My story is mine, but I know it is not unique

Trigger/Content Warning: sexual assault/abuse, addiction, alcoholism, self-harm

The DEI SIG has put out a call for stories and I just want to begin with this sentiment: my story is mine, but I know it is not unique.

To begin: I am a 30-year-old, married, bisexual white woman that grew up relatively comfortable financially, in beautiful Southern California, attended private schools, never went without, but was not exempt from suffering. Alcoholism and addiction were/are rampant throughout my family, on both sides, as is the relational abuse and trauma that often goes along with it. I don’t need to go through the statistics of what addiction can do to families. But I can illustrate for you that I have lost 2 uncles to drunk driving accidents, I have a 34-year-old cousin that is HIV+ and has Hepatitis C from years of IV drug use that cannot stop using, I have multiple family members in jail or prison with possession or intent to sell charges, I also have many family members in recovery….you are psychology professionals. I know that you know. But I struggled so much as a super-feeler in a family of super-feelers that had been historically denied the opportunity to feel and my parents were unfortunately recreating their childhoods without really knowing it or understanding the pain they were inflicting on themselves, each other, and me.

I have always valued education, even from a very young age. My parents really made an effort to make sure I had every opportunity to excel - it’s where I thrived and felt like I mattered. I did well in school academically, but tended to struggle socially, as kids from addict homes often do. I began engaging in self-harm, using drugs and drinking, and putting myself in incredibly unsafe situations with people much older than me around age 14. Much of this I learned from television, my older cousin, and the internet. It seemed like I could relate so much to her (and not my parents) and if it was providing her some relief, perhaps it could to me too. Around that same age, a repressed memory from around age 7 surfaced that I had been sexually abused by a family member, something my parents had been made aware of but were painfully unaware of how to cope with it, so naturally, it got swept under the rug. My parents really did the best they could and to this day, they do. My mother has been in recovery since 2005 and they are no longer married. I am so grateful that they are my parents and for as much empathy and compassion as I have for my younger self, ACT has taught me the skills to hold space for empathy and compassion for their younger selves too. I know it probably seems like I’m rambling, and that’s because I am. But this is me telling my story: there are so many parts, I have to ramble. So many instances I could use to illustrate the suffering my tiny self endured. But I don’t want to put myself through that, nor do I want to put the reader through that.

I have desired to work with children since my early adulthood. My first job was at a Blockbuster Video right after I graduated high school in 2008. In 2009, I started working for my father’s girlfriend at a non-profit that offered free and low-cost music lessons to low-income kids in the area. I was an administrative assistant, but that wasn’t enough for me. I want to be with the kids. In 2010, my grandmother died of pancreatic cancer (she drank until the day of her death) and I quit my job (and cut all of my hair off) in an emotional panic. I worked retail for a while at a number of places and finally compiled enough of a resume to find a job working with low-income children again, this time in an after-school No Child Left Behind funded context. It was rough. These were just babies (2nd and 3rd grade) and daily I had questions like: “Ms. Katelyn, do you know what alcohol poisoning is?” “Ms. Katelyn, my dad has another family in Mexico. Why doesn’t he want to be here?” I felt so out of control and so unable to help, again, I left. It was too much for me. Finally, I landed in special education, working with children on the Autism Spectrum and I had finally felt like I found somewhere where I had the tools to help (thanks to ABA) and that I could not only help the kids, but help their families. I now had the tools that my parents didn’t have, and I could use those tools to help other parents unlearn not-so-helpful ways of parenting.

Many, many years ago (probably in my late-teens, early 20’s), my father bought me a copy of “Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life” and in a resentful bout of anger, I threw it away, without even opening it. I started working in ABA in 2013, when I was 23. I knew NOTHING about ACT, Steven Hayes, or even RFT. And my biggest gripe with ABA and ABA services was that I did not understand why we didn’t have the tools to help these kids, or these parents, emotionally. I was constantly met with sentiments like “it’s not our wheelhouse” and so on. Since adolescence, I have been familiar with CBT and DBT thanks to many trips in and out of in-patient and out-patient (thanks to trauma I have a number of diagnoses). But, discovering ACT was a life-changing experience for me. Not only in a professional context, but in an incredibly emotional context. Steven Hayes' presentation at ABAI in May of 2018 changed my entire perspective on myself. I wept with grief for my younger self. I felt compassion for my younger self that I had not ever in my life. And all it took was a quick guided meditation referring to my younger self! It changed the way I parent, the way I practice ABA, the way I teach parents, the way I practice self-care, my own personal approach in therapy, and since, I have not stopped trying to learn everything I can about it. I strive every day to teach those I interact with at work skills related to ACT. I model them frequently and strive to hone in on their importance. If I have a behavior tech that is particularly interested in learning more about behavior analysis conceptually, I send them Skinner and the Purple Book. If I have a behavior tech that is having the hardest time implementing an extinction procedure for attention maintained behaviors, we chat about taking breaks for mindfulness and do some deep breathing. If I have a parent that I can just sense is struggling with self-care but doesn’t really want to talk about it (or perhaps doesn’t even know how), I recommend we work through Evelyn Gould and Lisa Coyne’s parent manual. I have a copy of Escaping the Emotional Rollercoaster by Dr. Zurita Ona on my desk. I have recommended it to supervisees.

I intended to write this piece about sexual assault and abuse because much of my life has been plagued by it. As I mentioned, as a child I was molested by a family member, but also by a babysitter’s teenage son, a peer, and as a teen, as you can assume by the situations I put myself in, I was so unsafe so frequently. In 2013, I was sexually assaulted at a party and went through a trial. Again in 2016, I was violently sexually assaulted during a break in at my home and also went through a trial. Two weeks ago, I settled a lawsuit against the apartment complex I lived in as they failed to do a background check (had they’ve done so, they would’ve discovered this person was wanted abroad for sex assaults, as well). In other words, sex assault and abuse has been prominent in my life. I began with “this is my story, but I know it is not unique” because 1 in 6 women in the United States is sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Every 73 seconds an American is a victim of sexual violence. 9 out of 10 survivors are women. My story is not unique, but ACT has taught me that I am so much more than the story that I tell myself. I am valued because of who I am, not the things that have happened to me. I am a compilation of all of my experiences, but also my perspective, my talents, and my values.

Submitted by Katelyn E. Burdette, M.Ed., BCBA

Katelyn E. Kendrick is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and is currently the Clinical Supervisor of two Early-Intensive Behavioral Intervention clinics in the north Denver-Metro area. She has worked in education since 2009, and specifically, behavior analysis since 2013. In 2015, she received a BA in History, with a concentration in United States history. She subsequently received her master’s degree in Education, with a concentration in Behavior Analysis, from the University of Cincinnati in 2017. Currently, she is planning to continue pursuing a PhD in Applied Behavior Analysis. For over 10 years, she has worked with a variety of diverse families, providing home, clinic, and community-based intervention services for individuals on the autism spectrum and a wide variety of other diagnoses. She frequently provides ACT-based parent training and has presented professionally on topics such as Decolonization and the ACT Framework, Behavior Analysis and ACT, and cultural competence in Behavior Analysis. Outside of behavior analysis, ACT, and RFT, Katelyn enjoys musical theatre, social justice, genealogy, talk radio, cooking, and politics.