Not sure

[Tigger1]

Update;
I have filed a police report and the guy has been charged. I have also been in contact with one of our organisations here in the uk to get some counselling.

I'm trying to take steps in self care to enable me to move forward from this, it's hard, really really hard but I have to make it through to the other side of this. Emotionally feeling wrecked although a little stronger today (that comes and goes by the minute) physically feeling a little more able to sleep which helps feel more human.

Found an album to sing along too and although it's a pretty weird one, very angry. Hopefully in time I can deal with my Head a little better

[Mo]

Thanks for another update.
I'm glad you've found a good singing album, and that you're working to take care of yourself even when it's hard. Hopefully you'll be able to connect with counselling soon and will find that useful, and of course we're happy to talk about any of this in the future if you wish.

[Tigger1]

Feeling rather emotional today, went to this group session thing yesterday and didn't find it at all helpful, then today went for this one to one thing and I'm not sure how I feel it went really, the women was nice enough and she just let me kinda do my own thing in relation to talking but I just dunno which way is up today!

[Redskies]

Hi Tigger,

for sure, groups - or particular groups - aren't always the right fit for everyone. I'm really glad you've been able to reach out and seek different supports so that you can find enough different ones that do fit your needs.

Totally, things can feel upside down, inside out and who-knows-what after a trauma - I hear you. And also on picking an angry album! What a dreadful man.

Sounds like the counsellor was making sure you have your own space to find what you need and not put more on you to muddle you further - that's usually a really good thing, and rape counsellors are usually really responsive to whatever needs you put out there whenever you want to do that.

I've been so glad to hear that your boss and colleague were supportive of you. Thanks for letting us know how this has been going for you.

[Tigger1]

Hey Redskies,

Yer the whole group thing just wasn't for me, in all honesty I didn't feel I belonged there, which sounds weird but I just didn't feel comfortable sitting in a group of people discussing the stuff I've been through, it's all too raw, things feel so much more personal too when it's face to face, people can see your vulnerability and your emotions and I'm generally not good at that kind of stuff because I just wanna take other people's hurt away somehow. But I have agreed to keep going back for the one to one sessions and have another one later this week, it was really nice not to feel pressured into talking and that I felt it was ok just to sit in silence in different places and THINK about what I wanted to offload and I felt comfortable with that. So yer I'm feeling mainly ok with that. Plus the other thing I think I feel is good about the one to one stuff is that nothing I can say to her is gonna offend her in anyway, she's heard it all before, it's her job. You know.

Angry music seems to be my thing at moment, it's partly how I feel so it's nice to just vent some of my feelings but in a healthy way.
Obviously still got a heck of a lot on my mind and generally still feeling very raw about what happened.
I return to work tomorrow, I'm returning on my terms at my pace, in ways I feel comfortable and have made it quite clear that if at any point I don't feel comfortable then I shall say something. Starting with only working from our main office for a couple days a week. There is a big internal investigation going on about him and me and the things that went wrong which kind of hurts me, which is bizarre but I just feel like because of the investigation other people who I didn't really want finding out about this....have.. plus it's pretty much a given thing that news travels fast and people like to gossip so I am feeling apprehensive about walking through HO's doors tomorrow. I've decided to take the bullying and harassment seminar later this month as well, I thought that just because the complaint against me was dropped, there was still a complaint. I just wanna show people that just because they get complaints dropped we still have a duty of care to ourselves, our colleagues and our clients.

Sorry it's an essay again!!

Also just wanted to thank you guys! Your support and advise is appreciated and it's only with support and the right kind of people that anyone can even remotely get through a situation like this so thank you.

[Redskies]

I get what you mean about the group session. Group sessions can be very helpful indeed for tackling some common post-assault issues, like feeling alone and isolated, and learning how to apply the compassion and understanding that we probably feel for everyone else and their situations to our own self; but sometimes the extra peopling involved isn't the right fit for caring for our own self in the way we need to. I'm so glad you feel positively about the individual session! It really sounds like having some time and space for your own mind is an important thing for you at the moment, and that the counsellor was giving you that.

I'm not surprised you're feeling raw, angry and have a lot on your mind. An assault by itself is a Lot to process, and then the extra ramifications and practicalities you've been dealing with? - again, a Lot. It's a tough job for anyone to find a way through, and it can take quite some time for the world and the mind to stop spinning and feeling like it's on overload. You do sound like you're doing an excellent job of caring for yourself in the midst of all that, though, and massive kudos to you for that.

