Resurrection After Rape Community Group
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...
Some thoughts I have been mulling over lately... (I'll be writing in first person as I, me, we, our, for the sake of ease)
Many of us hold tightly yo the belief that we are terribly broken, hurt in some way that proves we are singled out for special harm, uniquely wounded. It can feel as if nobody could ever know just how badly we are hurt. Our wounds make us feel special--not better, but especially wounded victims of terrible injustice. We find ourselves feeling isolated and different. Terminally unique.
This is the grandiosity of victimization, which is a subject that we seldom address because it sounds cruel or accusatory to point it out. But it's there. If we grew up in a painful family, we believed that whatever happened was because of what we did or didn't do, said or didn't say. Feeling ourselves at the center of family drama (pain), we felt that if we suppressed our inner wants and desires we could create peace. If we soothed Mom's anger, or Dad's violence, or brother's bullying, things would not get out of control, nobody would be drunk, and nobody would be hurting another person. We felt powerful AND powerless at the same time: even though we are terrified, we still convince ourselves that WE have caused others to inflict harm on us, and therefore we are remarkably powerful in provoking pain. This is where our self-blame comes from: we think we can cause others to harm us, and therefore we ought to be able to figure out how to quell their abuses.
If suffering happened because of who we were, then we could fix ourselves, right? Thus, we could make sure we would never be hurt again. We created the fantasy of control by coming to believe that we are the designer and conductor of our younger experiences.
But a second, more subtle form of grandiosity arises within the experience (and perception) of feeling "broken". When we enter therapy, when we go to endless workshops, read countless books, fill dozens of journals, what we are bringing to relationships is our brokenness. Our wounds and hurts, our pain and suffering, become our offering--carried like a gift to an altar. So many of my patients believe that "my pain is my gift to the universe...if my pain can somehow help one person, it will be worth it." And this is why we see suffering, wounded, distressed people flocking to the helping professions, but too often from a misguided belief that their personal pain becomes their great contribution to the world. We feel convinced that we have become handicapped by childhood sorrows, and nothing is as real or as clear to us as our pain. We become so attuned to taking "the next step" in recovery that we forget to actually BE recovered at some point...to "go home, and just live," as Tonya's poem says. Each accomplishment in recovery is something we string like a bead, and then begin the scavenger hunt for the next challenge, stuck point, or buried trauma to excavate, as if our pain has become bread crumbs leading us to...well, to what, exactly? Is there some imagined end point where we are now done? Or do we see live the way the mythological Sisyphus did, pushing a rock up a hill with no end?
I have had a few patients who transform their wounds into something sacred and important, a banner or a dark halo. Their wounds have become their most intimate companions, the lenses through which they look at all of life. Their wounds identify them and set them apart, until eventually every trial and tribulation is reinterpreted as a response to their wounds ("I yelled at my husband; is it because of my trauma? I don't like a violent movie, so does that mean I'm 'triggered' by it?").
It is hard for any of us to let go of feeling broken. As long as we take certain pride in how wounded and misunderstood we were, or are, the more tenaciously we hold onto our conviction that we are special in this mystical way (have you noticed some DS members who are members of TWO DOZEN support groups for various problems? Have you ever noticed the sheer volume of desperate pleas for support that consist of vague first posts hinting at despair, suicide, giving up, or exquisite manifestos of why they are leaving DS because they are so uniquely hurt here?). But what if we are not sick, or no longer sick? What if a person can become addicted to the idea of being especially ill, to the point that when someone accuses us of being quite well and healthy, we bristle at how ordinary it sounds?
A couple of short weeks ago, I saw this stuff exploding all over DS. An individual had approached me asking for support and feedback, but what she really wanted was flattery regarding how unusually challenged she is by her various ailments--physical and emotional. When I, or anyone else, disagreed or confronted anything in her, she exploded in a firework of anger and self-proclaimed persecution: "You say you understand, but you obviously don't! Did you MEAN to hurt me that much? Are you proud of yourself for being so cruel? All I wanted was for someone to support me, and obviously you can't. Don't you realize how hard this is for me? Don't you see how broken I am?...etc." This became the on-cue response to ANY confrontation or disagreement, which meant that we were all held hostage to the person's need to feel uniquely wounded, and to have that uniqueness recognized, cradled, petted, and praised. Any other response was seen as outright abusiveness and choreographed cruelty.
