The Bi Women Support Network is a survivor-led resource to support bi, pan, and queer women-identified survivors who have experienced sexual violence and abuse. This is a safe space for all who identify as such, including ace/aro, nb, and trans folk.
take
some time each day to take some breaks and channel into your emotions; how are
you feeling, what are you doing, what’s the next step i need to take – being
connected to yourself, and self-aware can really help in taking small steps
towards recovery
Zoe is one of many survivors who only remember an experience of sexual assault years after it happened, in what might be referred to as delayed recall (the term “repressed memories” is controversial among psychologists). It’s a form of dissociative amnesia, a disorder in which a patient doesn’t actively remember something traumatic that happened to them, usually because they detached mentally during the event as a coping mechanism. “Extreme, violent trauma, particularly repeated trauma, can produce markedly altered states of consciousness,” says Richard J. Loewenstein, MD, medical director of The Trauma Disorders Program at Sheppard Pratt Health System. “These include fight and flight, but also a ‘freeze’ state. People shut down, space out, their heart rate drops”—kind of like when a small animal plays dead around a large predator.
Because this state is similar to a dissociative state, things that happen when the brain is in it may not be readily accessible once the person returns to normal, says Dr. Loewenstein. (Research shows that if you get people drunk in a lab setting and teach them something, for example, they may not remember it when they’re sober. But when they’re drunk again, they do remember.) “This, along with other factors, may help explain lack of conscious recall of traumatic experiences.”
In Zoe’s case, her fear of the police officer, coupled with his direct questions about her attacker, may have put her brain back into the freeze state—and helped her remember her assault. Memory experts emphasize that these traumatic memories aren’t technically lost—they just haven’t been retrieved in a while. “Our brains encode and store things that have significance to us,” says Jim Hopper, PhD, a teaching associate in psychology at Harvard Medical School and an expert in recovered memories from trauma. “If we’re in a traumatized state, that amplifies the effect: Certain pieces get strongly encoded and strongly stored. But how well things get stored is entirely different from whether or not they get retrieved.” This is why Zoe remembers nothing else that happened on the day of her attack, but her memory of the attack itself is vivid; she just hadn’t accessed it until her police interrogation.
Forgive yourself for what happened.
For the mistakes you made. For not showing up the way up the way you needed to. For not being the person you wanted to be. You’re human. You did the best you could in the moment given what you knew and what you had, and that’s all you can ask of yourself. You’re still learning. You’re still finding your way. And that takes time. You’re allowed to give yourself that time. And you’re allowed to show up in the world imperfectly. You’re allowed to fail at things you tried hard for. You’re allowed to realize you made the wrong decision. You’re allowed to be someone who’s still figuring out their path and their purpose. And you’re allowed to forgive yourself.
You can’t go back and change the decisions you’ve made, but you can choose what you do today. You can keep choosing, again and again. You can start over. And that’s where your power is. In today. So no more beating yourself up. No more going over and over it again in your head and torturing yourself with the past. What happened, happened, and all the shame and self-hatred in the world won’t undo that. Today, you’re starting over. Today, you’re moving forward with the new knowledge and experiences you have. Today, you can be the person you want to be and live the life you want to live. You’re not a bad person. You’re not a disappointment or a failure. You’re just human. You’re still learning and growing and finding your way. And it’s okay. You’ll be okay."
“She took a look around & it all started to make sense again. She took a breath & finally, for once, she inhaled as she allowed the belief to enter and swallowed it’s sweetness down to her core. “It’s not my fault.””
When my therapist told me that he believed I was struggling with C-PTSD, countless pieces of the puzzle rapidly clicked into place for me. The flashbacks, the fear of abandonment, the hypervigilance, the distrust, the dissociation, the deep and abiding emotional pain that I could swear I was born with – with one diagnosis, all of it seemed to make so much more sense.
Complex trauma, while not officially listed in the DSM-5, is still widely recognized by clinicians and survivors alike as a form of PTSD that occurs due to prolonged exposure to trauma – particularly interpersonal trauma, in which there was abuse and/or neglect that led to a significant imbalance of power.
Many culturally competent clinicians and survivors alike extend this framework to include the oppression that marginalized folks face, which can so often be traumatic.
My understanding of C-PTSD is largely influenced by the work of Pete Walker, a psychotherapist and survivor of complex trauma, whose words and affirmations helped bolster my own recovery (his book on complex trauma in childhood is a must-read).
While I am in a much better place with my trauma history, my loved ones – especially close partners who don’t share this kind of history – sometimes struggle to know how best to support me. I’ve had time to read, engage in trauma-informed therapy, and connect with community around these issues, but my loved ones haven’t necessarily done that work.
Friends and family of folks with C-PTSD don’t always have the same level of education and understanding that survivors do. That’s why I wanted to create this quick resource – to serve as a jumping off point to how to better support trauma survivors.
When you just can’t love yourself, just work on giving yourself basic respect.
When you just can’t practice self care, aim for basic hygiene and keeping yourself alive.
When you just can’t have positive thoughts, focus on ignoring the negative ones.
When you just can’t quit those bad habits and unhealthy coping mechanisms, be sure to take care of yourself afterwards.
When you just can’t make yourself eat enough, aim for something three times a day, even if it’s something small.
When you just can’t stop binge eating, just do your best to forgive yourself and focus on something else instead of dwelling on it for any longer.
Not everyone is at a point where they can recover, and so thinking about recovery can be intimidating and make them shut down, because they just feel like they’re nowhere close to getting better so they might as well not bother. There needs to be more advice on dragging yourself through the days. Self care to the bare minimum. Aiming for “feeling okay with yourself” or “feeling less awful about yourself” rather than loving yourself. Baby steps.
The SINGLE most valuable thing I acquired from my undergrad degree was internalising this: something is better than nothing.
‘Perfect’ is the enemy of ‘good’. ‘Good ‘is often the enemy of ‘done’. Best practices are almost always the enemy of better practices.
I have spent a lot of time in my professional life – in several different fields, actually – trying to convince people to do something. Because something is always better than nothing. Even if it’s a very, very small something. It’s still better.
always
keep fighting, and if you feel like you don’t have anything to fight for,
remember to fight for yourself – work towards loving yourself, please; it will
be worth it
