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 told someone that I had been feeling like I had no friends and they talked about how they would be my friend and said they accepted me as I was. I then asked them what exactly they were accepting and they replied back with - who you are.
I was sort of hoping for more than that because that doesn't tell me anything. The conversation was happening over email and I expressed that I was looking for a bit more detail and proceeded to write a list of many items related to my perception of this individual. Personality traits, things they might enjoy doing. Things they struggled with. Some things were just facts. I wanted to explain who I thought they were so if I agreed to accept them they would know who I saw them to be.
As I returned the question back to them again to see if they could elaborate. I realized that I've struggled with who I think I am and who others might see me as and I wonder why the perception of others is so important to me.
I know there are times when the perception of others is very important, like job interviews but in general through the course of day to day life who do I really need to be concerned about what they think of me?
My facebook "friends' are people I do know in some way shape or form and many I"m related to and only a couple know I was raped. At times I've thought what it would be like to just write it as a status update. Guess what no one probably knows about me blah blah blah. The thought of doing it freaks me out and I'm not even sure why.
I"m not even sure why I'm writing any of this right now but I feel like I"m at this crossroads where I need to figure out who I am and how I fit into this world.
I've been my father's daughter, my mother's daughter. The intern, the project coordinator, the wife, the sister, the aunt, the teacher, the babysitter, the person who dated a jerk for far too long and blames herself for getting raped over and over and needs to freaking get over it already.
I'm sick of his words and actions being a constant din in my head. I like to think it's no big deal but maybe it is.
I feel blessed to not have the nightmares that others seem to have and I'm not conscious of any flashbacks. I have some sort of experience where fear over takes me and things seem really big and scary and I don't feel present and want to hide and scream but I haven't quite figured out what it is and it doesn't happen too often. Textbook panic attack it isn't because I don't feel like I'm having some sort of heart attack, I just feel like I"m not safe and not grounded, no images just feelings of immense fear that take over. I have rationalized the parade of thoughts in my head involving him and the things he said or did as background noise that doesn't matter.
who am i without the fear? who am i without that experience playing around in my head? How do I get to that next step where I can finally let it go and mean it and not continue to still be looking for someone to give a crap about what happened? I"m not even sure who it is that I"m looking for to care? I had one friend who took what happened to me harder than I did. He cried so much it made me uncomfortable.
I keep telling myself that i have the choice to let this go and if that's true, why the heck am I hanging onto it? What purpose can it possibly be serving me to stay stuck in the fear and the hiding?
There's so much I wanted to do and I don't want to be held back because I'm afraid of living my life.
He even apologized for what he did and I can't seem to be done with it.
I know I've written a lot and I typically don't but I'm frustrated.
I was sort of hoping for more than that because that doesn't tell me anything. The conversation was happening over email and I expressed that I was looking for a bit more detail and proceeded to write a list of many items related to my perception of this individual. Personality traits, things they might enjoy doing. Things they struggled with. Some things were just facts. I wanted to explain who I thought they were so if I agreed to accept them they would know who I saw them to be.
As I returned the question back to them again to see if they could elaborate. I realized that I've struggled with who I think I am and who others might see me as and I wonder why the perception of others is so important to me.
I know there are times when the perception of others is very important, like job interviews but in general through the course of day to day life who do I really need to be concerned about what they think of me?
My facebook "friends' are people I do know in some way shape or form and many I"m related to and only a couple know I was raped. At times I've thought what it would be like to just write it as a status update. Guess what no one probably knows about me blah blah blah. The thought of doing it freaks me out and I'm not even sure why.
I"m not even sure why I'm writing any of this right now but I feel like I"m at this crossroads where I need to figure out who I am and how I fit into this world.
I've been my father's daughter, my mother's daughter. The intern, the project coordinator, the wife, the sister, the aunt, the teacher, the babysitter, the person who dated a jerk for far too long and blames herself for getting raped over and over and needs to freaking get over it already.
I'm sick of his words and actions being a constant din in my head. I like to think it's no big deal but maybe it is.
I feel blessed to not have the nightmares that others seem to have and I'm not conscious of any flashbacks. I have some sort of experience where fear over takes me and things seem really big and scary and I don't feel present and want to hide and scream but I haven't quite figured out what it is and it doesn't happen too often. Textbook panic attack it isn't because I don't feel like I'm having some sort of heart attack, I just feel like I"m not safe and not grounded, no images just feelings of immense fear that take over. I have rationalized the parade of thoughts in my head involving him and the things he said or did as background noise that doesn't matter.
who am i without the fear? who am i without that experience playing around in my head? How do I get to that next step where I can finally let it go and mean it and not continue to still be looking for someone to give a crap about what happened? I"m not even sure who it is that I"m looking for to care? I had one friend who took what happened to me harder than I did. He cried so much it made me uncomfortable.
I keep telling myself that i have the choice to let this go and if that's true, why the heck am I hanging onto it? What purpose can it possibly be serving me to stay stuck in the fear and the hiding?
There's so much I wanted to do and I don't want to be held back because I'm afraid of living my life.
He even apologized for what he did and I can't seem to be done with it.
I know I've written a lot and I typically don't but I'm frustrated.
Sometimes, defining ourselves is a box around us. When we hold a label over our heads we can become clouded by our perception of what that role should be. At the retreat we did an exercise that was very simply..my name is and I am:
It doesn't have to be giant concepts just little things. I wrote creative, cat person, trusting
See what you come up with and maybe you can make a my name is and I want to be: too
one, I am learning is that my preception of how people interact with me may be a little off sometimes. For example. Last night I am talking to someone(who was visiting from out of town), a third person comes over and interusputs us and pull the person I was talking to away and tells her something. My first response was, what is she talking about that she can't talk about infront of me??? And why doesn't this thrid person like me??? To be honest they were making plans that did not include me... So, here is what happened, my friend comes back over and sasy...sorry, she was inviting me to dinner, you want to go. I said, I don't think she wants me there or she would have invited me as well, Friends says, who cares that's her problem there are a bunch of people going for pizza and you should come with us...so I went...That third person did not seem happy that I was there. My friend pointed out that it was her problem, not ours.
