This came up in a different thread and someone there felt it was taking it off topic, which I think it might be. I did want to respond to it, though, so I thought I'd start a new thread.
The discussion was about being vulnerable to predators as a result of past traumas making us less able to judge or react to risky situations. I had said:
Badger, I want to say that I appreciate your viewpoint over this and personally I think we probably have much the same viewpoint but are expressing/interpreting the actual words being said in different ways. That's why I wanted to try to clarify. I really don't think my view is necessarily in opposition to yours.
I didn't say or mean that we choose to be dissociated. It's a subconscious coping mechanism. It might have been helpful if I'd made that clearer in what I said. Whether conscious or subconscious, trauma can result in coping mechanisms that protect us psychologically from overwhelm but which can make us act in certain ways that put us at risk.
After a childhood of trauma, I lived in a dissociative fog. One day when I was 16, I was meant to be spending the evening somewhere and I couldn't face it so I spent the time walking alone around a dark, deserted common instead. I didn't even consciously decide I didn't want to go to the event, or consciously decide to wander around the common. I wasn't aware of what I was feeling, I was barely aware of what I was doing and I didn't register any significance of it being late, dark and deserted. If I hadn't been dissociated I might have felt the risk of wandering around alone like that and would probably have chosen not to do it. But I was disconnected and I didn't feel or think anything.
I was raped by a group of men. It wasn't my fault. I didn't invite it. They were to blame.
At the same time, I unwittingly had put myself at more risk than I would have done if I hadn't been dissociated. I've done this many other times too, when nothing bad did happen in the end. I've got into strangers' cars, gone out at night with no way to get home afterwards, travelled to isolated places I didn't know anything about where I couldn't speak the language, let someone I'd only just met in a bar take me into a building through an unmarked door with the promise of an underground club on the other side (there was one).
The point is not that I brought on a consequence or didn't - if something happens that's entirely the responsibility of the perpetrator. My point is that I was more vulnerable because my judgement and reactions were impaired.
Now, I wouldn't do those things. But I've had to learn to not do those things. If I didn't recognise that they were risky, and that I had a choice about taking those risks, then I wouldn't be able to act in a way now that keeps me safer. Without an awareness that I can't rely on my judgement, I can't put safety measures in place. For example, when I realised that I couldn't judge whether it was safe to walk home from the station at night, I decided that up to a certain time I would walk, and after that I wouldn't. I knew I couldn't make a good decision each time, so I made a rule instead.
I think it's a very sensitive topic, and want to stress that putting myself at risk doesn't mean that I'm responsible for anything that happens. All I mean is that there are things I can do towards my own safety, and I need to know that in order to do them. If I shied away from seeing that, I would still be putting myself in more danger than otherwise.
The discussion was about being vulnerable to predators as a result of past traumas making us less able to judge or react to risky situations. I had said:
and Badger responded:
Badger, I want to say that I appreciate your viewpoint over this and personally I think we probably have much the same viewpoint but are expressing/interpreting the actual words being said in different ways. That's why I wanted to try to clarify. I really don't think my view is necessarily in opposition to yours.
I didn't say or mean that we choose to be dissociated. It's a subconscious coping mechanism. It might have been helpful if I'd made that clearer in what I said. Whether conscious or subconscious, trauma can result in coping mechanisms that protect us psychologically from overwhelm but which can make us act in certain ways that put us at risk.
After a childhood of trauma, I lived in a dissociative fog. One day when I was 16, I was meant to be spending the evening somewhere and I couldn't face it so I spent the time walking alone around a dark, deserted common instead. I didn't even consciously decide I didn't want to go to the event, or consciously decide to wander around the common. I wasn't aware of what I was feeling, I was barely aware of what I was doing and I didn't register any significance of it being late, dark and deserted. If I hadn't been dissociated I might have felt the risk of wandering around alone like that and would probably have chosen not to do it. But I was disconnected and I didn't feel or think anything.
I was raped by a group of men. It wasn't my fault. I didn't invite it. They were to blame.
At the same time, I unwittingly had put myself at more risk than I would have done if I hadn't been dissociated. I've done this many other times too, when nothing bad did happen in the end. I've got into strangers' cars, gone out at night with no way to get home afterwards, travelled to isolated places I didn't know anything about where I couldn't speak the language, let someone I'd only just met in a bar take me into a building through an unmarked door with the promise of an underground club on the other side (there was one).
The point is not that I brought on a consequence or didn't - if something happens that's entirely the responsibility of the perpetrator. My point is that I was more vulnerable because my judgement and reactions were impaired.
Now, I wouldn't do those things. But I've had to learn to not do those things. If I didn't recognise that they were risky, and that I had a choice about taking those risks, then I wouldn't be able to act in a way now that keeps me safer. Without an awareness that I can't rely on my judgement, I can't put safety measures in place. For example, when I realised that I couldn't judge whether it was safe to walk home from the station at night, I decided that up to a certain time I would walk, and after that I wouldn't. I knew I couldn't make a good decision each time, so I made a rule instead.
I think it's a very sensitive topic, and want to stress that putting myself at risk doesn't mean that I'm responsible for anything that happens. All I mean is that there are things I can do towards my own safety, and I need to know that in order to do them. If I shied away from seeing that, I would still be putting myself in more danger than otherwise.
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