In my last session with my short term counselor at the women's center, she told me that since it's been so long since my assaults, that the best thing for me is to continue to work on grounding and reminding myself that I'm safe now. (because I have PTSD frequently)
But when these things come up for me, I want to do something about them. I said to her, what about if I'm picturing one or two of the guys who attacked me? I said, I'm so angry I never got to press charges or do anything to stand up for myself. I wanted to know what I could do now about it.
Instead of letting me talk about that, she asked me if I was feeling angry with myself at all. That got me really upset. I said that most women feel angry with themselves and it's the job of the counselor to get them to realize it's the attackers who are to blame. I told her that she was making me feel like it was my fault what happened. She said that's not what she meant - she said it's good to be angry at the perpetrators and not at oneself. She just wanted to know because most victims do experience that. I did used to be angry at myself a lot, but this was long before I was ever assaulted, and it stemmed from my childhood. I cried/shouted about this issue for awhile and she thought it was good for me to deal with that, but that was something that I'd already known about, and I resented someone else bringing up a topic that was so painful for me (being angry at the guys was a position of strength, and admitting that I'd had all that self-hatred from my childhood which was a totally different thing put me right back in a position of feeling awful and unloved.) It took me years to realize that it was because of the way that I was treated as a child that I felt that way - that I wasn't a "rotten kid" and a bad person - and here I was feeling those emotions all over again. Anyway...
I’m not angry with myself about the attacks. I’m angry at the guys who hurt me. I’m angry that there was a lot of information that no one told me about. I’m angry that there weren’t more warning programs for girls in my schools. I’m angry about the guys who I thought were my friends and so I thought I could trust them, and the guys who claimed to be protecting me who was taking advantage of me. Why is this so hard for people to comprehend?
Yes, I do wish that I could go back and change it, but that doesn’t mean that I’m angry with myself about it. I wish I would have known what I should do, who I should avoid, and that the attacks were attacks when they happened and not years later. I wish that I didn’t hang around people who weren’t trustworthy, but I know that I couldn’t have known that at the time. Even if I did make some poor decisions, it wasn’t my fault what happened.
It seems like so many people want you to take some kind of personal responsibility for your attack. Saying stuff like “you made poor decisions” or “you compromised yourself” is very hurtful to hear. I didn’t feel like I was compromising myself at the time, I felt like I was just going with the flow, or being cool. I don’t feel like the decisions I made were any different than the other people around me at the time - in fact, I was the one who was more cautious than others around me. How can it be my poor decision, when I don’t know what I’m dealing with, and when it seems everyone else who’s making the same decisions are alright and unharmed?
The weird thing is that by the end of the session of talking about decisions, I strangely felt better about things, having decided to make better decisions in the future and have stronger boundaries. Does this mean that what happened in the past was somehow my fault? Does deciding to protect myself now mean that I was bad at protecting myself then?
Before this last conversation, I had been planning to start a group therapy run by this counselor. She told me that it would probably be good for me. I had thought that would be a good idea, too, that I can have more time to work through my different assaults. But now that she’s told me that I should try to move past this and stay grounded and try not to think about this topic so much (for my PTSD symptoms), it made me wonder why she thought I should keep talking about this in a group if she just said that I should avoid the topic.
Today I just started crying for no reason, and I realized that I was still upset about the conversation. I feel hurt, and I don't want to go to a group that's going to make me take personal responsibility for an attack that wasn't my fault.
But even though I insist its not my fault, sometimes I wonder if my subconscious thinks I'm to blame because I do still have a lot of avoidant type behaviors, so it's like I'm still trying to stop it from happening. But just because I want to prevent it doesn't mean I think it's my fault. I'm really not sure?
Is it possible for me to heal from this and still hold fast to my feminist ideals that this was NOT my fault? It feels like I'm compromising my values if I have to take responsibility for this. Thanks for listening!
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sexual assault is never your fault period. No matter what you were doing when you were assaulted, even if you were drunk, another person chose to assault you. They are responsible for their own behavior. You did not ask for them to attack you. You need to find another psychologist who knows better than to say something like that to an assault survivor. You also should seek out support groups for survivors, they know what you are going through at least to an extent and if not help you can at least give you an extra ear to listen to what you went through. What your other therapist is doing is called victim blaming. And its not right or okay. This therapist should lose his or her license
You know your therapist better than me, but I don't necessarily think that asking IF you were angry at yourself meant that she thought that you SHOULD be angry at yourself. Also, being angry at your offenders and being angry at yourself are not mutually exclusive. It sounds as though your therapist brought up some issues relating to your childhood that need to come out at some time and that may be affecting how you're recovering from the rape.
But like I said, you know your therapist better than I do and if she's making you uncomfortable and contributing to your victimization, find someone else.
Also, I just want to touch upon something you've said. Just because you wouldn't do the same things NOW that you did when you were younger and when you were raped, does NOT mean you are to blame. It's a part of learning ourselves and about others. Now, you might be better able to identify people who would do you harm. That doesn't mean that you SHOULD HAVE been able to identify them back then, but now you can and have strategies to avoid them. It's always the offenders fault and people shouldn't judge others who happen to be near an offender just as they're about to hurt someone.
Group therapy, from what little I know, is NOT going to be a group of people who blame one another for what wrongs are done to THEM. They might make you take responsibility for your own actions in how you take care of yourself in your recovery from rape and may be sure that you don't blame yourself. But generally, there's not going to be blaming behaviors.
It was NOT your fault. But if there are ways that you can act that make you feel safer, it doesn't mean that it WAS your fault back then. It WASN'T. You need to do what you need to do to feel safe.
Thank you, rebekah. It means a lot to me to hear the reinforcement.
Thank you ElleStar for clarifying how I can protect myself now without blaming myself for not protecting myself then.