What I’m wondering today is how smaller, more mundane acts of physical surrender contribute to my inability to react powerfully, immediately, when a major violation is in the works. Is it just a sort of sexual violation triage thing? A picking of the battles worth fighting? Choosing what to take seriously and what to brush off is a delicate matter, especially for a survivor. How much is governed by the incredible desire to continue believing -- sometimes until it’s too late -- that this isn’t really happening again? These are a few considerations at work when, for example, a guy real quick all of a sudden sticks his hands down your pants at a club. In that kind of situation, my tendency is to duck through the crowd and find friends, and never think twice about it. What’s the point in confrontation, anyway? But then again maybe there’s something insidious about treating things like that as commonplace when they really, really shouldn’t be.
In a fight or flight situation, I choose flight Every. Single. Time. This kind of reaction may make sense in a case, like one recently, where I was stuck on a secluded beach with one other girl and some strange guy who was doing all kinds of nasty shit to me and wouldn’t stop even though I kept pushing him away and running. I wasn’t in a safe city and I didn’t know the guy, so probably sprinting as far away as possible with my friend was the smartest move. Smarter, anyway, then getting in his face. So I ran, laughingly, like many girls I know would, until I felt safe. And when someone asked, why are you smiling? I said, Because I don’t know what else to do. And then went to have a good cry in my shower, because I felt -- as is too often the case -- dirty and afraid.
But maybe I didn’t act like that because it was the smart thing to do. Maybe I am just still terrified of how a situation shifts and can spin far beyond what you expected if you make someone angry. People can become something else altogether when they are angry. Maybe the memories that kind of situation stirs up are still too close, too vivid. And maybe I smiled through it because I didn’t want it to be real, didn’t want to have to deal with it. Why does it always have to be me dealing with it? I somehow doubt that guy went home feeling dirty. I somehow doubt he cried. It starts to feel like a waste of time to take seriously, or care at all, what people do to my body. Like it would be a better idea to think of my identity, or what matters and defines me, as separate from my physical person. But I’ve been down that road, and I know it leads to a place much worse than this.
I’m still incredibly sensitive to these issues-- references to sexual violence, or the smallest slight to womankind, send me into days-long silences, furies. Part of the reason why I don’t react to the negative ways men sometimes treat me is because I’m worried I’m overreacting, worried I’m equating insults to me as a person with insults to me as a woman. (Although arguably I should react to insults to me as a person, too.) On a political level, it’s probably a good thing to choose only the big fights, so as not to make the cause seem light or petty. I don’t want to confront these issues too frequently because 1) I don’t want them to take over my life, as they did for some time, and 2) I don’t want to cheapen the effect of my words. I don’t want to be angry all the time. When I say something’s wrong, I want it to count.
But on a personal level, I wonder if that kind of quotidian compromise to avoid confrontation is a form of denial, or a way to pacify my legitimate anger, or at least a sad sort of resignation. I wonder if that’s one of the places (albeit not the most significant one) where I get that sick attitude that this is just what my life is going to be like. Because truthfully there are many times I wish I was the kind of person who would turn around on a dance-floor, look someone in the eye, and say stop, or what do you think you’re doing. Or the kind of person who demands the respect, not just the attention, of the people I spend my nights with, and would throw down if I didn’t get that respect, 100% of it. Unfortunately, I’m not that person, and I don’t do those things. I just run.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
They Say Rape Isn't About Sex
The general lecture goes like this: There's no need to cloister yourself, to wear baggy clothing, to hide how pretty you are. Too many rape victims are shut-ins, boys, crippled, elderly. The most typically sexually attractive girl on the block isn't the most likely to get raped, because rape isn't about sex. It's about power, and control. So if you're a cute young woman, not to worry, you're in no particular danger. Or put another way, no matter how safe you think you are (but I'm overweight and over 60!), we're all in danger.
