Beth,
You may not know it, but your posts have been phenomenal.Your point of view has given me a lot to thin about. I think that you are underestimating yourself.
You sound very researched on this topic. I am a firm believer that you can educate yourself on anything that you want to. Your voice would be a very powerful voice.
Butterfly
Discussion Topic
On being a wierdo-oddity and finding one's voice
Posted on 11/10/09, 09:43 am
I often feel like a wierdo-oddity when it comes to rape: stranger rape is the boogie man in the closet, the rape we never really talk about.
I was raped in September, 1995, while dropping off papers at one of my client's offices. A stranger approached my car. I thought he was in need of help, but something felt odd. I might have rolled down the window to ask him what he needed, but the handle had broken off and I couldn't find it in the dark. I decided to open the door a crack thinking I could pull it closed if I felt danger. But as soon as I did, he yanked the door open....and thus began the nastiest 30 or so minutes of my life.
Just recently I did a survey of the top 100 Google hits on the key-word “stranger rape”. Only about 10% actually did anything more than define the term and some did less than that. The real focus of those articles was on non-stranger rape. Of the 10% on stranger rape, only 4 were from the victim's perspective. Two were links to a masters thesis taking a family systems view to post-stranger-rape spousal relationships. One was a MySpace page created and abandonned by someone who had been stranger raped and couldn't find what they needed on the web. And one was post on a youth-help forum by a young person who was attacked by a stranger and thought that might make them weird because they'd heard most attacks are by non-strangers.
I also think my rape experience was unusual in that I was 30 at the time.
The recovery issues in the rape literature (both popular and academic) tend to focus on risky behavior, sexual self-understanding, attribution, boundary and relationship issues. These however were never a significant issue for me vis a vis the rape, or rather, when they were issues, pain came from the other side: from having what one already knew was sacred violated.
I knew from the very first moment that what was happening was dreadfully, cosmically and karmicly wrong. The man was a stranger and had no right to be near my body, let alone inside it. The men I had chosen to date or have friendships with had always been respectful of my body and my needs. I was never afraid to talk about the rape, even to male friends. After the rape my male friends helped me vicariously feel anger I was uncomfortable expressing. There is a certain satisfaction in knowing your male friends consider a guy who would rape a dishonor to their own gender and would gladly lynch the rapist.
I also knew my body well enough to be able to fake certain things and that allowed me a small measure of control in an intolerable situation. The pain I felt in relation to my sexuality mostly came because I had spent most of my life keeping my emotions, spirit, and body in sync. This was a matter of both psychological and religious importance to me. To survive the rape I had to (temporarily) disassociate things that I strongly believed should *always* go together. I felt a lot of anger about that.
I felt a lot of pain (survivor guilt?) because the rape made the flip side so easily visible to me: what if I didn't have a solid understanding (or as much as one can have at 30) of my sexuality, spirituality, or boundaries? Most victims of rape are so much younger than I was at the time. I remember sitting in the special waiting room for SA victims at the hospital. On the wall were all sorts of decorations aimed at small children. What kind of mind-f--- does rape do to a little girl who doesn't yet know what her body is for? This was also an issue for me in the rape survivor's group I was part of right after the rape, because the pain of broken relationships wasn't just speculation when I was hearing the story of a 16 year old raped by her cousin, a 19 year old raped by her date, and a 23 year old church worker who was acquaintence raped.
When I read stories of abused children or even teens who have been raped, I sometimes feel like I have no right to even claim victimhood. As painful as the rape was, I had so much going for me, so many avenues of support and never felt the need to hide, at least not at first. The police were on my side, my synagogue was on my side, my neighbors were on my side. My friends went out of their way. So many things that were supposed to go wrong didn't, but that doesn't mean it has been easy.
My core recovery issues and stuck points have centered on power and powerlessness, and the sometimes tension between having power and having support (some people wrongly think strong people don't need help). This no doubt has to do with my feeling that my life was at risk. But recently, it has hit home to me that these were also the core life stage issues at the time I was raped. I was making the transition into the generative stage of life, where our power to impact and change the world through work and nuture becomes the focus of our identity. I was single but wanting to get married and high powered enough to be earning more than most men I dated (all of whom were also professionals). I had been working with a therapist at the time because it was clear that professional progress meant taking on more authority, but I was afraid of the misuse of power based on the emotionally abusive way power was sometimes used in my family. But at the time of the rape these issues were annoyances, not crises.