The point of that story is...it was the third women who had the issues. She apparently wanted to be in control of who my friend visited with and stuf and was a little put out when things did not go her way. It had nothing to do with me. My preception was that she did not like me....someone else pointed out that she was just being rude and wanted my friends attention and when she did not get it left.
This reminded me that everyone has some type of issue and deals with them differently. I think I end up taking stuf personaly and it ends up becoming my problem when it is really the other persons.
So the second things is I was talking with another friend and I told her I admired her ability to talk infront of people and she said, it took her awhile but she KNEW who she was and could handle speaking because of that. I took that to mean she was not afraid to be herself.
don't know if my ramblings help or hot. But be kind to yourself.
I was just chatting with someone from the retreat about the retreat that said my personality intimidates people. My first reaction was to reply, "that makes me said, do I scare people"?. Her reply, "no not mean intimidating but just different from them, your personality makes you ..you. Don't lose that. There is nothing to change, just be yourself".
I knew that the right answer was to be myself, but still my knee jerk reaction was "am I doing something wrong".
I'm as true as I can be to myself, at the retreat especially, since it is one of the only places that we all accept and support one another regardless of differences. In my day to day life I try to be as authentic as I can be without coming off as abrasive.
I think you could ask yourself, why do I care that this person cares for me without knowing anything specifics about me. I wonder if you sense that person is being disingenuous when they say that if they don't know you. But sometimes, hearing that someone cares about us, without even knowing us gives us the ability to open up with others and take a leap of faith with them.
Going from being someone else's daughter, wife, sister, mother, friend or worker, is a life transition I believe. One everyone makes. Trauma can put a detour in the transition...overcoming trauma is transition itself, from victimhood to survivor hood. Sometimes the search that is supposed to happen gets postponed until your trauma issues are worked through some.
It's sounds like you are in a fork in your road (and you might have more than two choices of paths to go down) but know that even though we might not KNOW everything about you , your words resonate so clearly and accurately to what a lot of feel that it's easy to feel a caring for you without actually knowing you.
@Heptet -- I might have to try that only I'm gonna do who I think I am, who I think I want to be, what I want to keep about who I am now and what I don't and then how I think I can get there.
@AutumnFawn -- I do at times take things personally and I'm very much aware that everyone has something even if I might not know about it. I guess I just often assume that others are less fearful and more functional than I am, even though I know I'm capable of a lot of things, it's just the things I struggle with I feel are so easy for others and I want to just be more capable of the things I can't do or at least think I can't do.
@ finalytime -- The individual in question is someone who I worked with and it was an odd blend of my being a supervisor in some respects and then a co-worker in other aspects. So he often would talk a lot and I'd listen without disclosing too much about myself and it wasn't until I left my supervisory role that I talked to him a bit more about me, although I was still fairly guarded. I wasn't much for mixing work and outside of work. We know some things about each other and I probably know more personal stuff about him than he knows about me and I guess the fact that I don't feel he knows the "real me" how can he choose to accept me as I am, when he doesn't even know who that is. He sees the good stuff, the caring capable stuff but he doesn't really know the places that I struggle, the places that make me want to avoid other people.
Being in transition is a good way to put it. At present I feel like I'm stuck in the mud and haven't gotten the sense to get out of the car and call a tow truck. I just keep spinning my wheels in the same mess. Yet at the same time I want to be able to make decisions and plans for the future but I get stuck behind a bunch of fear and find comfort in the mud pit.
These 'places', are you ashamed of them? Do you think that if he knew them he wouldn't care about you the way he does?
I grew up in a home where there were no taboo subjects in an argument. If it scored you a point then it was fair game. I had my depression, my self harm, my abuse all thrown back in my face to win an argument. I had people make fun of me for how easily I cried and they saw it as a weakness. So I wante people to see no cracks...no way that they could possibly hurt me.
I think that when you find your comfortable spot with what you share with people and what you keep private you'll feel much more genuine. Feelings, our past, our traumas don't define who we are, it's what we do and who we are in the present that makes us who we are. You sound like a very sensitive and caring person, and I gather that from the fact that you listen, learn and care about a coworker in a way that leaves him feeling safe with you. Sometimes old negative feelings taint our perceptions of the good we do in the present, and challenging those negative feelings with positive facts can help.
I understand and believe in my heart that social connection is key for me and it wasn't until I formed bonds with people from the retreat, that I got the chance to reveal the authentic me over the last 4 years..warts and all ,to them. It didn't make them run away, but it brought us closer.
For me it was realizing that my friends at home (that don't know about the rape or my struggles) don't need to know the details to see the change in me as I have healed. I have an awesome group of friends from the retreat that I have been able to reveal virtually everything about myself and they care about me the SAME as my other friends. Caring is caring, no matter what someone knows about your secrets...whether or not you feel you deserve that caring, why.....because they are caring about the people we are today, and not the people we were, not our trauma's, not our secrets. Identifying your feelings surrounding this might be a great way of working through this issue.
I am me, it's just that I seem to be the me that I think is acceptable to be around others :) They are all still qualities I possess just the ones I deem more appropriate for "company" :) Sort of like how the house can be messy and it be ok to the people you are really comfortable with but the people you don't really know you have to have a clean house before they come over. At least that's how I am at times.
@finalytime
You make a good point about caring being caring regardless of what is known and that a person is more than their secrets and traumas.