We we were small, our family members may have rarely (if ever) spoken openly about their tender human feelings. so when we felt happy or sad, we assumed we were alone in those feelings, when in fact they universally connect us with all human experience. Joseph Campbell wrote, "The umbilical point, the humanity, the thing that makes you human and not supernatural or immortal--that's what's lovable."
Don't make the mistake of believing that the problems of the entire world are on your shoulders, and it's up to you to solve them.
Continue our work where healing is needed, and then comes the hardest part: let...it...go. Move forward into living. Rejoin the circle of interrelatedness.
More to come.
(as I said, these are thoughts that have been occurring to me for a long time, but I'm wary of whether anyone might personalize this and think it's specifically about them. It's not; it's about the entire community of hurt and recovering human beings.)
Many of us hold tightly yo the belief that we are terribly broken, hurt in some way that proves we are singled out for special harm, uniquely wounded. It can feel as if nobody could ever know just how badly we are hurt. Our wounds make us feel special--not better, but especially wounded victims of terrible injustice. We find ourselves feeling isolated and different. Terminally unique.
This is the grandiosity of victimization, which is a subject that we seldom address because it sounds cruel or accusatory to point it out. But it's there. If we grew up in a painful family, we believed that whatever happened was because of what we did or didn't do, said or didn't say. Feeling ourselves at the center of family drama (pain), we felt that if we suppressed our inner wants and desires we could create peace. If we soothed Mom's anger, or Dad's violence, or brother's bullying, things would not get out of control, nobody would be drunk, and nobody would be hurting another person. We felt powerful AND powerless at the same time: even though we are terrified, we still convince ourselves that WE have caused others to inflict harm on us, and therefore we are remarkably powerful in provoking pain. This is where our self-blame comes from: we think we can cause others to harm us, and therefore we ought to be able to figure out how to quell their abuses.
If suffering happened because of who we were, then we could fix ourselves, right? Thus, we could make sure we would never be hurt again. We created the fantasy of control by coming to believe that we are the designer and conductor of our younger experiences.
But a second, more subtle form of grandiosity arises within the experience (and perception) of feeling "broken". When we enter therapy, when we go to endless workshops, read countless books, fill dozens of journals, what we are bringing to relationships is our brokenness. Our wounds and hurts, our pain and suffering, become our offering--carried like a gift to an altar. So many of my patients believe that "my pain is my gift to the universe...if my pain can somehow help one person, it will be worth it." And this is why we see suffering, wounded, distressed people flocking to the helping professions, but too often from a misguided belief that their personal pain becomes their great contribution to the world. We feel convinced that we have become handicapped by childhood sorrows, and nothing is as real or as clear to us as our pain. We become so attuned to taking "the next step" in recovery that we forget to actually BE recovered at some point...to "go home, and just live," as Tonya's poem says. Each accomplishment in recovery is something we string like a bead, and then begin the scavenger hunt for the next challenge, stuck point, or buried trauma to excavate, as if our pain has become bread crumbs leading us to...well, to what, exactly? Is there some imagined end point where we are now done? Or do we see live the way the mythological Sisyphus did, pushing a rock up a hill with no end?
I have had a few patients who transform their wounds into something sacred and important, a banner or a dark halo. Their wounds have become their most intimate companions, the lenses through which they look at all of life. Their wounds identify them and set them apart, until eventually every trial and tribulation is reinterpreted as a response to their wounds ("I yelled at my husband; is it because of my trauma? I don't like a violent movie, so does that mean I'm 'triggered' by it?").