The other issue I've struggled with a great deal is work. On the day of the rape my client never got his papers and if I hadn't been so dedicated to my client's needs I might never have been there in the first place. Work provides the “what if...” and is the locus of most of my avoidance and shame issues. At the moment I feel like I've failed in my career. At the time of my rape I ran a consulting practice in strategic information management helping companies integrate organizational awareness, market awareness and technology. In the immediate six months after the rape I had one of my financially most successful periods ever. But financially it has been down hill from there. For the first few years the very idea of working for money scared the hell out of me – I would only do pro-bono work. The last few years I've worked on start-up projects, bringing them to the edge of success (first clients, fund raising) and then losing interest or neglecting to collect bills and cash checks. This has been so much an issue that I would summarize recovery as “earning a living without destroying my soul”.
This has made me think a lot about the relationship between rape and life stage. Is it any accident that the well known issues of rape (sexuality, betrayal, boundaries, figuring out just who is responsible for what in the world) just happen to be core issues during the age when women are most at risk for being raped (16-24) ? It would be understandable for these to be issues in date rape, but based on some of the survivor stories I've managed to find on the web, these issues seem to be a source of immense pain for teen and early 20-something survivors even when they are stranger raped.
Whatever else rape does, I think rape takes one's ordinary life cycle issues and turns them into loaded questions. It makes me wonder whether or not we really need to be paying more attention to the needs of older victims and younger victims and avoid the assumption that what holds for a 15-25 year old holds for someone younger or older. For example, how does a teen who is striving for independence feel when a date rape makes her more dependent on her parents and other adults rather than less? What insight can a 65 or 75 year old woman give us when she looks at her rape experience from the wisdom of her years? As we age we reflect back on life – how would an experience of elder rape impact that process? How do we counsel our elders while still granting them the respect and dignity that is their due?
I feel like I'd like to do something, but I'm not sure what. Feeling like a weirdo-oddity just isn't a great feeling and it would be nice to look back and say that I made the path a little easier for the next person down the road.
Reseach? Teach? Probably means going back to school: I only have a BA in Pysch and an MSc in Management. I've spent many, many hours studying, researching, as well as two years learning Jewish texts in an egalitarian Yeshiva sponsored by the Conservative movement of Judaism, and another year studying Jewish liturgy and cantorial music but none of this work was degree granting.
Write? Advocate? If I felt this way shortly after the rape, but like so many other things, I put in the work and stopped before I had a chance to go out in the world and make something of the effort I had put in. It has been just over 14 years since the rape, I feel as if I lost out on an opportunity, to speak out years ago. I'm also realizing that my wanting to speak out came from something much deeper than circumstance or the need to heal my own pain.
Advocating is hard (for me) without research to back it up. Most of the things I'm interested in advocating about are based on my own experience as a survivor. The research just isn't there. The survivor stories aren't there much either when it comes to rape uncomplicated by a history of childhood sexual abuse.
Some would say “Just tell your story. Start there”. But this doesn't seem enough. Or is it? We don't hear enough of the voice of the survivor, particularly the survivor who has had time to process and put their experience in a larger social and theological context. And who would publish it? Who would want to hear it? I yearn for the day when we have a literature on rape that parallels what we now have for the Holocaust, but is that possible?
Perhaps I don't have enough faith in the personal being universal; perhaps I even lack faith in myself (too little healthy narcissism?)? Perhaps that Princeton degree and being the daughter of two generations of university professors makes me think way too much of objectivity? Still, there is a thin line between believing that one's personal experience gives one something universal to share and narcisistically reducing the whole world to one's little corner of experience.
I don't want to impose myself on others and yet I don't want to be silent, especially about things that could give life and heal. I feel like I need to find my voice, but I don't know how.
Beth
I was raped in September, 1995, while dropping off papers at one of my client's offices. A stranger approached my car. I thought he was in need of help, but something felt odd. I might have rolled down the window to ask him what he needed, but the handle had broken off and I couldn't find it in the dark. I decided to open the door a crack thinking I could pull it closed if I felt danger. But as soon as I did, he yanked the door open....and thus began the nastiest 30 or so minutes of my life.
