It's about 99 percent truthful. Nowhere in that column do I tell lies. But I did omit certain things that would have been relevant to include. I wrote a scrubbed clean version of my story partially to make it more palatable, and partially because I didn't fully understand the psychological mechanisms behind what I was going through.
I was trying to protect my reputation, before I realized I had nothing to be ashamed of. I'm finally laying everything out on the table, because I know there are people in the world who need to hear this.
And any company that doesn't want to hire me because I openly discuss the side effects of sexual trauma is a company I don't want to work for anyway. I have nothing to apologize for, or to be ashamed of.
Hypersexuality is a common side effect of sexual trauma as is avoiding sex altogether. I didn't know this at the time I wrote that piece. During that period of my life, I wasn't just, "taking a guy home from the party because I wanted to.
My logic was: If I can sleep with random people, that means I'm fine. That means my trauma doesn't affect me. I didn't realize that this was a completely normal reaction to sexual trauma until I talked about it in therapy, and my counselor assured me that it was a common response.
I also recently read Come As You Are , by sex educator Emily Nagoski, who describes how trauma can press on your sexual accelerator:. Sometimes, too, survivors find themselves locked in a pattern of sexual behavior.
Their brains become compulsive about undoing the trauma, redoing it differently, or simply understanding it. Like biting on a cold sore or squeezing a pimple, the brain can't leave the trauma alone, even though you know you'd heal faster if you could. The result is that the survivor has multiple partners, often following a habitual pattern, without feeling perfectly in control of the decision to have those partners. I described it as always having my finger on the "yes" button.
I was "yes" happy. Acting out is what we do when we've hidden distress away, or pushed it into our unconscious, out of reach of our intellect.
The heart remembers, and moves us to act badly, very often against ourselves, and without knowing why. Once we gain insight, however, or understand how hurt we've been by some past experience, the mind can engage properly again. This then gives us both the will and the wherewithal to break with the bad behaviour, to stop abusing ourselves.
And that was what was supposed to happen to you. Both you and your counsellor worked hard and covered a lot of emotional ground. But then you got stuck. You acknowledged the rape, saw its connection to your self-abusive behaviour, and then went right on with the destructive sex, and the equally destructive alcohol abuse. Instead of using the knowledge and understanding to save yourself, you used it - and are still using it - as a defiant excuse for continuing.
Indeed, as you tell it, things are getting worse. You're drinking more, putting on weight, losing optimism and self-esteem, and starting to despise your job. My guess is that you didn't tap into your anger during counselling. You got to the rape, but not to the anger you feel about it. Every victim, as I seem to be saying a lot recently, is angry. You are very angry. And until you see that, you'll continue to beat yourself up.
Anger against an aggressor is legitimate, right and proper. But a victim feels so powerless that she almost invariably turns her anger against herself - and gets depressed, or self-abusive, with some inappropriate guilt thrown in, just to make her feel even worse.
The trick is to acknowledge the anger, and then use it as the fuel of your determination to rise above the rape, and succeed in your life. You also need to think about the fact that rape, because it is so obvious, can sometimes blind us to other problems in our lives.
Maybe you were a very unhappy young girl long before you were raped. Maybe your anger doesn't just stem from the rape, but also from emotional injustices which reach much further back.
In other words, perhaps the rape hastened a self-destructive pattern which was already there, rather than actually causing it. What do you think? Your first step is to stop drinking. There are always 1, good reasons to abuse alcohol. We all have them. None of them justifies us deliberately deadening our brains, our moral judgement, and our ability to take proper care of ourselves. Just stop it. It doesn't matter how bad you feel, how angry you feel, how heavy you've got, how lousy your job appears, how hopeless life seems - alcohol abuse just makes all of it worse.
Sure, it was lousy, undignified, immoral and decidedly beneath you to have sex with that man, particularly in what sounds like high-risk circumstances, but alcohol won't help you forget that, let alone regain your self-esteem. Victims' reluctance to involve law enforcement could have something to do with the lengthy, multi-step emotional ordeal they would face.
Unlike reporting a theft — which is typically a simple, straightforward process — reporting a rape can entail repeated visits to police departments to view lineups, provide descriptions of the assailant, and review specific details about the case immediately following the attack, a time when victims may still be in shock.
Victims may also endure a two- to four-hour invasive exam at a time when they are already vulnerable with their body. When the media covers sexual assault cases, the public often feels like they have license to weigh in, candidly discussing their opinions, which sometimes includes victim-blaming, without regard for how the victim in question might feel reading them — or, for that matter, the hundreds of thousands of victims who are forced to relive their trauma every time the media decides to report on a rape.
Society as a whole could help victims of rape by approaching the issue when it's in the news with more sensitivity. They could start seeing sex as an obligation, become resistant to touch, have trouble getting aroused, or even experience physical pain, among other things. Intercourse is also very daunting. Time and healthy sexual experiences will help rape survivors heal, but it's recommended they steer clear of people, things, and media that portray sex as aggressive; use positive and neutral language when speaking about sex; take an inventory of their sexual attitudes; talk about healthy sexuality with therapists, support groups, partners, and friends; and empower themselves by learning about their sexual rights and healthy sex, according to the University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre.
Symptoms of PTSD from sexual assault include nightmares, repeated flashbacks of the attack, increased overall negativity, irritability, and an avoidance of everything reminiscent of the rape — like thoughts, feelings, places, and situations, according to the National Center for PTSD. Another common symptom triggered by trauma is hyper-vigilance, or increased alertness. Victims may become fixated on what's going on around them to make sure they're safe, making it tough to focus on anything else, even everyday tasks like sleeping.
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