This is true, but it also isn't, I think, and not just because of differences in prevalence (girls are more likely than boys to be victims, for example). Like take this article(PDF) for example, about surgical castration of sexually violent criminals, and more broadly speaking, the impacts of testosterone on recidivism for convicted sex offenders. It's pretty clear, at least from this very small group of (partially archaic) studies, that a reduction in testosterone leads to a reduction in the desire to rape or engage in other violent sexual behavior. So, I mean, it is about sex, right? Or the violence - testosterone connection, about which I know little. Educate me, dear reader(s?)!
But then again, all guys have testosterone, and there's no mention of sex offenders having more of it. And most guys aren't rapists, so the current thinking goes, so that 1 in 4 stat is just because there's a handful of guys who rape a lot of people. So it isn't just about testosterone, or sexual impulses per se. I mean, my incident was about sex for I think the first fifteen minutes, and then about power and control for the last twenty (the fighting and the whole 'I don't get said no to' motif). I can pretty clearly remember when it changed.
So I guess what I'm trying to negotiate is ultimate causes, and that's not really realistic. But the power/sex dyad or interactive duo or whatever you want to call it, it's very interesting to me. I mean, raping a kid or a nursing home patient is about power, right? But then if the above article spits the truth, the desire to do so could be eliminated by eliminated sex drive. I mean, getting surgically castrated hardly makes you more in control of your life, or more powerful, or more loved, or whatever the other x factors in a rape are. Right?
As one of the perpetrator's idiot friends said during questioning:
He couldn't have done it, he didn't even like her!
This is true, but it also isn't, I think, and not just because of differences in prevalence (girls are more likely than boys to be victims, for example). Like take this article(PDF) for example, about surgical castration of sexually violent criminals, and more broadly speaking, the impacts of testosterone on recidivism for convicted sex offenders. It's pretty clear, at least from this very small group of (partially archaic) studies, that a reduction in testosterone leads to a reduction in the desire to rape or engage in other violent sexual behavior. So, I mean, it is about sex, right? Or the violence - testosterone connection, about which I know little. Educate me, dear reader(s?)!
But then again, all guys have testosterone, and there's no mention of sex offenders having more of it. And most guys aren't rapists, so the current thinking goes, so that 1 in 4 stat is just because there's a handful of guys who rape a lot of people. So it isn't just about testosterone, or sexual impulses per se. I mean, my incident was about sex for I think the first fifteen minutes, and then about power and control for the last twenty (the fighting and the whole 'I don't get said no to' motif). I can pretty clearly remember when it changed.
So I guess what I'm trying to negotiate is ultimate causes, and that's not really realistic. But the power/sex dyad or interactive duo or whatever you want to call it, it's very interesting to me. I mean, raping a kid or a nursing home patient is about power, right? But then if the above article spits the truth, the desire to do so could be eliminated by eliminated sex drive. I mean, getting surgically castrated hardly makes you more in control of your life, or more powerful, or more loved, or whatever the other x factors in a rape are. Right?
As one of the perpetrator's idiot friends said during questioning:
He couldn't have done it, he didn't even like her!
The Buzzword in the Mirror
Not to overuse this whole concept of dissociative behavior -- but it's new to me and I like it, I understand it, it explains something to me that eluded me before.
Website goes on to talk about childhood trauma, PTSD, those kinds of things. But another thing that interests me, particularly in the idea of childhood abuse, is the idea that at one point serious dissociative behaviors are adaptive, are a way to cope with something that can't be emotionally or cognitively processed. It's only in adulthood, or when the dangerous situation is gone, that the behavior becomes maladaptive, and thus problematic both clinically and i/t/o functioning.
What also interests me, beyond victim-focused discussions, is the possible presence (and I'm reaching here) of dissociative behaviors - albeit not full-blown dissociative disorders - among attackers, traumatizers. Soldiers are a good example of this, being in their own way both the perpetrators and the victims of their own violence. One imagines an otherwise normal soldier forced by a commander to commit some kind of atrocity abroad would have to engage in some kind of derealization or identity interference to be able to follow orders. For a soldier, dissociative behavior can be adaptive. So let's go see this new movie Waltz With Bashir.