It is hard for any of us to let go of feeling broken. As long as we take certain pride in how wounded and misunderstood we were, or are, the more tenaciously we hold onto our conviction that we are special in this mystical way (have you noticed some DS members who are members of TWO DOZEN support groups for various problems? Have you ever noticed the sheer volume of desperate pleas for support that consist of vague first posts hinting at despair, suicide, giving up, or exquisite manifestos of why they are leaving DS because they are so uniquely hurt here?). But what if we are not sick, or no longer sick? What if a person can become addicted to the idea of being especially ill, to the point that when someone accuses us of being quite well and healthy, we bristle at how ordinary it sounds?
A couple of short weeks ago, I saw this stuff exploding all over DS. An individual had approached me asking for support and feedback, but what she really wanted was flattery regarding how unusually challenged she is by her various ailments--physical and emotional. When I, or anyone else, disagreed or confronted anything in her, she exploded in a firework of anger and self-proclaimed persecution: "You say you understand, but you obviously don't! Did you MEAN to hurt me that much? Are you proud of yourself for being so cruel? All I wanted was for someone to support me, and obviously you can't. Don't you realize how hard this is for me? Don't you see how broken I am?...etc." This became the on-cue response to ANY confrontation or disagreement, which meant that we were all held hostage to the person's need to feel uniquely wounded, and to have that uniqueness recognized, cradled, petted, and praised. Any other response was seen as outright abusiveness and choreographed cruelty.
We we were small, our family members may have rarely (if ever) spoken openly about their tender human feelings. so when we felt happy or sad, we assumed we were alone in those feelings, when in fact they universally connect us with all human experience. Joseph Campbell wrote, "The umbilical point, the humanity, the thing that makes you human and not supernatural or immortal--that's what's lovable."
Don't make the mistake of believing that the problems of the entire world are on your shoulders, and it's up to you to solve them.
Continue our work where healing is needed, and then comes the hardest part: let...it...go. Move forward into living. Rejoin the circle of interrelatedness.
More to come.
(as I said, these are thoughts that have been occurring to me for a long time, but I'm wary of whether anyone might personalize this and think it's specifically about them. It's not; it's about the entire community of hurt and recovering human beings.)
feeling good, and no longer in a state of trauma related crisis can be terrifying.....more so than the trauma itself. we have tried to close off our vulnerabilities in times of pain, but allowing ourselves to feel love and joy makes us feel even more vulnerable sometimes.
for now, i will let the love in my life drip like water onto a stone. eventually it will wear away at the stone, and make its impression. perhaps then i will choose to let more in.
But this was on my mind because if things going on here at work, so I'll elaborate after my next group...
:)
And yeah... where the heck is the marker on the road that says this particular race is over? Where's the finish line??? I've been afraid of 'moving on' this time because I feel like if I don't finish the work, that it'll just come back to bite me again.
Anyway, thanks for bringing this up. Good stuff, as usual.
From my perspective, being a victim is exactly what I don't want to be. I accepted that role quite naturally however, having been the family Peacemaker. Feverishly trying to fix the ills of my surroundings consumed the little girl in me. I HATE ALCOHOL...DON'T LIKE TO DRINK OR BE DRUNK. I have consumed alcohol in the past, but alcohol is what I blamed for my family dysfunction, so I abhor it's use. But, I can see where I may have adopted the attitude you describe.
But, the thing I spend most of my time doing is hiding and denying. My therapist gets unsettled by me because he says I "downplay and minimize". He says that I avoid distress by deciding it doesn't exist.
I call it pretense and it served me well for many years. I pretended to be well-adjusted, emotionally stable, content, and devoid of the fallout of my rape. So, in effect, I suppose I perfected the pretense to a level of denial.
But, I attempted to get my previous Psychiatrist to tell me to get back to it, the pretense. I mean, I felt it had worked so well for me.
He said that I thought it had served me well, and had actually spent more than 20 years in denial, therfore never dealing with the issue of rape.
