Checking Out for Secondary Survivors is second to anger in how we attempt to deal with the sexual violence that has happened to our loved ones. This is part of our brain’s automatic responses to protect ourselves. In the Fight/Flight/Freeze reactions, checking out is a “Flight” reaction. Our brains, as a Secondary Survivor, are overloaded with emotions that are out of our control to process and we “Check out”.
How is that for a definition? The short of it is, this one is a BITCH! When my husband Jake first discovered that his loved ones had been violated, there was anger and rage! Very quickly this turned into “Checking out”. Any action that he could do as a result of anger and rage was going to land him in a very permanent situation of prison that was not going to help matters any. He was then left with the question…what could he do? He wasn’t able to protect his loved ones from the harm happening, so what could he do now? He had no idea!
He checked out! He couldn’t handle it. Everyone was telling him what “they would do”, or what “he should do”. None of that was helpful. He wanted answers badly, and at the same time, didn’t want to talk about it. He buried himself in alcohol and it worked beautifully! He numbed all that pain. He checked out as much and as often as he could. For the next 15 years, he was completely unavailable emotionally to everyone including himself.
Checking out causes all kinds of damage. Damage to yourself for not ever dealing with your emotions. Damage to loved ones because you are not there for them when they need you most.
Some of Jake’s Keys for healing were to go way back and change his past to shift his trajectory into the future. He had to get sober and used the 12 steps of AA to get back into alignment with his emotions. It takes some work to “Check In” but it has been the most life changing work he have ever done!
How about you? Have you Checked Out to protect yourself? Are you still Checked Out? What did you do to bring yourself back to a healing state?
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