And I saw it myself-- the way when the real violence began his eyes became empty of recognition, creepy and blank, their pupils somehow larger. They looked just like the eyes of a friend of mine in high school when she was sleepwalking and turned to look at me. It's not just that he lost control when he got angry, it's that he appeared to lose consciousness of who I was, of the reality of the situation, of the fear and desperation right in front of him. For a long time that expression of his has haunted me, and though I've never seen it since, I see reminders of it. When someone in group therapy dissociates, goes from competent adult to frightened child right in front of me, their eyes go with them.
And so the line between ourselves and our enemies further blurs.
Dissociation is a word that is used to describe the disconnection or lack of connection between things usually associated with each other. Dissociated experiences are not integrated into the usual sense of self, resulting in discontinuities in conscious awareness (Anderson & Alexander, 1996; Frey, 2001; International Society for the Study of Dissociation, 2002; Maldonado, Butler, & Spiegel, 2002; Pascuzzi & Weber, 1997; Rauschenberger & Lynn, 1995; Simeon et al., 2001; Spiegel & Cardeña, 1991; Steinberg et al., 1990, 1993). In severe forms of dissociation, disconnection occurs in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, or perception. For example, someone may think about an event that was tremendously upsetting yet have no feelings about it... The likelihood that a tendency to dissociate is inherited genetically is estimated to be zero (Simeon et al., 2001). http://www.isst-d.org/education/faq-dissociation.htm#depers
Website goes on to talk about childhood trauma, PTSD, those kinds of things. But another thing that interests me, particularly in the idea of childhood abuse, is the idea that at one point serious dissociative behaviors are adaptive, are a way to cope with something that can't be emotionally or cognitively processed. It's only in adulthood, or when the dangerous situation is gone, that the behavior becomes maladaptive, and thus problematic both clinically and i/t/o functioning.
What also interests me, beyond victim-focused discussions, is the possible presence (and I'm reaching here) of dissociative behaviors - albeit not full-blown dissociative disorders - among attackers, traumatizers. Soldiers are a good example of this, being in their own way both the perpetrators and the victims of their own violence. One imagines an otherwise normal soldier forced by a commander to commit some kind of atrocity abroad would have to engage in some kind of derealization or identity interference to be able to follow orders. For a soldier, dissociative behavior can be adaptive. So let's go see this new movie Waltz With Bashir.
And I saw it myself-- the way when the real violence began his eyes became empty of recognition, creepy and blank, their pupils somehow larger. They looked just like the eyes of a friend of mine in high school when she was sleepwalking and turned to look at me. It's not just that he lost control when he got angry, it's that he appeared to lose consciousness of who I was, of the reality of the situation, of the fear and desperation right in front of him. For a long time that expression of his has haunted me, and though I've never seen it since, I see reminders of it. When someone in group therapy dissociates, goes from competent adult to frightened child right in front of me, their eyes go with them.
And so the line between ourselves and our enemies further blurs.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
PTSD
5 people are driving in a car and there is an accident. Only person (not the driver) develops PTSD in the wake of the event. Why?
Diagnosis ---> Resolution:
This quote from NIMH's website is followed by a link for treatment, but it links to a page on treatment for anxiety disorders, broadly speaking. This, I assure you, is not the way to treat PTSD. At least not for me. No amount of Xanax could touch this 'anxiety'. I've been anxious before, I've had panic attacks before, and this was different.
