From Child Sex Slavery to Victory - My Healing Journey | Anneke Lucas | TEDxKlagenfurt

Oh [Music] I'm from Belgium but in my late teens I escaped from there and I ran off to France then I went west went to England first then I went to New York then I escaped further to the west coast of the United States landed in Los Angeles and after a few years there I was getting antsy and I wanted to escape again and I realized if I was going to go any farther west I was going to end up in the Far East so the journey outward the escape was over and I realized I have to go in I have to face myself so I began a journey that lasted thirty years that was an absolutely epic journey facing dark death around every corner confronted with large crevasses that I had to jump into and know that something greater then my little ego was there to catch me at times I felt the pain of all the world but after 30 years I came out victorious I was able to just be me I lucky to have a sense of what that might mean me as a baby I was raised by a psychopathic mother and you know we're all born the same we're completely cute innocent sweet and we need that reflection of ourselves as little human beings to live and I was not receiving that from my mother but there was a caretaker who did give me that and I remember very strongly she wrapped me against her body with makeshift wraps it was before we all held our babies in front of us taking care of the other babies but holding me and feeling what it felt like that just be me now she was there in the first three years my mother then sold me when I was six to a group of psychopaths they were very well organized Psychopaths they were not just in Belgium there were men from all over the world and I found out much later that many of these men had very visible places on the world stage they were world leaders politicians leaders of countries and then there were those who controlled the world leaders together in this club and they performed there the darkest things imaginable and I experienced and witnessed this from the age of six to eleven when I was rescued from someone from the inside today I work in jails and prisons in New York where I now live and I have an organization called liberation prison yoga I can relate to everyone because incarcerated people tend to be traumatized just where they are and they often also have a lot of trauma in their past often of the same degree of violence that I survived without the privilege that I had to spend 30 years focusing just on healing and then I also relate to people who come to train with me to go into the prisons with me and when I started to share my story in 2013 when I came to the end of that 30-year period I was interviewed and then I started to speak however the day is the first time I'm back in Europe speaking about this what we create with liberation Prison Yoga is an example of what the world could be like like perhaps here today where all of us really want to change the world for the better now we are in the Atomic Age we've already moved on into spiritual practices and most of us know that we are not just this finite body that we have these inner journeys and those are very real but somehow the world seems to be more chaotic and darker than ever so who's going to win the light or the dark is consciousness so we need awareness awareness of the reality of the darkness that this world is ruled by Psychopaths and I think generally we don't really know what psychopaths are and we can't really recognize them you know one way to tell someone who seems too good to be true whether it's in your love relationships or whether it's in politics it's someone who plays at being human and makes it seem so simple and usually appears like a better version of ourselves where we with all these messy feelings feel we want to emulate them and be more like that whether it's celebrities or whomever we put at the top of this top-down model this top-down model is a trauma based model and the top are the Psychopaths the sickest people and at the bottom are the vulnerable populations the prisoners the poor and then in the middle are most of us who are absolutely traumatized by this system and at the same time maybe seek to do good in the world so the best way to find the monster is to go within about Psychopaths is I was talking about the little baby before well the psychopath is a person who didn't get to experience that in a because their caregivers were already projecting so there was no reflection of themselves as that innocent cute little baby which as it were banned them from themselves because it is feeling that makes us human it is feeling that leads to consciousness and it is my journey through feeling that has made me increasingly aware of myself and as a result and reflection aware of what's outside as well and I don't think any of us truly escape because the model in which we live itself makes it really impossible for parents to be unconditionally present for their children and the younger the child the more everything is life and death so if you're told by the doctor you need to let your baby cry it out and not to listen when it sounds torturous well it sounds torturous because the baby feels torture and it is being traumatized in that moment so on our journey in yes yoga and meditation are great practices to become mindful to get a different perspective of ourselves very important but we can't do that and then bypass the feeling part we're all a little bit brainwashed into this thinking that the rational thinking is more important than feeling I say it's probably equally important we