Just recently I did a survey of the top 100 Google hits on the key-word “stranger rape”. Only about 10% actually did anything more than define the term and some did less than that. The real focus of those articles was on non-stranger rape. Of the 10% on stranger rape, only 4 were from the victim's perspective. Two were links to a masters thesis taking a family systems view to post-stranger-rape spousal relationships. One was a MySpace page created and abandonned by someone who had been stranger raped and couldn't find what they needed on the web. And one was post on a youth-help forum by a young person who was attacked by a stranger and thought that might make them weird because they'd heard most attacks are by non-strangers.
I also think my rape experience was unusual in that I was 30 at the time.
The recovery issues in the rape literature (both popular and academic) tend to focus on risky behavior, sexual self-understanding, attribution, boundary and relationship issues. These however were never a significant issue for me vis a vis the rape, or rather, when they were issues, pain came from the other side: from having what one already knew was sacred violated.
I knew from the very first moment that what was happening was dreadfully, cosmically and karmicly wrong. The man was a stranger and had no right to be near my body, let alone inside it. The men I had chosen to date or have friendships with had always been respectful of my body and my needs. I was never afraid to talk about the rape, even to male friends. After the rape my male friends helped me vicariously feel anger I was uncomfortable expressing. There is a certain satisfaction in knowing your male friends consider a guy who would rape a dishonor to their own gender and would gladly lynch the rapist.
I also knew my body well enough to be able to fake certain things and that allowed me a small measure of control in an intolerable situation. The pain I felt in relation to my sexuality mostly came because I had spent most of my life keeping my emotions, spirit, and body in sync. This was a matter of both psychological and religious importance to me. To survive the rape I had to (temporarily) disassociate things that I strongly believed should *always* go together. I felt a lot of anger about that.
I felt a lot of pain (survivor guilt?) because the rape made the flip side so easily visible to me: what if I didn't have a solid understanding (or as much as one can have at 30) of my sexuality, spirituality, or boundaries? Most victims of rape are so much younger than I was at the time. I remember sitting in the special waiting room for SA victims at the hospital. On the wall were all sorts of decorations aimed at small children. What kind of mind-f--- does rape do to a little girl who doesn't yet know what her body is for? This was also an issue for me in the rape survivor's group I was part of right after the rape, because the pain of broken relationships wasn't just speculation when I was hearing the story of a 16 year old raped by her cousin, a 19 year old raped by her date, and a 23 year old church worker who was acquaintence raped.
When I read stories of abused children or even teens who have been raped, I sometimes feel like I have no right to even claim victimhood. As painful as the rape was, I had so much going for me, so many avenues of support and never felt the need to hide, at least not at first. The police were on my side, my synagogue was on my side, my neighbors were on my side. My friends went out of their way. So many things that were supposed to go wrong didn't, but that doesn't mean it has been easy.
My core recovery issues and stuck points have centered on power and powerlessness, and the sometimes tension between having power and having support (some people wrongly think strong people don't need help). This no doubt has to do with my feeling that my life was at risk. But recently, it has hit home to me that these were also the core life stage issues at the time I was raped. I was making the transition into the generative stage of life, where our power to impact and change the world through work and nuture becomes the focus of our identity. I was single but wanting to get married and high powered enough to be earning more than most men I dated (all of whom were also professionals). I had been working with a therapist at the time because it was clear that professional progress meant taking on more authority, but I was afraid of the misuse of power based on the emotionally abusive way power was sometimes used in my family. But at the time of the rape these issues were annoyances, not crises.
The other issue I've struggled with a great deal is work. On the day of the rape my client never got his papers and if I hadn't been so dedicated to my client's needs I might never have been there in the first place. Work provides the “what if...” and is the locus of most of my avoidance and shame issues. At the moment I feel like I've failed in my career. At the time of my rape I ran a consulting practice in strategic information management helping companies integrate organizational awareness, market awareness and technology. In the immediate six months after the rape I had one of my financially most successful periods ever. But financially it has been down hill from there. For the first few years the very idea of working for money scared the hell out of me – I would only do pro-bono work. The last few years I've worked on start-up projects, bringing them to the edge of success (first clients, fund raising) and then losing interest or neglecting to collect bills and cash checks. This has been so much an issue that I would summarize recovery as “earning a living without destroying my soul”.