Aie, the work investigation thing sounds ... less than ideal. It's hard to deal with a situation that gets broader and less within our control when we already had plenty enough on our plate trying to manage our own self; it can be hard to deal with other people knowing something that we haven't got our own head round yet, and which is very personal. I really hope the work day today went alright for you, and that you received adequate support from HR and your colleagues. While an investigation right now is understandably tough and challenging for you, I'm also glad that your company has taken that guy's actions very seriously, and hopefully they're operating in a way where they examine themselves as a company and make sure that they have a company atmosphere where people are protected from behaviour like that and perpetrators stopped and removed. It sounds like your company has been very good with supporting you so far, so I'm thinking that if anyone says or does something that feels disrespectful of you or your privacy, HR would be able to deal with it for you if you wanted tham to, so you wouldn't have to either put up with it or manage it yourself if you didn't want to. Personally, I tend to be very uncomfortable with gossip too, so I really hear your discomfort about that as a possibility. If it helps any, anyone who has their head even slightly in the right place around assault issues will know that what he did says Everything about him and nothing about you, and he and his Bad News-ness will be the focus of their thoughts and responses. Try too to think of most of it as background noise (and I dislike background noise, too): what's important is you, the people who care about you and who you care about, and anything really central to your job/career. If it's not one of those, it's background noise: it will pass and it won't change who you are or what's right for you.

Write as much as you need, it wasn't so very long
And you're so very welcome. We're happy to be here however we can, and thank you for such a lovely thank-you. Always nice to be appreciated!

[Tigger1]

Hey,
Work was pretty terrible tbh, a lot of people staring at me, like I'd just dropped down from space! Lots of unwanted comments and stuff which hurt.
Apparently I look rough! I mean duh! How the hell am I suppose to look right now!!
People having conversations about me when they think I wasn't about, spent 20mins locked away in a loo cubicle trying to block out their drivel, ended up sending an off the cuff email to
The entire building which wasn't overly professional but I didn't really care!

Feeling drained tonight and feeling like I returned to work to quickly but hopefully it will get better with time, it's only day one!

[Redskies]

Ugh, I'm sorry to hear that. Sometimes I really wish that people behaved better. And you're right, it Was the first day, and the first day is usually the worst. If you need HR to do anything that would make it easier for you, or you want to reasses your situation, it's their job, so they should support you.

Not-really-professional aside, in the circumstances I'm slightly smiling at you standing up for yourself like that. Good on you Hopefully it'll jolt some of those people into activating more of their be-considerate-to-others thoughts and rather less of gawking curiosity.

[Tigger1]

Hey Redskies,

I am pleased in some ways that I managed to stand up for myself and say what I felt I needed to say at that moment in time anyway. I am fully aware that this has been a lot for people to get their heads around, I mean its not exactly a 'normal' situation to find yourself in! But at the same time it is just horrible that people even in this day and age judge you by the way THEY feel you should be or act or whatever and not take into account how I am actually feeling and overhearing comments about how 'he wouldn't do such a thing' and 'he was always so nice to her and everyone else' kinda brings up different feelings about the whole self blame thing again. You know. It's a situation I am yet to fully understand, it's a situation I'm far from dealing with right now and all I wanted to do in all honesty was get some structure back in my life. Something else to focus my attention on. Alas this did not work and I probably should of guessed that work being the place this whole thing started was probably not the bests place to focus but part of me deep down really does just want to return to how I was before all of this.

[Redskies]

It's really, really understandable that you'd just want your life back and something to focus on. It absolutely stinks when someone who assaulted us was also in a work or social environment - as they so often are, sadly - and that puts extra barriers up.

Ugh, those people. How people think they or others would respond to an assault is very often based in myths about how assaulted people act, and a total lack of knowledge of the social, psychological and neurological processes that are often in play. I reckon you know this already, but anyone who has a judgy opinion on how you are or how you act/ed is simply full of myth-y rubbish and no reality. And the comments about him? it's not like assaulty people walk round with a sign on their head saying "I'm a nasty person" - oh that they did, it'd be a way of avoiding them! - but quite the contrary. Seeming nice is often how they get themselves into a position to harm someone in the first place, and then how they try to get away with it.