want to balance them out but there's not really a lot known about someone's trauma journey we don't really generally recognize behaviors and can guess that this started with a particular trauma that can be read and someone's behavior we can read people's minds more easily because we ourselves have gone through trauma after trauma so trauma is fear of death fear of losing the physical body or the body of a loved one so in that moment of fear of death all brain activity recedes to the survival brain which is right around the brainstem all other brain activity stops what's around the brainstem well I spent a lot of time in that state we're not human in that state and Psychopaths without feeling are in that state all the time and then they have a cortex over it to hide it and so I've never seen an abuser that I didn't know was himself abused as a child because I in my real job which was a tuning with the abuser and giving them what they needed what they truly needed I got this image of the little boy who was vulnerable made themselves vulnerable to me the child sex slave so that that vulnerability was completely controlled and if I hadn't given them what they truly needed if I'd followed my impulse and perhaps laughed or at them or whatever they were afraid of then I would have been killed and there would be no witness to that vulnerability that sense of humiliation a repeat of the abuse the feelings around the abuse that are all repressed so for someone who has zero healing at all the best way to get it out of the system because it is there and it needs to get out is to go in that same mode fight flight freeze collapse and in that barbaric primordial state to go into the fight mode and get that temporary release it's where in trauma and we can fight we can kill the predator or we can run then all we have to do is take a few breaths and the trauma would be out of our body-mind system but as a child we go into freeze and everything is frozen now these men some the most evil in the world I'm pretty sure we're like parents to me and there were some who gave me some reflections that I need it for my own emotional development and so I loved them so I try to understand because I know that no one is truly a monster but of course Psychopaths behave like monsters I like to think of them as dinosaurs in business suits they are antiquated because we are already in an age where we move away from matter as the final reality and if you have no access to feeling you are relegated to the world of matter to yourself the body as a final person who you are and so they're very heavily into rejuvenation and the ways that they do that I will spare you but it's very barbaric so in my work today I get a chance to do the same as I was made to do as a child having moved through this vast regions regions and regions of the emotional world to come back to myself free from guilt and free to just whatever the universe sends my way now if we look at society for a moment and we think that if we want to climb the ladder of societal ladder it tells you not to feel trauma and the higher you go the more you will be asked to give up your principles and usually there's some sex scandal along the way up whether it's in the corporate world or it's in the yoga world that needs to be kept under wraps and if you don't want to be quiet about it you get kicked out and you don't get to be part of the club and at the very top of course are the people who are the most sick with trauma so when a psychopath kills a baby they are reliving a trauma story of when they were a little baby and they felt deadened so they don't know it but they're repeating their trauma story the great thing about the journey inward now it was completely invisible I had a few safe people but the great thing about it is that we don't have to travel to do it you can do it right here and now it's difficult to hear about the reality of the darkness of the world because it requires for us to go through some feelings perhaps that are traumatic the shock and disbelief the anger the landing of the reality and the pain that comes with that and perhaps the grief the disgust it's not easy but I've been amazed and how receptive audiences are and I can tell you that it's been a challenge to stand here back in Europe today and feel heard and allowing myself to feel the healing so have a pleasant journey and may we all be victorious [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 368,255

Rating: 4.9219646 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Austria, Global Issues, Activism, Behavior, Big problems, Childhood, Children, Consciousness, Crime, Emotions, Empathy, Family, Fear, Global issues, Government, Human Rights, Life, Love, Mental health, Morality, Pain, Parenting, Politics, Psychology, Recovery, Relationships, Self-help, Senses, Sex, Sexual Assault, Slavery, Trafficking, Tragedy, Truth, Violence, Women, Youth

Id: tLp5LM18wIU

Length: 18min 14sec (1094 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 26 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/williamshakemyspeare]

Addicts and sex workers are two massively different groups of people, with some overlap. I’m not accepting or rejecting the claim, just pointing out how disingenuous it is to speak of both together in this way.

[u/FlopScratch]

I won't dehumanise them but at the same time they need to recognise they have a problem. Sex work for example. People are trying to justify it being a good thing. Its a terrible thing to have to sell your body for money. Addiction is a disease. They shouldn't be sent to prison unless they're selling.