Triggers?

[redme]

For as long as I can remember, I have been triggered by descriptions or depictions of rape and sexual assault. I remember reading a non-graphic narrative about molestation (I was probably 10-12 years old) and being unable to sleep for a long time. The idea of rape has always terrified me. I've been being treated for an anxiety disorder for a few years now, and I'm doing really well, but sexual assault is still a trigger for me. I can calm myself down, but certain things still cause mild panic attacks. The first time a guy went down on me (without asking--I was 17), I had my first panic attack that included hyperventilating.

I just don't understand why. Is it possible that I'm repressing some kind of earlier sexual trauma? Why is rape triggering if I haven't been raped? It seems impossible that I've so completely blocked something from my memory; could there be another reason that sexual assault is such a profound fear?

[Heather]

Rape is a very serious kind of violence, so it's sound for people to find it and depictions of it very disturbing. This isn't just something that upsets or scares those of us who have been sexually assaulted (and what triggers those of us who have can be ANYTHING, not just a description of rape: like, say, a smell we smelled while being assaulted, the way someone said something, the sound of pants coming off, you name it, it can be a trigger: this is one of the big flaws with trigger warnings, that there would have to be one on literally everything).

As your therapist for the anxiety disorder can probably tell you, having one often makes people more anxious about just about everything, especially some of the earnestly scary things in the world. And I'd say a child reading depictions of molestation would most likely be pretty traumatized by that: that's awfully young to be looking at that kind of material and do have any kind of context for it.

Ultimately, it's very, very unusual for people to utterly block out -- completely -- any sexual assault that happened to them. So, I'd be inclined to simply attach this to you being someone very upset and scared by very upsetting and scary things. Flatly, I think when people don't feel pretty upset by depictions of rape, they've likely been desensitized and schooled by the rape-enabling so prevalent in pretty much every culture on earth.

That said, what you're describing at 17, someone doing something sexual to you without your permission? That's what sexual assault is, and reacting to it like you did is typical: when we are being sexually assaulted in any way, we certainly are going to tend to feel scared and upset. So, some of this now may also have to do with that experience, as well.

[redme]

Thanks for this. I've definitely come to recognize that some of my encounters with my first boyfriend were coercive/borderline sexual assault, and I've been dealing with that. But you think that growing up with a sort of paranoia around sexual assault is normal––or at least, not necessarily indicative of something deeper?

[Sam W]

Hi redme,

I think what Heather was getting at is that the idea of being sexually assaulted is upsetting for most people, and for many of us it is a scary thought (again, there's a whole other dimension of this for people who have been assaulted). So it's reasonable that a lot of people would be frightened of being assaulted, even if there was nothing deeper going on in their past. Too, if you are dealing with things like an anxiety disorder (or you just tend to be more nervous, or grew up in a household that emphasized the dangerous side of the world, just to name a few examples) that could affect the degree to which you feel that fear or express that fear. Does that make sense?

Edit: To give an example, I carry a fear of assault on some kind of baseline level. But several years ago I read an account of a specific rape and could not sleep that night because it had just pinged my fear really hard. So you may even find that the level of fear you have around this is going to shift.