This has made me think a lot about the relationship between rape and life stage. Is it any accident that the well known issues of rape (sexuality, betrayal, boundaries, figuring out just who is responsible for what in the world) just happen to be core issues during the age when women are most at risk for being raped (16-24) ? It would be understandable for these to be issues in date rape, but based on some of the survivor stories I've managed to find on the web, these issues seem to be a source of immense pain for teen and early 20-something survivors even when they are stranger raped.
Whatever else rape does, I think rape takes one's ordinary life cycle issues and turns them into loaded questions. It makes me wonder whether or not we really need to be paying more attention to the needs of older victims and younger victims and avoid the assumption that what holds for a 15-25 year old holds for someone younger or older. For example, how does a teen who is striving for independence feel when a date rape makes her more dependent on her parents and other adults rather than less? What insight can a 65 or 75 year old woman give us when she looks at her rape experience from the wisdom of her years? As we age we reflect back on life – how would an experience of elder rape impact that process? How do we counsel our elders while still granting them the respect and dignity that is their due?
I feel like I'd like to do something, but I'm not sure what. Feeling like a weirdo-oddity just isn't a great feeling and it would be nice to look back and say that I made the path a little easier for the next person down the road.
Reseach? Teach? Probably means going back to school: I only have a BA in Pysch and an MSc in Management. I've spent many, many hours studying, researching, as well as two years learning Jewish texts in an egalitarian Yeshiva sponsored by the Conservative movement of Judaism, and another year studying Jewish liturgy and cantorial music but none of this work was degree granting.
Write? Advocate? If I felt this way shortly after the rape, but like so many other things, I put in the work and stopped before I had a chance to go out in the world and make something of the effort I had put in. It has been just over 14 years since the rape, I feel as if I lost out on an opportunity, to speak out years ago. I'm also realizing that my wanting to speak out came from something much deeper than circumstance or the need to heal my own pain.
Advocating is hard (for me) without research to back it up. Most of the things I'm interested in advocating about are based on my own experience as a survivor. The research just isn't there. The survivor stories aren't there much either when it comes to rape uncomplicated by a history of childhood sexual abuse.
Some would say “Just tell your story. Start there”. But this doesn't seem enough. Or is it? We don't hear enough of the voice of the survivor, particularly the survivor who has had time to process and put their experience in a larger social and theological context. And who would publish it? Who would want to hear it? I yearn for the day when we have a literature on rape that parallels what we now have for the Holocaust, but is that possible?
Perhaps I don't have enough faith in the personal being universal; perhaps I even lack faith in myself (too little healthy narcissism?)? Perhaps that Princeton degree and being the daughter of two generations of university professors makes me think way too much of objectivity? Still, there is a thin line between believing that one's personal experience gives one something universal to share and narcisistically reducing the whole world to one's little corner of experience.
I don't want to impose myself on others and yet I don't want to be silent, especially about things that could give life and heal. I feel like I need to find my voice, but I don't know how.
Beth
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Reply #1 11/10/09 10:48am
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Reply #2 11/10/09 11:25am
Hi Beth,
I'm just gonna respond to two things.
I believe it's possible to have the whole bookshelf of literature one day!
One of the pivitol points in my life was after much work I shed the pain. I was in my apartment and had sort of finished some trance work and took a bath and the pain was GONE! It was then I realize how funny it is when we feel fine it's like everyone is fine but when we feel pain on the level I felt pain you know every life is sacred and soooo important. I got up and the first thought I did after a moment of jubilation was to realize there was someone somewhere still in pain. The next day I ended up logging into a internet recovery board and spent 3 years really helping and also getting some help. A woman and I came very close to writing a book....I do believe it would have been beneficial. However I thought well I can write about being out of pain but not about THRIVING.