Having spent only two years this coming March in the quest for recovery, I have no fear of getting caught in the hamster wheel of addiction to recovery. BUT, I sure can see where it would be easy to do.
It's like I have asked you Matt, on several occassions, how did your clients "graduate"? I wondered when I would do that. I wanted to know when I would finally get out of this act of recovery. And, having accomplished something I fully believe is the single greatest thing I have done in therapy, I KNOW I am closer to picking my life back up. I mean, one day I was FINE...no rape issues whatsoever, no flashbacks, no triggered moments, no nightmares, little to no thought about 'it' ever having taken place. I went into surgery believing it was to be a routine, "We found everything to be okay", procedure. I woke up to a man in blue scrubs from head to toe, leaning into my groin with all his might, and my boss, the Neurosurgeon sitting at my head telling me I was going to be fine. And without warning, "they" were there. So, what made this all take the course it did? Why do I deal with a rape from 1970 and not just say "Alright already"?!!
I can tell you, in the concept of disclosure, I don't know how to let go of my therapist. For me, that is the worst thing about this. I mean he knows every sordid detail of my life. My life before rape, the rape itself, and how I have reacted to the rape....all of it. So, I look forward to the next part of this post Matt. I guess that will be the part that tells us how to close the book....how to say goodbye to the therapist who knows me more intimately (in a non-sexual way) than does my own husband.
I fully want this rape to have "it's" moment, and I want that moment to end so I can pick up my life where I left it. I hope you are telling us that can happen. I hope what you are saying in this post is exactly that - that life begins in this moment, and rape is not a part of this moment.
If our rape accounts were the meat of a novel, what would the last sentences in that novel be?
(sorry this was so long...I'm still kind of euphoric from Friday).
I call it pretense and it served me well for many years. I pretended to be well-adjusted, emotionally stable, content, and devoid of the fallout of my rape. So, in effect, I suppose I perfected the pretense to a level of denial.**
He would say the same thing about me. Wow. I can so connect with this. Thanks MB.
Matt is right about the job choices....I am a teacher! I always felt invisible in school, except third grade, where my teacher was kind and caring towards me. I thought that there needs to be more teachers like her in the schools.
But, now that school has started back, Tate is not talking with me as much (barely), I don't talk with Shawn and am unable to juggle everything. I am slipping away! I teach half-day Kindergarten, 44 students, and the majority are really low. They are suppose to read by the end of Kindergarten, thanks, in part to effing-NCLB. Which clearly hinders their thinking processing in the future! This is not Early Childhood! Even the State Superintendent, stated this, to my son's Mother's Day Out Coordinator at a conference this summer. How sad! I'm starting to rant and get off the subject.
My plan time is pretty close to non-existent. The principal does not like parents helping and the secretary is down right rude to them. Anyway, I will put it this way...we are asked to do more than other school in our district and it pisses me off! I have decided it is no longer worth STRESSING myself out and am planning on speaking with her, the principal tomorrow or Wednesday. So, please pray for wisdom for me to say it in the right non-critical way and that she will be understanding. The other kindergarten teacher is actively looking for another job, because of the BS, pressures!
I cannot live at school and I refuse to cheat my family anymore! I have realized that, I am no longer willing to bring my work home with me! I am also, no longer willing to worry about what I do not get finished.
I LOVE MY JOB and the students! BUT, I AM PUTTING MYSELF AND MY FAMILY FIRST FROM NOW ON!
I do not know if this is what you are exactly saying here Matt, if I'm off base let me know.
I was discharged on medication that kept me in a zombified state, and I was directed to see the Psychiatrist whom I had seen while hospitalized. I didn't. I eventually quit the medication, resumed being a mother, applied for and was accepted into Nursing School, and I decided I was fine.
Fine equated to denying I needed anyone's help with anything. I was a super wife, a super Mom, a super student, a super Sunday School Teacher...everything 100%...you do the math...at that point in my life I was barrelling along at 400%, none of which was directed at my healing, or even at me at all.
