News Stories, Fictional Portrayals And Thinking "i Was That Person"

[Hashi]

First I want to be clear that this isn't about triggers.

It's more about, having accepted what happened as real, processing it and fitting it into my internal world, I suppose I'm now going through something about fitting it into the external world.

Recently at work, someone was talking about an infamous past rape case in the UK (the way the law treated the case caused an outrage and it led to changes). They were saying how the survivor was a family friend, how awful it was and how hard it was to think of that happening to someone you know. That prompted someone else to talk about an acquaintance who'd been murdered and how strange it was to know someone who'd been murdered.

They weren't being insensitive or sensational, in fact I really related to what they meant but from the other side of things. My traumas included rape and attempted murder. It's very strange to be one of those people yourself, in a functioning world. I'm having trouble fitting myself to it.

I've been thinking about the time I made an appointment at the doctor's when I was having a bad time with anxiety. NHS appointments are really short but you can request a double time appointment if you can give a good enough reason why. Since I didn't want to shout it out in front of everyone in the waiting room, to give the reason I wrote on a piece of paper "to discuss anxiety following rape" and handed it to the receptionist. She was visibly shocked and shaken. It was validating but it was also frustrating. After all, I've had to deal with it when some other people can barely deal with the idea.

Rape/murder as entertainment, like in books, is difficult. In a way, it's easier because I know it isn't real to the people who read it. But in another way it's harder for me because there's a thing where it goes from not real to real, because for me these things have been real.

I don't mean I read the books, but for example at my station there are big posters for a book called "The Kill Room". Every time I see them, and I can't help seeing them, my mind goes through the same process. Every time! My eyes are drawn to the poster because it's eye catching, I read the words, register them, and my brain makes a little series of connections which I can almost literally feel, like a route map on a plane showing a green line joining the dots of various points of a journey. The words - it's a book - that's the title - it's only fiction - then the actual meaning of the words - the words taken away from the book and generalised - the words applied to my experience - big difference between me looking at the poster and someone else looking at the poster - big gap between me and other people in general.

The fact that this is coming up so much, and the brain thing I can feel, tell me clearly that this is processing.

I realise that it's a transition from spending about four years in therapy and on places like this forum, where my experiences are usual. But those are little bubbles and in the wider world this isn't that usual. In the wider world, I'm "that person" that these unthinkable things happened to. So I start seeing myself like that from the outside and don't know what to make of it.

It's making me feel so, so weird. I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else. I feel like I'm trying to get a foothold and there isn't one. Just a huge empty space beneath my feet.

Does anyone relate? Any thoughts?

 

[Bedbug]

A big part of my reluctance to go outside at the moment is about being seen as "that person", as though others can see into my soul and see the things that happened to me. Or, rather, see the things I am claiming happened to me. I won't be believed. I will be seen as a liar, an attention seeker. Stuff like that doesn't happen, not to ordinary people like me, in an ordinary house, by an ordinary family family member. Even if I am believed, I will be shunned because people don't want to think about stuff like that.

I am dreading fitting my reality back into the external world. I am expecting to be doubted or denied. It is making me doubt my own reality again, when I have been working so hard to accept it as real and process it in order to become a functioning member of society again.

 

[katiekat]

It sounds like you are becoming aware of your awareness. You feel different from other people and you are taking notice of it. If I follow you, this is what mindfulness meditation is about.

I don't think you need to put it in a negative light, but instead turn it into a story of victory. You are the main character, the one that makes the movie worth watching, the one that allows everyone else to have the experience of walking in your shoes for two hours. You're the one everyone is routing for, the one with a story worth hearing. YOU are the hero.

I bet it's similar to being the new kid at school. No one knows anything about you, but you feel like an outsider. The good thing is, there are kids who are I interested in you and your story and they want to be your friend. And eventually you realize that though you come from a different place, you are not quite as different as the rest of the kids. Don't forget that EVERYONE has skeletons in their closets...

And I know triggers might be all around us, and even though you are not calling this a trigger, I think if this continues to upset you, I suggest that you relocate the poster.

 

[NicG]

Wow! You just completely hit the nail on the head for me. I've been... resonating? with movies and books and TV shows that depict things that relate to my trauma really differently to my "normal" friends, and just couldn't explain what it was. Thanks for sharing!!