The life stages aspect is sooooo important. A long time ago I became aware of that part. I was 17, on a date when raped. I also had the value of previous male relationships who were about love respect good things. That became a beacon to me in later years. When I realize that something seemed to mess up for me a crucial points of decisions and life development later. How do I articulate this now at 45? At some point I felt how I was suppose to be developing at 17 just beginning to send myself out to do what I should do in life. And how it was all scwered. I did not come to this realization about the time of life cycle truama til maybe in my late twenties. Because something happened to me again right out of college. I was on the cusp of either lets say flying or plummeting .... I felt it strongly ... the rape unfortunately was untouched because I did not have the support to enjoy when I had reached for it in family and then I didn't even try friends. So again I felt my life cycle moment of truth take a hit.
I believe if there had been a book at the time I was starting to grapple with this maybe just maybe there would have been some gem of insight. Books about rape offer that ... after silence was critical in my healing. Oh my gosh we are so much more powerful if we are able to follow this through.
It's also funny though because I sometimes get tripped up as you wrote about the idea to offer help to delve in and then thinking I am just belaboring this one negative experience. However maybe that is the final effect of the rape or the ego trying to keep the it's hold talks us into not using our experience to help reduce it's negative effects on others?! However I also believe you are called when able and ready.
as I reread your paragraph on the rape and your career I feel it so linked. And I do get angry at how they effect the confidence and natural progression...you certainly deserve to be rewarded for the work you do and I trust that it goes to a very conscientious person. I think you are also saying that you feel drawn to a new kind of work as well. Glad you are exploring these connections hope you gain firm footing on the issues. -
Reply #3 11/10/09 12:14pm
I really like what you're getting at here. And I agree that maybe you deserve more healthy narcissism. You have one strength in particular that really leaps off the page/screen: the ability to meta-analyze. You are very good at thinking about how you think, and curious about why you feel certain feelings. That curiosity and self-awareness is not at all the same thing as self-absorption; being a curious person is an enormous asset. I can't count the times I saw victims flounder and tread water because they lacked curiosity about their own psychology; they could describe a feeling or recite a belief, and then stop there. I want to encourage you to continue this strength of yours. For example, recognizing that you became angry because dissociation forced you to separate the mind, spirit, emotions, and body that you had always revered as a unified whole person is a marvelous insight. Many people can't put into words why dissociation is so upsetting, even while using it as a coping technique!
It reminds me of a lyric by the songwriter Aimee Mann:
Say you were split, you were split in fragments
and none of the pieces would talk to you...
Wouldn't you want to be who you had been?
well, baby I want that, too...
I also like that you are incorporating spirituality into your recovery, yet you are specifically seeking a form and source of spirituality that promotes your empowerment and insight. The fact that you seek certain qualities in your spiritual resources is a strong suggestion that you have high conditions placed on your life, and won't accept an influence that expects you to remain subordinate or passive. Frankly, I think you are piecing together the kind of spirituality I advocate: one that emancipates and uplifts, one that requires acts of justice, one that reconnects the survivor with all consecrated life rather than suggesting solitary inward changes as your answer.
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Reply #4 11/11/09 2:52pm
Butterfly9: thanks for the encouragement
CatRoot: we need each other I think. It is hard to do anything that is really new without at least a few people to believe that it is worth the effort and the risk.
Matt: It never occurred to me to connect the mind-body separation during the rape to the experience of clinical dissociation or DID. That's an interesting insight as well.
It seems that my experience has given me a taste of many experiences I would have never even had a glimmer of understanding. But I am a bit leary of drawing the comparison too far. Aside for popular autobiographies (Sybil, Three faces of Eve) I don't have much experience with DID. However, several years ago I had an acquaintence who was discovering DID during the period I knew her. One of her other selves had apparently rearranged the furniture in the house and this had triggered a huge fight with her husband. The sense I got listening to her was that dissociation upset her in three ways: (a) the sense of being and not-being – she wasn't fully “there” if there were pieces of her self that she had no knowledge of or control over (b) being out of control: she couldn't take responsibility or even explain the decisions of a self that wasn't even on speaking terms with her yet (c) the practical concern that someone who was an important source of support might abandon her just when she needed him most.
The biggest difference I see was that the disassociation I felt during the rape was a breaking of connection, but not “thereness”. There was no fogging out or escaping to some safe mental place. The separation I felt was comparable to a piece of water damaged plywood where thelayers are still fully present but separated.
