Silence/ freezing

[Jess@888]

I know some people freeze and are silent when they are in a dangerous situation. When I was sexually abused by my dad and sexually assaulted by my ex, I was silent and froze. When my dad did it, he would tell me all about his fantasies and behaviors then he attempted to masturbate right in front of me. When my ex sexually assaulted me, I froze and was silent like when I was my dad, except I had tears filling my eyes and I was silent to the point J could not do anything. The guilt, shame, and denial drove me crazy as I struggled with self harm thoughts,masturbating, and impulsive behaviors,eating less, or binge eating. Till this day I still struggle with shame and guilt as I think of ways I could have prevented this.

[Heather]

Truly, this is more common than not: freezing up when under stress, in any kind of trauma, and certainly with abuse is a very common reaction people have.

I feel confident that if you had been able to prevent being abused, you would have: I know that's the truth for any of us who have survived abuse. I also know that the idea it was on us to prevent comes 100% from rape culture and victim blaming, and is totally wrong. After all, if the person doing the abusing wasn't doing it, there would have been nothing for us to try and prevent or escape in the first place.

It can take a very long time, I'm afraid, to dump these feelings, or even to dial them down. But hopefully, with counseling like you have been getting, and talking with supportive people like you have here, that's getting chipped away little by little every day. It can just be hard to feel or see that progress sometimes. Can you at least take a second right now and look back behind you, through the healing journey (that sounds cheesy af, I know) you have been on so far and see if you can't identify some progress? It might help in moments when you're finding yourself feeling like you haven't made any.

[Jess@888]

Thank you, Heather! I have a hard time processing emotions however when I am away from people I am able to look back and remind myself that I became stronger from these traumatic experiences. I have been improving so much from the past few months.

[Heather]

I know! It's been hard to miss, even just how you sound in services here, it's clear you're doing a lot of hard work and some healing is happening.

I forget if you still have to be around your ex or your father: do you? If so, do you want to talk about how you can deal with that if or when there's no way around it?

[Jess@888]

I do not seek my dad or my ex. However, I have been struggling with high levels of anxiety with my stress which triggers my trauma. Is this normal? How come I still feel guilty for what happened with my dad and ex?

[Heather]

(Jess, I'm off today, but back tomorrow. Just letting you know I see this, and I'll pick this up with you then. If you don't want to wait on me, though, just holler and if other staff are around again before me, someone else will probably pipe in.)

[Heather]

The short answer to that last question is that it usually takes survivors a long time and a lot of work to stop feeling that way. And it is generally even harder for incest survivors, especially the earlier the abuse started, because the more you've generally internalized the idea it's your fault.

I don't know what will ultimately work best for you, but one thing you might try when you feel like that is to just kind of walk yourself back through the steps of what happened, understanding that how any abuse started is that someone decided to abuse someone. How can it be up to you, or anyone else BUT that person, what happened? After all, if they had not decided to abuse someone, no matter what you did or didn't do, they wouldn't have abused you. Does that make sense?

It may be that for a good while still you have to often do little thought and reframing journeys like that in your mind when those feelings of it being your fault or somehow about what you did come up. The good news is that the more time that passes and the more what you're thinking is coming from truth-telling places like that, and not from things like abuse that victim-blames, culture that victim-blames, the less often you'll find your head in that trap and the easier it will be to get rid of those thoughts when you do still land there.

[Jess@888]

Thank you, Heather! This process has been hard since I will never deal with it when these things happened. Now, I want to effectively heal from this! I think stress of starting college triggered this for some reason. After work on Fri, I told my coworker to see if he wanted to go out with me and told him he was hot. He was got off guard when I said that and explained he does not want to date as I can relate with that. He took me by surprise when he said he will work it out with me. I gave him my phone number and have not yet heard from him. I hope this does work out bc I want to enjoy dating again without my past trauma affecting my dating relationships when I now know my boundaries.

[Heather]

I don't know if you want to shift gears to this thing with your co-worker: it sounds like you do, but feel free to guide me back to what we were talking about earlier if I have that wrong.

I'm a bit confused by his responses, personally. I hear you describing him saying no, because he doesn't want to date, then saying he would "work it out," and -- right? -- asking for your number, than not calling. Personally, if someone told me they didn't want to be dating, I'd walk away. Dating someone who doesn't want to date is pretty much a recipe for nothing great, you know? (Dating coworkers is also always thorny in the best of circumstances.)

But just because, and if, it didn't work out with this person doesn't mean you couldn't date. Generally dating involves at least a few tires, and a few hits and misses before we even find a dating relationship where we have more than one date and that one date in the first place. Perhaps you can think of this exchange as you getting practice just asking, and dipping your roe into that water?

I do want to say that our past trauma is usually going to influence ALL our relationships, dating an otherwise. There's just usually no avoiding that, particularly in intimate relationships. But you don't have to avoid it to learn to manage it: you can often have trauma in your history and have trauma have an influence without it unduly limiting you from living the life you want to live and from doing the things you want to do.

[Jess@888]

Thank you, Heather for your advice! I told him that I was hot and asked him out, but he did not give me a clear reason. Besides, he said he will work it out with me. I want to give dating another round before I considered myself studious with school.