Sexual Assault Exposure therapy

[Miss_Basilisk]

I was wondering whether anyone here has tried exposure therapy for like one of their main triggers? My rapist had a pretty strong Scottish accent and since then, whenever I hear a man with the same accent, I get nauseous and sometimes actually vomit. My counselor brought up trying exposure therapy for the accent cause, just my luck, my cousins who grew up in Scotland and have Scottish accents are coming down for Chinese New year in about two months. The thought of having to hear them constantly is genuinely terrifying and nausea-inducing.

Has anyone else tried exposure therapy for something similar and if yes, what was it like for you? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Stephernovas]

yes. that is what Im going through right now. Basically the point is to talk the trauma directly, and go over and over and over it until you don't have such an adverse reaction to it - so you come to realize nothing bad is going to happen. It's been tough to get me to talk

 

[Justmehere]

Yes. It’s been helpful. There was a sound I couldn’t handle well. We went through the process until I could play the sound on my phone without being triggered.

It’s not for everyone, but it’s pretty well studied and can be pretty effective.

Well done exposure therapy for something like a sound would not be to immediately just expose to the trigger itself, but to approach from a distance until that gets easier. For example, if flying in a plane is a trigger, step one would not be to go get on a plane. It would be to talk about going to an airport. Then maybe getting near an airport. Then inside the airport. Then... well you get the idea. If the exposure done triggers *sustained* destabilization, it’s too much. If exposure triggers nothing, then it’s too little.

It was uncomfortable and not fun, but it worked for me for simple triggers like the sound.

I’d suggest making sure you have a good solid basis of coping skills before jumping into it (or any trauma therapy for that matter.) For me, that have me he confidence to be able to sit with the discomfort and stick it out.

 

[Freida]

yes -- for hospital phobia. Something tangible - a building. Just like @Justmehere described. go into parking lot and drive thru...go into parking lot and stop...and on and on and on

no-- for assault Dissociated the minute we tried to start. to many moving parts so we went for EMDR instead

 

[Friday]

Yep. At one point I had all my major, middling, & minor triggers sorted.

 

[Sandstone]

As I understand it, exposure therapy requires you to begin to approach the thing that causes the problem, then stay with it until your distress levels drop to a manageable level. You only move closer once the first stage is under control.

How could you make your exposure to your cousin's accents gradual?

The thought of having to hear them constantly is genuinely terrifying and nausea-inducing.

I think that could end up confirming your fear, unless you have a way to limit the time or the proximity.

 

[Friday]

By the by... Some ideas for edging closer:

Reading. Yep. Don't even have to start by listening. Simply try researching the different regional accents & dialects.

Listening (in no particular order)

- Near Accents (Irish is probably the closest, although weirdly, Jamaican has a lot of the same rhythms in a wildly different sounding accent. It MIGHT be close enough to get a little tingle/spike. Or it might not. For LATER work, there are over half a dozen variations of the Scottish accent... Once you've gotten yourself to being able to identify specific regions? It won't even ping your nervous system to be working listening to people from Glasgow if he was from Edinburgh, and then 90% of Edinburg won't spike you, because he was of a certain part of it. That's later, but it really does get there. And then, vanished all together.).

- Children (no child speaks their accent properly, yet. They're still learning it.)

- Fake accents (from really the really terrible to the spot on... And not just people doing Scottish accents, but Scots doing other accents. The tonality or rhythm will barely be there, but will still show from time to time, especially when shouting -actors flub shouted lines all the time- or making a "thinking" sound or "space" sound -ah, um, eh, oh, och, oy, etc.-. Actors are a fantastic pool to pull from.)

- Accent Teachers / Linguists (they'll actually break down sounds, phrases, rhythm into little pieces here & little pieces there, in a backdrop of their own accent). You can actually hire one, or there are a lot of tutorials around the web. I wouldn't start by listening to accent teachers do Scottish accents, but completely different ones (like Australian, or Italian). Just to learn vowel sounds and stuff.

- Singers. (Because most pop music is sung in an American accent, whilst most classical pieces are sung in an English one.)

- Old Movies. (We produce things differently now than we did in the 1940s.)

- Journalism-accent. No matter the local accent, journalists over enunciate and have their own unique rhythm.

Talking
Almost nothing is as bad as when you're doing it yourself. Whether it's attempting to replicate a sound, or setting off your own fireworks.

Overlay
- Earplugs (I usually recommend drummers earplugs for clarity of sound with the volume turned down, but for this, muffled might be best.

- Earbuds/music (just in one ear, so that you can play music over people talking, so your brain is hearing 2 very different accents at the same time, in a divide and conquer kind)

- humming (similar to the above, but you're the one creating the overlay, as needed)

Playtime

Almost anything I can turn into a game very quickly turns the :eek: factor, down. While I do this whilst playing with my triggers and stressors? Also keep in mind that other people like to play, too. When your cousins are around? You may well get people to speak in TERRIBLE French accents, JohnWayne American Paraodys (Howdy Pardner ;)), Sexy Russian Spies, etc. with very little effort. Ditto whisper-games (accents are cut in half or more when whispering). Similarly, LISPS & "th" instead of T. "Whath?" <<< that's a way to make whispers even quieter, but can also be used in normal voices.

Translate

If you can listen with only one ear, and repeat what they say in your own head, in your own accent, it changes the emotional impact of the speaker. (I do this with my mom all the time, because her tone of voice starts making my teeth itch, and when I get bored start "translating" various people on the street/ bus/ etc. into difference accents just for the comedic factor). It's kind of a weird skill to learn, but is very distracting.

***

These are just a few off the top of my head... You can probably come up with lots and lots more as you work around the outside of your trigger and figure out the edges of it.