What you described here was clearly very deliberate and calculated on his part: his actions, his smokescreen. It wasn't your fault. The victim-blaming things that some people say are unacceptable and untrue.

[Tigger1]

Ok I know it shouldn't but the whole sign bit made me smile! If only!!
I mean I am trying seriously trying to get through this but it's comments like that along with other things that set me back ten fold. I'm still really hurting, I've still got so much going on and yer I just wanted something to be 'normal' again because I am far from myself at the moment which I know is normal, my head is spinning, I'm not dealing well and I know now that work isn't gonna help that situation.
I fell for this guy. For the first time ever, I fell for a guy who didn't wear a sign on his head, he didn't lead me to believe anything was amiss, im dealing with emotions of that as well as assault as well as work and I just don't feel capable of any of it right now.
I'm still playing stuff over in my head, day in day out trying to figure out the why's, dealing worth what if's. It's hard and no one has any idea how IM feeling in all this, they just assume. They just a don't seem to get it. You guys do but they don't and I dunno what to do about it or anything.

[Sam W]

Hi Tigger,

To echo Redskies, that feeling of replaying things in your head is really common among survivors. Sometimes playing with those "what ifs" is a way of trying to take back the control of the situation that was taken from you. It's ultimately not the most helpful exercise your brain could do, but it is one that many survivors experience.

At work (and maybe in other spaces as well) is there a person or two who you trust enough to tell them what you need right now? That might help create a buffer for you and make it so that you're getting the kind of treatment from your coworkers that's going to be most helpful for you right now.

[Tigger1]

Hi,

I have contacted my boss this morning, we have agreed that I will work from home until I feel I am ready to go back to visiting sites/main office etc. he seemed to understand my reasons why and is happy for me to work in ways I do feel comfortable with and has taken the pressure off a bit. we have put together a plan of action in relation to what/how I will be working and if at any stage during this plan I freak we can revisit and replan. This has made me feel better about it. I don't wanna take too much time out of my work but I am just not ready to go the whole hog yet, I've got things I need to sort out and do and therefore part if this plan is that I am able to take time out of my day to attend therapy sessions etc because I pointed out that if I was away I wouldn't be able to attend the things I feel I need to.

[Sam W]

Way to go you! That was a huge step in advocating for yourself, and I'm so glad your boss responded positively and that you were able to arrange something that fits your needs. And it was very sound to try and build a schedule were you'll have the ability to seek out things like therapy to help you heal.

I really do want to say that you have a lot to be proud of yourself for. You've taken so many big, potentially intimidating steps to take care of yourself and do what you think is best for your healing. That can be a really challenging process, and that fact that you've kept going speaks to you having a lot of strength.

[Tigger1]

Thanks!
Some days I feel like I have enough strength behind me to deal with whatever happens next, some day/moment in each day, I feel like my world is crumbling around me.
I feel I just want to get my life back to how it was. I need to keep my focus on where I wanna be heading so the past/current situation doesn't feel so scary or overwhelming. I do want to get through this. I do want to build my life back up but as the saying goes 'Rome wasn't built in a day' I just have to focus on what I feel and want each day and have a kinda checklist thing on my phone which has things on it like 1) today is like something to make me smile 2) today I wanna get out of bed etc etc and hopefully given time and support from the right kinda people I will have a day when all the things on the list are achievable. A day when the world doesn't seem like such a bad place. I feel that is the only way I'm going to get through this, to keep my focus on what I wanna but also have time to feel everything I feel and know it's ok to feel these things.
Thank you all for supporting me during this time, the good and the bad times.

[Redskies]

Referring to a few posts back: well, we find humour where we can in tough times

I'm so glad your boss has been so sensible and supportive! Working from home sounds like a really good thing to try, to enable you to have some normailty with work and something to focus on, while not having to deal with things that are too much for you at the moment.

Going day-to-day is a good plan. Figuring out everything all at once would be too much and impossible for just about everybody. When something major has happened in our world, the perspectives of how hard things are can change massively, so that the sorts of things on your daily list become big achievements. That's okay, and natural; and, try to remember that they Are big achievements and recognise them when you make one of them.

With time, you will be able to have again the kind of life you want. Processing an assault or other trauma tends to be very hard and take up a lot of focus for a while, but it's not like that forever. With time and processing, it becomes a thing that's part of our life history, and not The thing: we get to decide what it means to us in the context of our whole life, when we're ready for that stage. We, and our life, don't become defined by an assault that someone else carried out.

