus mid-programming of the victim, or they were the child of higher-ups in the group and expected to perform more complex roles.

If by "technique", you mean different methods of implantation or organization, that is also somewhat par for the course. Some groups change goal or formation over time, others may on-board programmers with a different "style" (an organized crime syndicate utilizing a programmer with a military background, for example). I know that only some of our system is structured strictly & militaristically, because one of our abusers was in the military.

Also... Don't be afraid of being wrong. Sorting out what happened with RAMCOA is confusing on multiple levels—trauma & dissociation warps memories, abusers will lie and trick victims, what happened is often decade(s) old, etc. You are allowed to question, research, and, if you want to, join survivor's spaces. It will be a long journey, but you are not the first and, unfortunately, quite definitely not the last.

I hope your answers come quickly, painlessly, and clearly. - Aisling

If you need me I’ll be collecting bruises

“One of the great tragedies of all forms of abuse is that the abused person can become emotionally dependent on the perpetrator through a process called traumatic bonding. (…) This is a bitter psychological irony. Child abuse works in the same way; in fact, children can become more strongly attached to abusive parents than to nonabusive ones. (…) Almost no abuser is mean or frightening all the time. At least occasionally he is loving, gentle, and humorous and perhaps even capable of compassion and empathy. This intermittent, and usually unpredictable, kindness is critical to forming traumatic attachments. When a person has suffered harsh, painful treatment over an extended period of time, they naturally feel a flood of love and gratitude toward anyone who brings relief, like the surge of affection one might feel for the hand that offers a glass of water on a scorching day. But in situations of abuse, the rescuer and the tormentor are the very same person.”

— Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That?, 2002