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FeedLife After Rape: Trauma Recovery
Sexual assault is a trauma that no woman should ever suffer. After an attack, victims of rape may find themselves experiencing a plethora of psychological reactions connected with Rape Trauma Syndrome. According to RAINN.org, symptoms of rape trauma can include intense mood swings, sleeplessness, eating disorders or withdrawal from once normal daily activities.
Psychotherapist, social worker and author Babette Rothschild offers rape survivors a plan of action to reclaim their lives with her book 8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery. While Rothschild herself is a clinician, she insists that therapy is not the only viable option.
Rothschild says the need for professional help depends highly on the individual. “I really think it is between the person and their own needs,” she says. “It’s not always wise to push professional help on somebody if they don’t want it.” For those who choose other means besides therapy, carefully monitoring your progress is key. Keeping an eye on how well you can manage your feelings, function in daily life, sleep relatively soundly and eat reasonably will indicate whether your path of recovery is working.
“If those things are all going well and the person is wanting to continue in that direction on their own, I say go for it,” says Rothschild. “But if any of those things are compromised, then they might want to consider at least consultation.”
Rothschild explains that a person’s support system of friends and family can be just as valuable as professional help. In her book, Rothschild touches on “sharing your shame.” When preparing to tell your story, she says to select your confidant carefully. “Think over your network and the people you are closest to and what their strengths and weaknesses are,” she says. “You don’t want to get yourself in a situation where you’re hoping to get support and that person is unavailable or, at worst, totally traumatized by what you’re telling them and needing you to support them.”
According to Rothschild, trauma victims being in control of their own healing and recovery is pivotal. “It makes absolutely no sense for someone who has lost control in trauma to go into a situation where they continue to lose control with a professional,” Rothschild urges. Selecting a therapist should be a careful process with many factors to consider. Rothschild says trauma victims need to be mindful of “the fit between the therapist and the client and the fit between the client and the methodology. It’s very important that when looking for professional help, they choose a therapist who has more than one methodology available for them so there is flexibility if one does not work.”
While most may think facing your trauma head-on and confronting the memories is a crucial element to recovery, reliving trauma is one thing Rothschild is cautious about. “Sometimes remembering makes it worse,” she says. “Why do it if it makes you less functional? A person should never be forced to relive those memories and should be well prepared if they choose to. Any time you open up that Pandora’s box, it is destabilizing.”
Whatever method of recovery a victim chooses, Rothschild says the key is to be mindful of the process and know your options. “People were surviving rape for thousands of years before there were ever therapists,” she says. “Most of the time they did that with support from their families, their friends, their spiritual guide. So there are other tools. Though often valuable, psychotherapy and trauma therapy are not the only ways to recover from something like that.”
For more on rape, read Lesbian-on-Lesbian Rape, part two of Victoria Brownworth's five-part social issues series.
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Reader Comments:
I have to strongly disagree with her! Handling trauma victims like they are too fragile is a crock.
The trauma SHOULD BE exposed. Again and again and again and AGAIN.... Journal it, tape it, vent it....Until the events begin to become less severe. And it will!! Your feelings are brought OUT including the ones you weren't aware of. Holding all the pain, fear, hate will STAY inside unless it's brought to the surface. The sting will be minimized. Everything will find its place. You become DETACHED from the abuses and abuser. You start feeling free to go out and actually do something, talk to people, fix a nice meal and can sleep. It won't be immediate. TIME. PATIENCE. If over time you feel bothered with the trauma...KEEP TALKING. It will get ok. Really. Hopefully after time, this trauma will just be a memory like in the same vane as the time you rode your bike to the park.
I think this author is not privy to trauma at all. Maybe a country-bumpkin. REAL trauma exists in tough places like Newark, NJ, Chicago, IL, the lower east side, where she needs to go to do serious education!! And she needs educated on this!
So I would save my money with this book. Read a trauma book like "Honor Betrayed" or something!
I can't tell you how many times people have pushed me when I am not ready. The comment above me is obviously from someone who has never been raped.
Reliving it when you are not ready, especially if you've just gotten your trial over with, can cause tremendous set backs. It made me more scared, more afraid. It pulled things out of me I was not ready for, as a result I suffered some memory loss and then developed PTSD. I cannot remmeber certain details, yet other details are SO VIVID that just a certain smell or sound will make me have a flashback and I will panic.
Time and patience is the key to healing. You just can't talk about it, and talk and talk and talk. THAT'S NOT GOING TO HEAL ANYTHING. Survivors like me need COPING MECHANISMS. If it's to the point where you have PTSD like I do, just talking about it is not gonna cut it.
Give me grounding strategies, help me set up a support network, tell me what I am feeling is NORMAL,etc. Those are things therapists should know more about, as this Author seems to know. Sometimes it just doesn't go away, we need to learn to DEAL with how it has affected our life and learn to cope.
You can never move on from rape, it's always with you. The memory is ingrained in your brain. Instead of trying to "just move on" we need to learn how to cope with every day life living as a survivor. We need to learn why we feel a certain way, where is this emotion coming from. We need people who are willing to LISTEN and not pass judgment.
This book is catching my attention, I need some self-healing because at the moment I am not seeing a therapist to deal with my issues due to insurance reasons. This book looks like it might be an interesting read, and may give me a form a self-understanding which I am desperately seeking.
It's very overwhelming to have emotions you cannot describe, and to have feelings that you cannot understand where they are surfacing from. We are expected to "know" how to heal and how to deal with being raped.
i'm a 15 yrold rape victim, and to tell u the truth no one person can determine how things should be handled when faced with a trauma like this, i've tried all of the above over a 6yr period and none have helped.