Regaining Trust After Sexual Assault

[bisexuwhale]

Hi Scarleteen,
I've been using your site for a while as a means to get the queer sex ed training that I wasn't getting in my school's health classes. But I'm at a weird point right now. When I was a young teen, I was emotionally manipulated by an older guy, who attempted to molest me multiple times. I'm really career-oriented, and people don't generally reciprocate my feelings, so I doubt I'll be in any intimate situations anytime soon, but I'm nervous about getting close to someone that way again. I haven't ever been in a relationship or even kissed someone that I gave consent to. I just want to know how I can build trust again when I do end up in an intimate situation with someone. I would talk to my therapist about this, but it's not the most pressing issue I have right now, and I never get a chance to talk to her about this. Thanks Scarleteen

-Bisexuwhale

[Sam W]

Hi bisexuwhale,

I'm so sorry someone did that to you when you were younger, and that you're still having to manage the fall-out from it.

Your question is pretty common among survivors, and I can offer you a few pieces of advice from some of the survivor's I've worked with. A big part of learning to trust is encountering a partner (or potential partner) who is trustworthy. That may feel obvious, but some survivors will push themselves to trust someone who is setting off their warning bells because they feel like demonstrating that trust is part of their healing. Generally speaking, a trustworthy partner is someone who acknowledges and respects your boundaries (sexual and otherwise), who's words and actions align with each other, and who seems invested in supporting you and building you up rather than controlling you or putting you down. Does that make sense?

The other big factor in rebuilding trust is pacing, particularly what pace of intimacy feels okay to you. For some people, developing intimacy and trust with a partner takes weeks, for others it's months. None of those paces are the "correct" one, it's about whatever feels right to you. It also helps to be up front with your partner about how slow you'll need to take it (you don't have to go into major details about why that is). Practicing those kinds of conversations can be a great use for your therapist.

How do you feel in terms of trusting people who aren't potential romantic or sexual partners? Like, do you have an easy time trusting friends?

[bisexuwhale]

Hi Sam,
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly
I do often have trouble trusting friends. Not so much in the sense of sharing secrets, telling them things, but definitely in the physical sense. I've done those trust exercises that people often do in leadership training (having someone lead you around while you're blindfolded, trust falls, etc.) and I find that those are the times when I find it the hardest to trust.

[Sam W]

You're welcome

Got it, I was wondering if the distrust of physical contact was unique to romantic contexts. It sounds like, then, some of this is about relearning to trust physical contact from people you feel comfortable with. Your distrust of physical contact is completely understandable, since your brain might be trying to prevent further trauma by going, "nope, not letting anyone get physically close enough to do that again."

Do you feel like you'd want to try building trust around physical contact with your friends? It might give you a way to test the waters and practice setting boundaries in a setting that doesn't feel as high stakes as an intimate moment with a partner. For instance, maybe a friend hugs you from behind and you realize that that is a big no-go for you and freaks you out. You get to practice saying, "I'm not comfortable when people hug me without me being able to see them coming. Let's just stick to front hugs." with someone who you trust and who cares about you, so that when you have to set a boundary with a partner it feels easier to you. Does that make sense?

[bisexuwhale]

It does. See, that's the weird thing: physical contact with friends is totally ok with me, and I do enjoy that. I think that doing those exercises remind me of the incident a bit. I'm a stage actress, and that's how the guy and I met, we were playing opposite of one another onstage. Since then, I have had a lot of intimacy onstage with others, and I always have a bit of anxiety surrounding that. The exercises were in that same context, building trust with your scene partners, and I think that's probably why it triggered me. I've found that just practicing the onstage intimacy helps, so it gets desensitized for me I guess? But I don't know, I still am afraid of offstage intimacy more. To clarify, the attempted sexual assault happened offstage, typically backstage, while we were waiting to enter for the next scene.

[Sam W]

That absolutely makes sense as a trigger. When you think about being intimate offstage, what parts of that idea make you most afraid? For instance, some people might be afraid of the intimacy triggering a panic attack or other unpleasant reaction, while others might be more concerned about a partner they really like leaving them if intimacy is too "challenging."

[bisexuwhale]

Honestly the thing I'm most afraid of is that I'm going to be validated again. And I guess that does mean I'm afraid of panic attacks at that point. But mainly just that it's going to happen again, and that I'm not going to be able to stop it this time

[Sam W]

That's a really common fear for survivors, and it's a tricky one because it's one of the few elements of the situation that you don't have complete control over. Because ultimately, whether someone tries to hurt you again is about their choices, not yours, which isn't always a comforting thought. We can't really control how another person chooses to behave.

There's a few ways to approach that fear. One is to give yourself permission to develop comfort with a person over as long a time period as is necessary and not feel pushed to let people into your space until you're pretty darn sure they'll respect it. You can also keep an eye on how that person reacts to boundaries and limits that you or other people set, or how they react when they're told "no" or "stop" in day to day life. It's also 100% okay to trust your gut on a person or situation, even if you can't articulate why they're setting off your alarm bells.

Another way to approach the fear is to work through a scenario in your head of what you'd do if a partner started to push. This is the kind of exercise where it can be helpful to have a therapist as a guide. It may help bring down some of the ambient nervousness because feeling like we have a plan for when things go wrong can often calm us. The big caveat with this is that sometimes, when bad things happen, they don't look the way they did in our plan or we freeze up or panic. If that were to happen in your case, it wouldn't be your fault. Ever.

[bisexuwhale]

I think I'll talk to my therapist about trying that. Thank you so much, you have no idea how much this helps.
You're the bomb, Sam W. <3

[Sam W]

You're so, so welcome