One of the very hard parts of the rape for me to discuss is just how really “there” I was. At a certain point during the rape it became clear that I might not get out of the situation alive even if I did *everything* the rapist asked. Around that point I began to feel an immense clarity of mind, inner stillness, and mindfulness.
[Trigger warning – here to end]
While writing the above I had an ah-ha moment. There is a long list of things that were less than helpful in my one-on-one counselling experience at the rape crisis center. One of the ones on the top of the list was the time I wanted to discuss what it meant to have someone treat my life as disposable. When I mentioned this the counsellor's response was “you are giving him too much power”. Ok, I know she was trying to reframe it, in hopes of empowering me.
However, reframing in a way that is not true to life does not work. It isn't authentic. We have to get our power from truth. Here is the ah-ha. The only “successful” part of my rape defense was the part that happened after I accepted my life was at risk, not before.
At the start of the attack, I yelled “Fire!”, “Fire!”. I have a very resonant voice, but no one came.
I fought. That ended with me being strangled to the point of unconsciousness. I surrendered. Surrendering ended with me being strangled to the point of unconsciousness again (sort of: I was beginning to get smart and faked stopping breathing and passing out). Faking unconsciousness resulted in me being tossed into the back of my car like a sack of potatoes upside down with my head jammed in the foot well between my briefcase and an empty 2 liter cola bottle.
It was at that point I finally understood that the guy I was dealing with might kill me even if I did everything he asked.
I realized my car keys were visible in my hand and my hand was dangling in the air. I didn't want to give away the fact that I was conscious so I let gravity make my arm fall into the footwell and then when my hand was out of view, pushed the keys under the front passenger seat. I had no intention of ending up in a garbage bag on the side of some highway. I became hyper aware.
Then as events began to escalate – one penetration, two penetrations, three penetrations, I decided to speak up. I composed my words: “What would your mother think about this?”
He stopped. He got angry. He continued. He stopped. He argued. His mother didn't matter. His mother wouldn't care. His mother abused him. His mother was dead. I identified with him – we had both lost mothers. I empathized with him to calm him down. He argued. He turned me over. He looked at my face. He tried to convince himself that what was happening was consensual and he was giving me pleasure. I said no. There can be no pleasure without choice.
He continued trying, assaulting, but now he wanted only touch. I pointed out he had a choice – once, twice, three times. He had free will. He didn't have to do this. This was wrong but he could make another choice. Back and forth, making me touch him, me in unwanted places. Words. And then when it looked like I could stand no more I began the prayer quietly in my heart where no one but God could hear. The prayer that Jews say before death. Shma O Isreal ... Hear O Israel Your God is One.
And suddenly he stopped. He lost his errection. He gathered his things. He left the car. “My mother would have liked it” he said. But it didn't sound like he believed it, though he wished I would. It really didn't.
The point is that once I had accepted that my life was at risk I began fighting with the only tools that could have worked – psychological, spiritual, moral. I can't prove it, but there is at least a chance that a rape was meant to be a sadistic nightmare turned into a “gentleman rape” and then a molestation and then stopped altogether.
There is more than one way to fight. I lost with my muscles, but won with my mind, my words, my empathy, and my spirit. And maybe an angel or two creeping in through the backdoor of my soul.
When the detective heard this story, she was impressed. When the rape hotline counsellor heard this story she was impressed. When I asked a good friend who used to run the Washington DC rape crisis counsellor center why everyone was saying that they were impressed she said, “It was textbook”. The number of strategies I used, the way I responded to new information.
None of this. None of this made me feel better. In fact it made me feel worse. If not even a textbook defense could prevent this then how can I count on anything? I had tried my best. I really had.
Along with the rape counsellor who tried to downplay the seriousness of the threat to my life, I think some part of me also wanted to down play it. Instead of focusing on the truth, I've focused on ways to prove the truth: the bruises on my neck inside and out, the feedback I've gotten over the years that I'm particularly good at understanding people. Of course none of it was conclusive. Such things are subjective and open to multiple interpretations. A bruise can't tell you the motive behind it. Perceptions of intent are always judgment calls.
