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...
I've been thinking recently (well today)that maybe my counsellors wern't very experieced with rape trauma (which is strange as one of them i saw at a rape crisis centre) and maybe said some things to me that they shouldn't. The first one I saw I only saw once and i know she said some things that she shouldn't but I have since learned that she probably wasn't a counsellor and was just a trained volunteer. I only saw her once and during that session she told me that I took too many risks and we needed to work on reducing my risk taking and then later in the session (after having lied to me about why she couldn't see me again) she said that the reason she had sain she couldn't see me again was because I wasn't listening to her!
The second counsellor I saw I think was a lot better but she still told me that i took too many risks. Having spent some time on here now this sounds to me lik evictim blaming, how am i suppose to stop blaming myself if everybody else does? I took there words very seriously at the time but now I am wondering if maybe i shouldn't, that whatever i did doesn't make me responsible for what happened but then there is another part of me that wonders if i do need to learn a lesson about the risks i take and how i look after myself, i do feel i,ve made progress in this area and that is good but at the same time i haven't made much progress with the whole self blame thing
The second counsellor I saw I think was a lot better but she still told me that i took too many risks. Having spent some time on here now this sounds to me lik evictim blaming, how am i suppose to stop blaming myself if everybody else does? I took there words very seriously at the time but now I am wondering if maybe i shouldn't, that whatever i did doesn't make me responsible for what happened but then there is another part of me that wonders if i do need to learn a lesson about the risks i take and how i look after myself, i do feel i,ve made progress in this area and that is good but at the same time i haven't made much progress with the whole self blame thing
Self blame is a crazy thing. I completely and totally thought I had mine under control when I went in to start therapy because my inner monologue was "of course I didn't want that". That's not being free of self blame but just acknowledging the obvious. I still blamed myself for "being somewhere I had no business being".
What worked for me was still working hard, but not focusing on that one issue. I think self-blame is a very subjective analysis that is hard to have someone else understand for individual cases. It was a very nice incidental of my therapy.
Not that this will work for you hands down, but you may find it reassuring that it can still happen. And yes, it sounds like from what you said above that there was victim blaming. It is such a strong undertone in media, advertising, everwhere, I'm just about sure that people don't realize they do it sometimes. I think it's ignorance, not that I'm making excuses. Just an opinion. Just keep on keepin on girl. Your doing all you can :)
These therapist types...the ones who are in the position to help, but haven't invested enough of temselves into actually learning about rape trauma...they are dangerous to me. I hope you have found someone who is helpful to you. They aren't perfect, ever. But, the ones who care, who really want us to succeed...it shows. You just know it in them. They will make mistakes...and it is sometimes up to us to tell them when they do...like, if you feel they misunderstand...say so. Speak up. I told a friend this before...and she did, and it helped her. Just yesterday, she reminded me of my own advice....so, I have to go back to therapy and share how I am hurting over a thing. A process, I believe, but one worth the effort.
Also, keep in mind that taking risks is not the same thing as causing the rape. It is reasonable to consider ways to minimize the risks of a situation, but there should be no connotation of victim-blaming, either. I have worked with women who, it just has to be said, took many risks with their safety and we did indeed have to discuss that. But as everyone here knows, I am 100% militant that rape is the product of a rapist's mindset, not of a woman's conduct: "Opportunities don't create rapists; rapists create opportunities."
From the time I was 15 to almost 18 I put myself in ever-more dangerous situations... drinking and drugs and going home with men I'd just met... I was sort of compulsive about it... I never THOUGHT about what I was doing or why, but I was definitely ratcheting up the "putting herself in that position" factor more and more and more as time went by. I did that until I was raped again... which, surprisingly, happened in a situation that I would not have considered risky or dangerous...
And then I stopped COMPLETELY... It was almost as if I was trying to MAKE it happen, maybe to prove something to myself? I'm not sure... This is seriously the first time I've thought about it in these terms.
So then what I did... I married the next man I had sex with... weird.
So... I'm thinking that the risk taking was a form of self-injury sort of... an attempt to repeat trauma... maybe a way to try and get some sense of control over what had happened.
I have a lot to think about...
I totally get it. My age frames are similar. I don't know if my risk taking was necessarily self-injury or maybe more that I just didn't seem to care what happened. I had the whole "lighting can't strike twice" thing going on, and I just did what felt good. What felt good at the time was to do everything wrong. It was a rush and made me feel like a "normal" teenager.
Anyway, be careful in self analysis like that. I'm sure therapists encourage self reflection, but what I do know after holding onto things for 16 years is that I have held onto a whole bunch of self-defeating concepts for a long time. I'm still clarifying things. Alternative explanations sometimes don't even occur to me until my T asks me to consider it and then it makes sense. And in a good way.
Do you have a T now you feel like you can ask? They may have some other ideas to help you frame it in your mind better :)
HUGS!
--- Devin
The first time I was 'raped' (sorry still not sure how to refer to this experience) was a year after this.
I don't know why I wanted to flirt with danger so much.
I sometimes wonder if I was trying to play out something that happened to me when I was younger to its conclusion cause nothing really did happen but it effected me and it was almost like I wanted some sort of validation for feeling that way. I feel like I am on really dangerous ground here but maybe alot of my self blaming isn't just about what happened but how i got there
Mayday, I'm just getting into the "sexualized grieving" section of RaR, but it sounds like all of that stuff is fairly common.
Back to your original comments, I think a therapist or someone else could be concerned about risk taking behaviors without any implied victim blaming. I think risky behaviors take a toll over time. All that "fun" I thought I was having just feels like hurt to me now.
That being said, those counsellors you saw may very well have had some victim blaming attitudes.
There's nothing a woman can do to get herself raped. It's just impossible for it to happen without some jerkwad man to act willfully and take what isn't his.
Seriously, if you were drunk, dancing naked on the table in a dark alley in the bad part of town it STILL wouldn't be something you caused...
I get all riled up about this one. It's so not fair the way we blame ourselves.
Take care.