In the program I have found that has finally be successful in treating what I now can comfortably identify as PTSD, the illness is treated differently than a typical anxiety disorder (although copious benzos are always helpful). Rather, it is treated as, to some extent or another depending on the person, a dissociative disorder, like dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality (with which PTSD is often comorbid especially in children). Trauma, for some people, is treated as a fundamentally a dis-integrating experience, and PTSD as a disintegrated worldview. The trick then is not to teach yourself how to stop being afraid -- although that is a goal -- but rather to figure out, slowly but surely, how the trauma and its concurrent reaction can be fit into the rest of your life (or reintegrated). Whether you need talk therapy, cognitive behavioral restructuring, hyponosis, or just paper and pens and a lot of time, the goal is to come to an understanding of Why You. But not why the trauma occurred to you, because that is often (as in my case) the malice of others and shit luck. Rather, why the PTSD did.
Now, in some ways, this requires working ahead of the medical community, whose members know very little about the Whys of PTSD. What they do know is often focused on and limited to war veterans, no doubt an group in need of help but perhaps not a representative sample. But they do not really know much about why that fifth person in the car is predisposed to PTSD. What you can bring to the table, though, is your knowledge of yourself. It may not provide any medical exactitude, but let's be honest, how often do psychiatrists offer that? So in my case, while underlying mood disorder tendencies are no doubt a component, there are other environmental factors, and factors in my personal history, that I realize now made it unlikely that I would find a way to healthily cope with what happened. So I sort of forgot, sort of panicked, sort of dissociated, was always hyper-vigilant, and was too numb to really be any of those things fully. I was textbook.
I'll explain all this more clearly. I've had some revelations. More to come.
P.S. For those in other circumstances, watch out for something called Complex PTSD, possibly to be included in the next DSM. It's what some victims of routine child abuse and other long-term childhood trauma experience, and has distinct symptoms.
Diagnosis ---> Resolution:
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat
This quote from NIMH's website is followed by a link for treatment, but it links to a page on treatment for anxiety disorders, broadly speaking. This, I assure you, is not the way to treat PTSD. At least not for me. No amount of Xanax could touch this 'anxiety'. I've been anxious before, I've had panic attacks before, and this was different.
There are four main symptoms of PTSD:
1. Reliving the event, in flashbacks, nightmares, etc.
2. Chronic avoidance of situations that bear some relation to the traumatic event
3. Numbing of emotions, forgetfulness
4. Hyper-vigilance/hyper-arousal
In the program I have found that has finally be successful in treating what I now can comfortably identify as PTSD, the illness is treated differently than a typical anxiety disorder (although copious benzos are always helpful). Rather, it is treated as, to some extent or another depending on the person, a dissociative disorder, like dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality (with which PTSD is often comorbid especially in children). Trauma, for some people, is treated as a fundamentally a dis-integrating experience, and PTSD as a disintegrated worldview. The trick then is not to teach yourself how to stop being afraid -- although that is a goal -- but rather to figure out, slowly but surely, how the trauma and its concurrent reaction can be fit into the rest of your life (or reintegrated). Whether you need talk therapy, cognitive behavioral restructuring, hyponosis, or just paper and pens and a lot of time, the goal is to come to an understanding of Why You. But not why the trauma occurred to you, because that is often (as in my case) the malice of others and shit luck. Rather, why the PTSD did.
Now, in some ways, this requires working ahead of the medical community, whose members know very little about the Whys of PTSD. What they do know is often focused on and limited to war veterans, no doubt an group in need of help but perhaps not a representative sample. But they do not really know much about why that fifth person in the car is predisposed to PTSD. What you can bring to the table, though, is your knowledge of yourself. It may not provide any medical exactitude, but let's be honest, how often do psychiatrists offer that? So in my case, while underlying mood disorder tendencies are no doubt a component, there are other environmental factors, and factors in my personal history, that I realize now made it unlikely that I would find a way to healthily cope with what happened. So I sort of forgot, sort of panicked, sort of dissociated, was always hyper-vigilant, and was too numb to really be any of those things fully. I was textbook.
I'll explain all this more clearly. I've had some revelations. More to come.