The real reason I believe my life was at risk was that once I accepted it and began to take action the tide turned. And only then. Forgetting to fear I would be killed gave the rapist power. Knowing, took it away. -
Reply #5 11/11/09 6:43pm
Very briefly (I'll write a more thoughtful response later), two things:
Don't get spooked by the word "dissociation" and the term "dissociative identity disorder." They don't mean the same thing, as if you're "Sybil-like" because you dissociate and she had DID. Dissociation in trauma is simply the "numbing-out" of the active mind as a coping skill, and we ALL do it to some degree; daydreaming is a mild form. Sitting in a trance after getting tragic news is a form. DID, by contrast, is a chronically-fragmented personality disorder that still baffles psychiatrists and psychologists, and is the legendary "multiple personality" disorder like Sybil.
Second, if you are writing in MS Word and pasting into your posts, you'll keep getting those weird characters. To avoid this, change the format from "smart quotes" to "straight quotes."
To turn this feature on or off:
1. On the Tools menu, click AutoCorrect Options, and then click the AutoFormat As You Type tab.
2. Under Replace as you type, select or clear the "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes" check box.
DS also has trouble with dashes - like these - when you write them in Word and then paste in. You'd think DS would have fixed this by now, but noooo...
I want to write more to your post later because it's REALLY profound stuff! -
Reply #6 11/11/09 6:47pm
Okay that's it I am going to start using word to write stuff...I just hit some button and poof again.
The thing I was gonna say right before that was about your not feeling better for your strategies... remember this were strategies you were using to reduce the violence and quite possible to keep your life. And they worked for that ... I'm sorry there were no strategies to use to prevent any of it at all ... sometimes we don't get that chance.
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Reply #7 11/11/09 9:22pm
"We have to get our power from strength...." That therapist rying to re-frame the situation to give YOu the power...I think that must be a technique(sorry Matt), because the same was approached with me today. I shared my cancer...and the melt down with the bear in the toy department...and then looked back at how much of my life is consumed by this....and I cried.
He tried to tell me to not get into the "victim mind-set"....and you know what? I looked directly in his eyes from my teary ones, and I said, "No. You have to let me say this. You may try later to change the pattern my thoughts are taking right now, but I have got to be allowed to go there. I have got to get to feel shitty right now. I won't get lost there, but I need to feel this, and to know it is okay to feel it. I can't abide one more kind-hearted person telling me to 'look at the up-side....count your blessings....this isn't the worst thing that can happen..." No. I told him "No" and he understood me. He knew in that moment that I was saying it is important to move through the ugly emotions...not get stuck there (and he knows me better). But if we don't get to feel all the emotions, how can we 'choose' which one(s) are best for us to attach to?
I really like how you think. I actually 'can' relate to the mindfuck you mention...I was a child. I know too, each of us, in our own way, because of our own makeup and our own experience...each of us shares a mindfuck. It happened to me, and it happened to you. It does effect you when you don't yet know what your body is supposed to feel...how it is supposed to work. That your body reacts to things done to it is not natural knowledge. That (trigger warning) parts can be put into places where you know only of ....well, you know this as a place for excrement only...that is terrifying. To be forced to put your mouth in a place where you only understand it to be a place for urine to come from...that is yukky and gross....and humiliating. And yes, to be a young girl and realize you didn't need to be here...that you never said "Good-bye"....that maybe life wasn't so bad....that you wish not to die here in your bed...that the blood coming from your body where it is torn down there....that that blood might be a sign you are already dying, all of that is indeed a mindfuck.
And to be that same young girl and realize there is death, but never realize, against three, there is fight...whether it be words, or actions...that makes a difference. To not be world-wise makes a difference. But, during this recovery effort, I did realize that freezing is a gift too. That I froze and just lay there...maybe, just maybe that is why I am here today.
I hope you keep writing here. I want to come back to this...I have so little computer time anymore, and your fresh perspective is so nice. I thank you for being here with us.
-
Reply #8 11/11/09 9:33pm
The comment of the advocate was so out of context. Maybe she was beyond fatigued and saying comments
that were out of place. Seems to me you just needed confirmation of this horrible experience. This man? ( rapist) was treating a human being in a horrible way ... he threw you in the back seat of a car ... that's terrible.
It's really difficult to rewrite my initial thoughts.