But, everyone around me was satisfied. They were taken care of. They were happy to let my past stay in the past. It remained that way until March of 2006.
I was completely unprepared for 2006. I was blindsided and unable to imagine re-living 1978. I believed I would repeat the same no-help scenario via the American Psychiatric Association. I believed that what I had failed to take care of in 1978 had come seeking it's vengeance on me.
I had gotten a new computer and had been messing around with it one night and for some reason, I typed the words "Rape Recovery" into the tool bar and hit the search button. The first thing in the lengthy list was a site called Pandora's Aquarium. I filled out the form to "join", but it said it takes 24 hours to process, so I went to number two on the list....Daily Strength. It let me join right then, and I am a "right now" kind of woman. I was immediately sucked in by the conversations being had. I read about myself and hadn't typed the first word. It was unlike any form of [treatment] I'd ever imagined. Complete strangers pouring out their pain, and interacting with others who seemed to absolutely understand....and it was anonymous. And I had such a great need. So, like you, I dug in and read everything. I absorbed everything. I requested friendships and posted comments. I was a DS madwoman and for the first time since 1970, I believed I had a shot at this thing people referred to as recovery.
So, I get the issue of being consumed by this cyber-recovery. But, at a point, you do become saturated in your own right. You do learn to balance this life, gain and contribute what you can, and carry out your "real" life as the foremost part of your world. But, I know what DS did for me. I know where my head is at now, and where I am on this path. One thing I cannot do is to step off that path now, having gained so much, and wish everyone else well. My heart won't let me move away from the ones here who are where I was at in 2006, and where I was in February 2008 when I found this place, where I found the beginning of my path to wholeness.
I had been in a place so dry and dark. DS and my friends here helped me, and I absorbed the help like a dry sponge sucks up liquid. But, I am saturated now with that help, and now I hope to help others with the excesses with which I have been blessed. I'm not done healing, but I am so much closer to it that I can sense it, and that's such a great feeling. It is a feeling I never imagined would be available to me, and for once in my life, I believe it's my turn.
When we exchange care, we name our love for one another without fear. I can say to a patient, for example, "I love you," and have no fear that she will reject me (or it), misunderstand it, fear it, exploit it, or otherwise harm me. We listen for what is painful or difficult, and work together with our loved ones to make adjustments that will bring healing and peace. We can listen to another's heart without feeling that our own needs are being slighted, and we express genuine concern and affection for another's well-being in a way that allows them to feel that our care is trustworthy. This is not a codependent bond; it is perfectly acceptable for one person to care for another's needs, to invest emotion to them, to seek the comfort of their presence. This is not pathological, it is holy. It is "Gakina Awiiya".
But in our pain, meaningful attempts to genuinely communicate thoughts or feelings are often met with great resistance, confusion, or even anger. Any moment of genuine affection of simple expression could get sidetracked by someone's fragile self-esteem, their quickness to feel slighted, their fear that the expression of love is a seductive tactic to gain strategic advantages over them. All of this forms a clumsiness about the effort of simply caring for what is true and good. The result is an atmosphere of high drama, in which interpersonal exchanges are not forms of nurturance, but of transactions for power, control, and advantage. Through dramatic outbursts, we try to manipulate information and feelings to come out in our favor. But in the process, real and true feelings of care are crushed like petals under a bulldozer. Thus we rarely feel genuinely listened to or cared for.
For many of us, childhood was not only dramatic, it was also perplexing. Simple acts and phrases were used to conceal, rather than reveal, intentions and messages, and we had to learn to decipher all the levels of suppressed meaning around us. We became masters at reading the intricacies of the moments around us, which also caused us to become hypervigilant about the intentions behind every act: what did they really mean by that? Nothing was ever as it appeared to be.