P.S. For those in other circumstances, watch out for something called Complex PTSD, possibly to be included in the next DSM. It's what some victims of routine child abuse and other long-term childhood trauma experience, and has distinct symptoms.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
What then must we do? (asked Saint Luke & Leo Tolstoy)
To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven." - Chuang Tse
M was right, I think. It is the smell of fall that's bringing it back, almost a year since it happened. I've been having nightmares out of nowhere, waking up to feel how a shaved scalp feels in your hands as you push and pull and bat it away from yourself, with the desperation of someone who - pinned down - took a shot at just closing her eyes and giving in and found her body rebelling. How can you still feel a scalp in your hands a year later, feel it physically, as if it were right now?
The best word is 'shaken'. My body is still a stranger to me. That night it made choices without me, though I think gratefully of the ways it protected me then. It's not so much that I don't trust it, since it fought bravely enough for both of us. It's that I don't think it should trust me. Or that I think of my body and me as two different beings.
We think of our bodies, unintentionally, in very obvious rape metaphors. I want desperately, palpably to be Washed Clean of something that is still torturing me, to Get Rid of Whatever Is On Me and Inside of Me. And it is a terrible thing (not to just realize but to really understand) that there's nothing to wash off, nothing to remove, nothing foreign inside of me that can be expunged or excised. There is nothing, physically, left to be done.
I am searching for something that I can neither feel in a clear emotion nor find tangibly. I don't live in self-hate or obvious fear, and there's also no corporeal injury to resolve. Something else is wrong, something I can't pinpoint anywhere or really give a name to. It makes my body feel out of place in the world, my mind subtly but persistently haunted. I haven't been talking to my confidantes about it because I can't think of a word for it, just like I can't convey it to you now. I'm just starting to try to talk about it because I don't have a choice, because my counselor told me not to be afraid of it.
How do you deal with flashbacks? My best friend asks me. Did they ever give you advice on how to handle that well? I think, I say resignedly, that you just have to face them. I don't think there's much else you can do. Face them until they don't scare you anymore. Don't try to cleanse yourself. Accept that you'll never be the same again. That there are things about your body, about how humans process the world, that you'll never understand. Like how an almost simple physical act of violence that (even months after tangible pain and fear are gone) could cause an echoing pain that hurts so badly for so long.
The trial is over. He won't do any time, but he got a long stint in probation and sex, violence and alcohol counseling mandatory. And about a grand in fines (around how much my sanity is worth). In the end I accepted a plea bargain because I just fucking couldn't do it. Because no matter how much support and evidence and conviction I had on my side, I would have walked into the room and it would have been me, him, and his damn lawyer alone in there. No matter how many people came with me when I'd have had to testify, all I would have seen and felt was the three of us, alone. And people say, Oh! I can't believe he didn't get time! And it sounds like an accusation. I did what I could to send him a message, and it's not like prison ever made anyone less criminal. And don't sit there and think how much farther you'd have pushed it if you'd been in my shoes. You have no idea how brave I was. It was just that in the end, after eight months locked in a horrible, intrusive staring contest, I couldn't do it all.
Now that it's over I realize something, anyway. Everyone feels it, especially me and my dad, who were the most involved in the criminal process. It's the best argument against the death penalty ever, this feeling. I don't feel any better, that's what it is. No matter how harsh his punishment, I don't honestly believe it will prevent him from doing this again. At least not forever. And no matter how harsh the punishment, I don't think I'd ever feel satisfied that justice was achieved. There is no justice because nothing will ever change what happened, and nothing that happens to him will ever heal me.
So that's the wall I've arrived at now. There are no distractions left, no other angles from which to approach my trauma. I have no trial left to focus on, and I can't make the future of this about him anymore. Although I know that one day I will fight hard and fight well to protect other people from living through this, I also know that it will be a while before I can. So I'm facing up now to the awful knowledge that today's battle (one campaign in a fucking unconscionably protracted war) is inside of me, or on me. The real fight is right here, somewhere between me and my body and the false dichotomy I've created between us.
I have absolutely no idea where to begin.
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