So I will just have to move on ... anyway something about my experience has suddenly surfaced
i realize now that I never got to the point of thinking about how he had a choice. I don't really think I have ever allowed myself to think that about him
But there's something that always disturbed me and now I think I know why. It was high school and the school of course had a creative writing magazine. Once, after the rape, I read a poem that I really didn't like and thought was stupid.
one of the phrases was as follows and I actually need a trigger warning for this just for myself I don't know about anyone else***
the line in the "poem" talked about an apple and then it said the apple could give everything or nothing at all.
Unfortunately I was in vicinity of rapist and in contact ... I'm getting a little nauseous ... I think we are familiar with how this might happen ... the rage had to subsided and bla bla bla
Anyway I told him about the poem and how I thought it was so stupid.
Well he said it was him who wrote it. And used a pretend name.
And I knew the apple was sex and he was acting and thinking like he was some kind of creep who could determine whether it would be everything or nothing ... he choose to make it nothing. And worse. I think on some level this poem was letting me know he was knowingly responsible (or maybe he wrote it after wards) I don't know but somehow this gross attribute to rape as a #@$#@$ poem just gets me so upset.
The thing is that's the evil of rape right it acts and masquerades as sex but it can never be sex. The apple can give everything it's a fake apple that gives nothing. So so much for his ha ha ha shit. He thinks he's so clever. Blaa his apple is just a plastic do nothing piece of nothingness trying to look like an apple. The real apple it still gives everything and can only give everything.
It's almost like he has confessed in the poem if anybody could know or tell. I could.
Oh I'm also strangely triggered by my roommate who takes and eats my food with out asking. He doesn't just siphoned some food ( I'm okay with that..it's respectful) if I go to the fridge to get something of mine it's like it's been grossly attacked ... huge chunks the portions almost gone. A jar of new peanut butter will in one afternoon be like gone to maybe a table spoon left. My expensive cheese more than half gone in seconds.
Should I say something .... it's almost like I am afraid to say something.
Sorry I guess I am just in a rare form tonight. -
Reply #9 11/12/09 5:27am
Matt , don't worry, I didn't freak. Your comment did attract a lot of emotional energy, but I consider that a good thing. I really don't think I would have gotten to my own truth if I hadn't taken the time to compare and contrast. So thank-you.
Mockingbird12, Thank you for your welcome. I am sorry to hear about your cancer. And I want to confirm that you have a right to every mad, yucky, angry or even depressed feeling you want to have to get through this. If there is anything I learned from the rape and the above essay it is that dark things can give life, if you face them truthfully. The hope, real hope, will come in time, but it has to come out of your struggle, not be a way to side step it.
What I like about your telling of your childhood story is that it doesn't get lost in the 'oh you were such a little kid' sentimentality. But the reality is that you as a small child had so few choices and no way of knowing lots of things that adults know. A child's perspective on the body are very, very different than an adult's. You make that very clear.
I quite agree that your rape story would have been very different if the adult you could have been there instead of the little child. I'm glad you are giving yourself the opportunity to explore the experience as an adult while still acknowledging the eyes of a child. We are all richer for it.
Catroot: I think your story of the apple poem is wonderful. You have a fine sense of symbolism, both its use and abuse. This is one of your strengths for healing. I wonder what would happen if you wrote your own poem or story about real apples and real sex? If writing was your gift as a teenager, maybe that is also your way of fighting back?
I'd also like to share a link to what I think is an amazing essay on the power of speech, and in particular the impact of hurtful speech: http://www.maqom.com/journal/paper... I'd be curious what your thoughts are about the rapist's apple poem in light of that essay. -
Reply #10 11/12/09 8:53am
Link to essay on hurtful speech is broken: http://www.maqom.com/journal/paper... should work. But just in case it doesn't the title of the article is "Norms and narratives of ethical speech: Tots, Timber, and Talmud".
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Discussion, question-and-answer, general social support, and journal processing for progress-oriented rape survivors. No crisis, no damaging or triggering conflicts--this is for individuals who want to contribute to collective, cooperative action toward the goal of making actual PROGRESS through rape trauma. Much of this work is based on the book "Resurrection After Rape." Diversity of topics is expected and encouraged!