Since people didn't speak in simple truths to us, everything was shared in a symbolic language: one phrase actually meant something else; one action really meant another. Maybe you could tell by how dad set his keys down when he got home that he would be fierce or pleasant. Maybe the way mom would listen to your thoughts and respond with a sideways question, "really...?!" caused you to begin to mistrust your own judgment and pull back from experiences and ideas that were actually positive. Maybe jealousy was regarded as a display of love. Or control was redefined as protection.
But occasionally, we would stumble upon some booby-trap we hadn't ever seen before, and it would explode and provoke tremendous anger or rebuke. Shannon shared her story of being invited into her father's study to see his oil drilling maps--which hardly interested her as a child, but she was thrilled to be brought into the "inner sanctum" of dad's attention. She was thrilled and terrified at the same time, pleading with herself "please don't do anything wrong! Please just let him love me!" But as she climbed on a chair to view the maps, the chair tipped and she went tumbling, pulling the maps down upon herself and laying injured on the floor. For this, she was screamed at and her father stormed out of the room, leaving her alone and crying. She waited there in tears for someone to come for her before the terrible truth dawned: "nobody was coming for me." The story of her life. Thus, the path toward a father's elusive and scarce warmth was literally a series of maps and traps, leaving a tiny-bodied girl sobbing alone. She pulled herself together, wiped her tears, and left the room, learning to conceal her own anguish in the process.
We become accustomed to seeing the world as a symphony of signs and symbols that are important to the degree to which they can predict what is masked or hidden. We are conditioned to seek high drama, because it is in the constant analysis of these legends and cues that we find truth. When we are necessarily intrigued by the infinite complexity of things, we overlook the simple power of a single action, a simple word, a humble "I love you," an uncomplicated gesture--"you are my friend, and I accept you as-is." We feel that nothing of importance is ever obvious, and any truth lies in how difficult it is to find.
We gradually adopt a hierarchy in our perceptions of reality: the more complex or dramatic an event, the more meaning it has--and thus more intrinsic value. But this constant elevation of drama and complexity blinds us to the simple, pure, and authentic gifts and blessings we have right in front of us. In fact, we doubt them: "he says he loves me; he says he is my friend, but nothing is ever as it seems. There must be some hidden message or agenda in those statements, and it makes me uncomfortable to guess it." Personally, I wonder if this might be part of the reason for my dear young friend's abrupt and silent departure from our tribe, leaving behind cherished and healthy bonds--not with a bang, but with a whimper, while I and others racked ourselves with the question, "what did we do wrong? Why did our friend slip away?"
Yet things that are simple--the touch of my son's hand on my arm, the color of the sky at the sweatlodge, the scrawl of curled letters handwritten in a journal, the smell of rain, the aroma of cedar, being loved back by a friend--in a moment of awareness, these things can vibrate with something deep and true in our hearts. Look at how many spiritual practices are grounded in silence and simplicity as forms of wisdom!
But our hearts mistrust simplicity. When love is given only with secret conditions attached, the mind of the child learns to analyze every gift for its hidden costs. Every act is a Tojan Horse, every word wears a disguise. As our eye seeks to expose the hidden complexity of every moment, how can we learn to see with an eye that is simple and clear?
So we wait for a healing that, if it even comes at all, will be dramatic and complex, one that matches the complicated nature of our distress. A single word or touch, a healing breath, the simple honesty of a loving moment--these feel impotent and inadequate. In the face of our inner complexity, we feel powerless: things about us are just too complicated. We cannot be held responsible for our distress; try as we may it is just too large to be healed--we tell ourselves. Thus, we wash our hands of our own destiny.
At some point we must ask ourselves, Are we willing to be healed? Seduced by the infinite puzzle of our own pathology, we often resist any healing available to us that utilizes the simplicity of common words, colors, and gestures. Yet if we continue to take pride in the uniqueness of our individual pain, we are destined to wander in isolation, frustration, and disappointment--maybe even detaching from the good relationships we actually DO have because we expect them to collapse anyway. If we can surrender our addiction to complexity, though, then perhaps we could be persuaded that we are simply human beings and we all have pain, and we all have sorrow, and we all hurt. And we can all be healed.