I was watching a movie with a friend when an unexpected domestic violence scene happened. I was freaking out, it reminded me of what happened to me and I could see myself in the character being abused, while my friend was only experiencing the emotions the scene was meant to invoke in him. Another time a few weeks ago another friend was suddenly interested in old cases of rape and murder etc and was telling us about what she'd looked up... and I felt like a total outsider in the way I was reacting because nobody seemed to be affected by it the way I did. I felt like "that person" too.

I think it affects us worse because we know the reality of the situation while the rest of the world can only dream about it. And we feel like outsiders because nobody understands it like we do. I know that in my part of the world at least, 1 in 5 women experience sexual assault in their lifetime. That means that most people at least KNOW someone who has been assaulted. It might not help much but I feel like maybe the people who don't understand/aren't affected much by it all are the ones in the bubble. The ones who don't want to talk about it and deny that it can happen to "normal people" are the ones who aren't so in touch with reality or normal life.
Anyway I don't really have answers for you since I don't know what to do with it either, but I definitely relate and I thank you for posting this, it's helped me make that little bit more sense of my own life. :)

 

[Echo]

I think dealing with the outside world is the hardest thing of all. We have no hope, on our own, of changing all the myths and stereotypes that people believe. Very few people really want to engage and find out what it actually meant to us. They have all their prejudices and presumptions, not to mention their defence mechanisms for keeping it all away from them. Sometimes, probably very often, this outside world starts with the family, doesn't it? People want a short-hand to deal with things. They want to believe they are caring, some of them, but they don't want to engage, not really, with what it really is all about. Sometimes they just want to put it into boxes for easy reference.

I have never understood why people enjoy watching murder, rape, torture and other such things. It is, indeed, the hardest thing to accept when it has happened to you. It is a fantasy world with no pain, except, of course, where it verges into recordings of real crime being enacted, but that is something else.

I wonder whether it would help us to deal with it, at least in part, by thinking about it in terms of labels. We are far more than those dreadful events that happened to us. We are also far more than our diagnoses. If people can't see that, then they are not really the ones to share our lives. I hope to be able to get to a position of having again achieved things in life, despite what has happened. And if I am to have a label, then I would like it to be 'amazing survivor', 'role model', and you are already those things, @Hashi.

Maybe people don't have to know so quickly about what we have gone through. Maybe we just have to leave them in their ignorance for now. Maybe we have to find a way to voice the truth. Maybe we have this insight, through no fault of our own, and we can do something positive with it. It will be different for all of us. I guess though it will take generations for change to happen. We have had centuries of men speaking for us as women, and finally many of us have said, no longer, that is not how it is; this is the truth. It has taken a long time. The same no doubt applies to many minority groups. I don't think we should feel obliged to act in ways that are uncomfortable for us and we shouldn't oblige ourselves, before we are ready, to start to set the record straight. Maybe for the moment you just need to work on the effect on yourself. Maybe you will later find a route to express this to the outside world. I don't know if you would think this would help.

 

[Hashi]

Thank you all so much! Really.

After I posted this I felt very weird. Like a pack of cards was being shuffled inside my brain. In one way I love trauma healing and processing, and in another way I recognise it but I hate it. This was a case where I could recognise it but I really, very much didn't like it. Like I both completely accept and deeply don't like seeing that book poster at the station on my way to work.

I just tried writing a response here, but the card-shuffling-in-my-brain feeling got a bit too much so I hope you don't mind if I come back to this a bit later? I definitely will, because the things you've said have been really helpful and have given me a lot of food for thought.

Thank you again. Will be back.

 

[Abstract]

I haven't read all the responses Hashi but I just wanted to post my instinctual response. It seems to me it is probably a very positive sign of some of the compartmentalisation breaking down. A new level of reality seeping in. That is always hard. It tends to make us see the abnormality of the experiences again.

I think it's normal for that to spill over and for us to start feeling abnormal ourselves - I realise that a lot of the difficulties you are speaking about relate to that. Others have covered that more it seems. I just wanted to comment of the de-compartmentalisation of your life and how things seem to be starting to bleed into each other. Usually very painful but usually very positive.

I sometimes view these moments as Alice-falling-down-the-rabbit-hole moments. Reality shifts.