You said a couple of times that you want to go "back". I don't want to step into something that you're not ready for, so if you feel like I'm doing that, please say and I'll back way up. I wonder if thinking of it more as "forward" than "back" might help? I very much understand wishing that a bad thing hadn't happened and wishing that things could be different - I'm not suggesting trying to drop those feelings, because grappling with and feeling those is very much part of the process. But in terms of where you go from here, where your way through this will be: you will be able to be the person you are, and live the life you want, from the point you're at right now. Even if you have no idea how yet! Maybe "forward" might help you grasp inwardly that you'll get there from here, and that you wouldn't need to undo what's done in order to be the person you are and want to be.

[Tigger1]

Hey,
I get what your saying about forward rather than back, it's just I feel kinda stuck in the past right now, like reliving the past is somehow gonna make it all go away, like trying to find some sort of clue as to why and when stuff changed and if at any point he did give me some reason to believe this would happen, will help me somehow to make sure it doesn't happen again in the future with anyone else. Which is either a right or wrong way to look at it I guess. I've taken to heart the comments people at work said about him being a nice guy and that he would do such a thing and I guess I'm still trying to deal with this wave of self blame. Because yer he WAS a nice guy, so I thought anyway, he didn't as we have said before have a sign saying anything else. I fell for him, the guy he was before all this and I'm just trying to get my head round it all TBH. It's complicated, it's confusing and it sucks. Yet I know I need to get through this and not let it rule my future. It's just hard right now.

[Heather]

It might also help to bear in mind that probably he WASN'T a nice guy. After all, someone doesn't have some sort of Jeckyll and Hyde switch from being someone nice to being someone who rapes and harasses and intimidates.

Rather, what it likely was -- including for your co-workers -- was that he was good at pretending to be a nice guy, really good, from the sounds of things, but that's often the case with abusive people. That's how they wind up with opportunities to abuse at all (because if we saw them coming, they wouldn't get them) and how they hide their abusive behavior so they can keep doing it, and also how they get or keep things -- like jobs -- they otherwise wouldn't if they behaved abusively.

That's not on you, or your co-workers, for being stupid or anything like that: rather, it's a testament to how good a job many abusive people do at conning people into thinking they're someone safe.

[Redskies]

(cross-posted with Heather, but probably both responses are useful to you )

When something very major happens, it often takes quite a while for our brain to catch up and process it, which is basically what your brain is trying to do at the moment. And like Sam said, replaying what happened and thinking a lot about what happened is often part of the processing - it's part of your brain grappling with it and trying to grasp it and figure out what the hell might be appropriate to do with it. It's very natural, because after all, there's very little in the world that's less appropriate for the other person to have done than assaulted someone. How do we figure out what to do, mentally, with something that's so intrinsically unreasonable?- it's really hard. And of course, that's on top of the practical things that you're also dealing with.

I think a lot of general-world rhetoric goes along lines of "rapists are monsters". Rape and sexual assault are monstrous things to do to someone, sure. The people who do it don't usually seem like monsters, though. They're otherwise very ordinary people, and ranging into people who otherwise appear to be nice, who appear to care about other people, who do things for other people. Seemingly nice people - people who are nice to other people, people who've been nice to us - can assault people. It's not mutually exclusive. Too, like I touched on before, often the assaulty part is not some unpleasant add-on. Usually, the seeming-nice part is a deliberate and essential part of their whole thing. They use niceness and trust-gaining as a way to get the opportunity to assault someone and to try to get away with it - because they're so nice, how could they?! You didn't do anything wrong by taking his nice-seeming self-presentation at face value: most of us take people as they present themselves to us, because that's how human interactions generally work.

It's usually an especially hurtful and challenging part of the whole thing that someone we chose to spend time with and thought was nice then assaulted us. That's still not on us, though: their "nice" presentation is equally a part of their harmful bad behaviour as their actual assault/s are. Very usually, the assault couldn't exist without the "nice" setup: being nice to us and setting themself up as someone we might like and trust is also a wrong that they did to us. I know it's very hard to process, but it's also not our fault for going along with the person they presented themself as: that part is also on them, their responsibility and their fault.

