- Admin
- #13
anthony
Founder
Hi and welcome to the forum. Lets look at the facts based on your experience up to this one event, to help you get past this as quickly as possible and avoid something like PTSD becoming your life.
You said:
This is whats called, negative thinking styles:
You can play with "what ifs" forever in a day. They're called a negative thinking style for good reasons, because they hare possibilities, not actualities. Anything is possible, hence you have lived your life and now endured this single event, which is making you rethink your stance on your own safety.
None of us are truly safe in life. You could be sitting in your apartment and its bombed, another apartment has a gas leak and explodes, killing you and others in it... an electrical fault could burn it down... and aircraft engine falls off 30,000 feet above you and hits your building... the list is just endless.
We mitigate risk and often dismiss it, because it hasn't happened to us. People often say when they have just been diagnosed with cancer, "I never thought this would be me." Now it is though, and they must walk that path.
So... are you any safer or in more danger due to this event? No. Your life actually hasn't changed at all, beyond you now experienced a traumatic event that is making you rethink the safety you "thought" you had within this world, but actually never had to begin with. That is what you must come to terms with now from the event, and not concentrate on the event itself. The reality is that you are not safe at all, and under some circumstances you are best to mitigate risky situations. Being a female and walking home at 4am in the morning, even in the best neighbourhoods, is still a slight risk.
Mitigate the risk by ensuring you have another person with you, someone who lives in the building, a male friend or co-worker, who then isn't afraid to walk by themselves. Even they could be attacked being alone... its a risk that exists.
The way through this is to actually accept the reality of the situation, not allow negative thinking styles to determine and run your life, and to very quickly get back out and into life, doing things and reproving that your life is actually quite safe again... however; you may feel better by implementing risk assessment into your walking alone at 4am in the morning, and instead get dropped at your door and watched entering your building, or walked home with a male colleague or such.
The thing you must do is to get back into your daily routine as quickly as possible, yet at the same time you MUST reinforce and acknowledge that you are doing the same things, yet you aren't being mugged, thus you rebuild that reality of safety. What you will have in the back of your mind now, and forever, is the experience you endured which you can use positively to mitigate risk when you believe a situation warrants it.
Night time is more risky than day time, simple as that. Darkness allows much more anonymity and chance of escape than daylight, so anything you do at night has that immediate risk added to it. So at night, you should accept that risk and factor it into your decisions. If walking alone, be more perceptive and aware of your surroundings, have a can of Maise or such with you to defend yourself if required. People with burning eyes don't want to continue, and often will rethink every offending again.
Identify the risk, apply a mitigation to it, then accept the risk or reject it, or add more mitigations to it in order to lower the risk until you accept it.
Hiding from life is not a good mitigation strategy though, and leads to further complicated issues.
You said:
- it's not a bad zone to live in at all- lots of students and movement.
- No they may or may not know where I live, but they definitely know I live near there because what else would I be doing at 4am, right?
This is whats called, negative thinking styles:
- What if these jerks live nearby and are waiting for me because they are pissed that they didn't get my money?
- What if they do something worse to me?
You can play with "what ifs" forever in a day. They're called a negative thinking style for good reasons, because they hare possibilities, not actualities. Anything is possible, hence you have lived your life and now endured this single event, which is making you rethink your stance on your own safety.
None of us are truly safe in life. You could be sitting in your apartment and its bombed, another apartment has a gas leak and explodes, killing you and others in it... an electrical fault could burn it down... and aircraft engine falls off 30,000 feet above you and hits your building... the list is just endless.
We mitigate risk and often dismiss it, because it hasn't happened to us. People often say when they have just been diagnosed with cancer, "I never thought this would be me." Now it is though, and they must walk that path.
So... are you any safer or in more danger due to this event? No. Your life actually hasn't changed at all, beyond you now experienced a traumatic event that is making you rethink the safety you "thought" you had within this world, but actually never had to begin with. That is what you must come to terms with now from the event, and not concentrate on the event itself. The reality is that you are not safe at all, and under some circumstances you are best to mitigate risky situations. Being a female and walking home at 4am in the morning, even in the best neighbourhoods, is still a slight risk.
Mitigate the risk by ensuring you have another person with you, someone who lives in the building, a male friend or co-worker, who then isn't afraid to walk by themselves. Even they could be attacked being alone... its a risk that exists.
The way through this is to actually accept the reality of the situation, not allow negative thinking styles to determine and run your life, and to very quickly get back out and into life, doing things and reproving that your life is actually quite safe again... however; you may feel better by implementing risk assessment into your walking alone at 4am in the morning, and instead get dropped at your door and watched entering your building, or walked home with a male colleague or such.
Males think vastly different moreso than females do. Some is ignorance, some is more logical. Women tend to think more emotionally, thus fear is an emotion, males tend to think more logically, thus fear is a reality / actuality that they just accept within life.
The thing you must do is to get back into your daily routine as quickly as possible, yet at the same time you MUST reinforce and acknowledge that you are doing the same things, yet you aren't being mugged, thus you rebuild that reality of safety. What you will have in the back of your mind now, and forever, is the experience you endured which you can use positively to mitigate risk when you believe a situation warrants it.
Night time is more risky than day time, simple as that. Darkness allows much more anonymity and chance of escape than daylight, so anything you do at night has that immediate risk added to it. So at night, you should accept that risk and factor it into your decisions. If walking alone, be more perceptive and aware of your surroundings, have a can of Maise or such with you to defend yourself if required. People with burning eyes don't want to continue, and often will rethink every offending again.
Identify the risk, apply a mitigation to it, then accept the risk or reject it, or add more mitigations to it in order to lower the risk until you accept it.
Hiding from life is not a good mitigation strategy though, and leads to further complicated issues.
