Kaira Senka
New Here
I'll try to be as concise as possible. At the beginning of my second year at the top graduate program in the USA for my field, I was raped by my ex-boyfriend, who was an older student in a different program there. He had stalked me for a month after we broke up - he was emotionally abusive and rejected any notion of accepting that I mattered to him, so I left him. He had climbed over my balcony to break into my apartment more than once. Campus hotlines didn't help, and the rape happened (twice) before any of the available resources could reach me. I wound up in front of the Title IX office, trying to get a no-contact order (internal to the campus, no police involved). During that time, he retaliated through Title IX by accusing me of relationship violence, and the process dragged on for a couple months. He didn't have a case against me, but Title IX was satisfied with placing no-contact orders on both of us and leaving it at that.
I was completely dissociated and did not even realize I had been raped. No one ever suggested that I should go to police. I spiraled downwards into seriously suicidal thoughts and ended up in a three-day psychiatric hold at the hospital. I was diagnosed with major depression and PTSD. Afterwards, I started to realize what had happened.
For the next few months, I did therapy that helped me process what had happened and regulate my feelings. I would have flashbacks and anxiety, often not sleeping until very late.
However, during this time, I felt my capacity to think about my work had diminished significantly. I was trying to get a PhD and impress my research adviser, but I had tremendous difficulty focusing. I ended up avoiding some of my classes because they were near my ex-boyfriend's office. My performance slipped everywhere. By the time my PhD qualifying exam came around, I felt like I was studying and studying but not remembering anything. Obviously, I failed my exam, which was completely oral. I was extremely nervous and froze up, forgetting many things and incorrectly stumbling through answers I had known in the past. The professors were visibly surprised by my terrible performance. My adviser yelled at me over something trivial in a lab meeting a few weeks later.
I've already decided not to continue on with the PhD since it's probably better for me to leave that place and get a job (and the adviser was not a nice guy, even to people doing well), but I hate this feeling of everyone looking at me like I'm the dumbest person ever. I used to ace everything and perform extremely well to get to this top-notch university, and I stopped being able to even answer basic, easy questions.
I just wonder if this makes sense to anyone on this forum. I don't want to use what's happened to me as an excuse for under-performing, but sometimes I wonder if it's normal for this type of trauma to set people back this much.
I was completely dissociated and did not even realize I had been raped. No one ever suggested that I should go to police. I spiraled downwards into seriously suicidal thoughts and ended up in a three-day psychiatric hold at the hospital. I was diagnosed with major depression and PTSD. Afterwards, I started to realize what had happened.
For the next few months, I did therapy that helped me process what had happened and regulate my feelings. I would have flashbacks and anxiety, often not sleeping until very late.
However, during this time, I felt my capacity to think about my work had diminished significantly. I was trying to get a PhD and impress my research adviser, but I had tremendous difficulty focusing. I ended up avoiding some of my classes because they were near my ex-boyfriend's office. My performance slipped everywhere. By the time my PhD qualifying exam came around, I felt like I was studying and studying but not remembering anything. Obviously, I failed my exam, which was completely oral. I was extremely nervous and froze up, forgetting many things and incorrectly stumbling through answers I had known in the past. The professors were visibly surprised by my terrible performance. My adviser yelled at me over something trivial in a lab meeting a few weeks later.
I've already decided not to continue on with the PhD since it's probably better for me to leave that place and get a job (and the adviser was not a nice guy, even to people doing well), but I hate this feeling of everyone looking at me like I'm the dumbest person ever. I used to ace everything and perform extremely well to get to this top-notch university, and I stopped being able to even answer basic, easy questions.
I just wonder if this makes sense to anyone on this forum. I don't want to use what's happened to me as an excuse for under-performing, but sometimes I wonder if it's normal for this type of trauma to set people back this much.