This can be a hard and scary fact, but mostly with assault, it's simply bad luck. Bad luck that someone with bad intentions came into our orbit. What you described sounds so very deliberate: if it hadn't been you, it would have been someone else. This didn't happen because of you, it happened because of him, and the actions he chose.

[Tigger1]

I know deep down that a 'nice guy' wouldn't of drugged and raped me. I know a nice guy wouldn't have put me through what I'm going through. I do partly understand that I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and I am glad in a weird way that he did this to me and not anyone else, I wouldn't eish this on anyone! I'm also glad that I reported this to the police after much debating and a lot of conversation because it means he won't be able to do this to anyone else.
i don't have enough words to say how much I hate this guy for everything he has done to me, yet I fell in love with his niceness, I fell in love with the guy he wanted me to see. His act as it were. That hurts, not just the being in love for the first time part or whatever but the fact that I was totally honest with him, about everything. I let him in and he saw how vulnerable I was and maybe he became nicer because of this. I can not help feeling like I betrayed myself in that respect. He is the first person in a very very long time I have let see my vulnerability and I can not stop feeling like if I had just kept my distance things would of been different and that makes me angry at myself. I know I can't see through people's acts or whatever I am but human it's just that it all just hurts right now and I am trying to process all of this and look forward. It's just hard. Too hard sometimes.

[Sam W]

Hi Tigger,

You're absolutely right that it hurts to open up to and be vulnerable with someone and have them take total advantage of that in such an awful way. Something to keep in mind is that people who are predatory in the way this guy is are often very good at reading other people and presenting themselves in a way that makes other people trust them, because that makes it easier to keep doing what they're doing. Like you said yourself, you can't be expected to know every instance when someone is manipulative. And the you who opened up to this guy was acting in good faith. You thought he was trustworthy because he was acting like he was. The fact that he wasn't is his doing.

I want to emphasize that it's okay to feel as though all these conflicting feelings and ideas are jumbled up inside you. This is a huge thing to have to recover from, and that means it is likely to be hard. But, you've taken a lot of steps to take care of yourself that have been equally hard. You've got what it takes to get through this stage of things too.

[Tigger1]

Thanks,
I know this isn't going to be magically all ok in a day and I know it's ok to feel the way I feel and yes it is all jumbled up but then I suppose the whole situation is jumbled up.
I've got the therapy thingy again soon and hopefully given time that will begin to feel easier and I think it's just a case of one foot in front on the other for however long this takes.

[Sam W]

I think that's an incredibly good mindset to have going into therapy. And if you're not doing so already, I really encourage you to build in bits and pieces of self-care throughout your day so that you have some time to take care of yourself. I'd also suggest, to the degree that you're comfortable doing so, sharing the feelings that you've talked about with us here with your therapist as well. You deserve the space to talk about those jumbled emotions and see if you can start unjumbling them.

[Tigger1]

Yer, I get that. I've only had one session so far and the last one I spent most of the time in silence trying to think about what I wanted to offload. Maybe this time I'll have a better idea of what to offload and how. It felt like a good thing last time I was there but also having those feelings about what to expect last time didn't really help. So yer, I'm happierish to be going this time with a little more knowledge of what to expect.

[Tigger1]

Had my session this morning, i managed to talk about how jumbled up I'm feeling about things and how I can't pin point one feeling in particular that stands out more than any other. She has suggested I write them down, write every emotion/feeling down and then along side it, put why I feel like that which part of this whole thing led me to feel like that etc etc as well as how I feel I might combat that feeling in the future (if I feel I can do that right now) if not then that's ok too and then in the next session we can go through it in more detail if I WANT to, she said that writing things down might mean I can get everything into some sort of order as well as getting a good starting point to start to recover from this. So that's what I'm gonna do, I'm going to make a start anyway. I've got a funky coloured journal and that is my starting point.

I've found new songs to listen to which are more about moving forward and staying strong, the kind previously suggested that I'm able to sing loudly too but they also have lyrics that I'm connecting with in a small way right at this moment in time.

Working from home is great so far, means I can take time out of my day to do things I want to do, I'm dealing with the contract that enabled this situation to kind of come about, it's difficult because we dealt with this contact together and seeing the previous communications we shared is hard as well as just seeing his name written down. But being at home means I am able to walk away from the computer or paperwork and turn the music on at full volume or just refocus.
Off to do bits and pieces now but just wanted to let you guys know about session and stuff