Rape and Frustration

 81. RAPE AND FRUSTRATION

Hello and welcome once again to Raped 25 Years. At this time, I invite you to join me in a short walk through my journey of healing from the trauma of sexual abuse and sexual assault. Don’t forget to stay to the end so you can enjoy my gem of positivity.

Frustration is an emotion which I am coming to live with more and more, as I heal. It is not a comfortable feeling, and is becoming harder to live with in silence. This frustration over a lack of understanding doesn’t just come from people outside of my supposed circle of safety. It also comes from my relationship with my family members.

When my nightmares and nighttime terrors, not to mention flashbacks, are particularly painful and scary, I get really frustrated. White hot frustration. Why in particular, you might ask? It’s the lack of post traumatic understanding and support, even in my own family. 

Despite years of trying to educate the people within my circle of safety, my family and friends seem to be almost immune to the explanation that I try to help them with. Instead of helping, my family in particular seem to hold on to the old ideas around rape and trauma. That it didn’t happen, or that it was my fault, or that I Should be over it by now.

This lack of insight is so very frustrating. This is because in spite of the information and allowances I give to them, they remain unable to empathize. It almost feels like they get a perverse sort of pleasure in being so hard hearted.

The more I accommodate them and their old fashioned ideas of how to treat trauma survivors, the less they allow for and respect my experiences and trauma-driven reactions. It is frustrating over their obtuseness and inability to try and understand where I’ve been.

This frustration has become white hot anger. I also literally see the colour red. My fists start to clench and unclench. My whole body becomes tense, as if in ready to fight or flight. My thoughts are written in red. At worst, my frustration leads to self harm, as I feel so unable to cope with such a strong emotion in healthier ways.

My frustration is absolute. My constant thoughts are: 

“Why are they unable to see how their thinking and actions affect me?”

“What am I doing or saying wrong?”

“Am I unworthy of being understood and cared for?”

As you can see, this frustration is not healthy. Because I bottle it up, and turn it on to myself. I don’t feel that I have any other non damaging way of expressing myself. At least, I didn’t. 

In my therapy now, I am slowly learning that there are healthy ways of expressing my feelings of frustration and anger. Writing, drawing, punching a body pillow, talking it through with my therapist. No body else gets hurt or injured, and neither do I. And it proves just one thing….. I am healing.

And now, what about you? Are you frustrated by the treatment you receive from your circle of safety? Do they seem uninterested in understanding your trauma driven thoughts and actions? Unfortunately, you can’t force them to change. They have to change themselves. But you can change the way you deal with your frustration. Find a way to express your frustration without hurting others or yourself. And when you find your own way to healthily express your frustration, you will find that you too, are healing.

The gem of positivity this time is an old Norse proverb:

“Every day has a morning, but it also has an evening.”

This means that every frustration has a definite end. It is only now that I’m starting to realise this to be true. Frustration is just like any other emotion. It will pass. It’s what I do with my frustration while I am in this strong emotion that dictates the outcome. And I am learning, and using, healthier ways to cope with this ever so strong and potentially damaging feeling. Every time I use an alternative action, I am healing. And you can, too.

Thank you for joining me on this short walk in my journey of healing from the trauma of sexual violence. Don’t forget to leave a comment on what one healthy way you are helping yourself to deal with your feelings of frustration. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby.

Rape and Apology

  80. RAPE AND APOLOGY 

Hello and welcome back to Raped 25 Years. I’m glad you can join me on this short walk in my journey of healing from the trauma of sexual abuse and sexual assault. Don’t forget to stay to the end, so you can enjoy my gem of positivity.

Have you ever heard yourself apologizing for things that weren’t your fault? That you feel like you need to say “I’m sorry” simply for breathing?  I understand that feeling. Because I say sorry too.

It started with pedofile Mr S stealing my virginity, as a toddler. I began to believe that if I said that I was sorry enough, and really mean it, bad things wouldn’t happen. The tragedy and trauma of that night would somehow just disappear.

It didn’t. As I have grown from childhood, through my teenage years and into adulthood and I continued to survive through further cruel acts of sadistic tortures, I apologized even more. 

This extended to common everyday things. Here are some of my own examples. 

If a piece of paper fell to the floor, I apologized. If a door is blown shut at the other entrance of the house, I apologized. Even if I hear about a person within my circle of safety just having a bad day, I apologized even more.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…. I didn’t mean to do it….. I won’t do it again….”

Over time, I have been conditioned by other people to apologize simply for existing. This is especially true of my own family. They blame me for things I have no control over, particularly when I was a small child.

Now obviously, challenges do happen. For me, it’s taking on my own responsibility by acknowledging when I am to blame. However, I don’t need to apologize for being alive. 

Automatic self criticism is often how my thinking circles. The perpetrators have destroyed the normal course of how my life would have turned out. Through complex trauma, it was always going to be a high risk outcome to the rapes that left me feeling powerless.

Yet now, in my therapy sessions, I am slowly starting to come to a truthful conclusion. The molestations were not my fault. The rapes were not my fault. So there is nothing for me to apologize for.  

So, how do you feel now? Are you, like me slowly reaching the truth that you are not at fault? You are not to blame for the decisions and actions of others. Even if you are raped because you refused to listen to the advice of the people who are in your circle. Or your mom and dad, if you’re molested as a child. That doesn’t make rape your fault. And when you start to accept that for the truth it is, you will find yourself on your own journey of healing.

Child sexual abuse is never your fault.

Rape is never your fault.

And now for your gem of positivity. This time it’s a quote attributed to Paulo Coelho:

“Never apologize for being you”.

This is a truth I’m only just starting to accept. It was not my fault that I was molested. It was not my fault that I was raped. And it is not my fault for being myself. So I don’t have to apologize for being me. And as I heal I’m finally learning to hold that reality close to my heart. And you can too.

Thank you for joining me on this short walk in my journey of healing from sexual trauma. Don’t forget to leave a comment to tell me one thing you are going to stop apologising for. Remember, sharing can help someone else decide to stop saying sorry for simply existing. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby.

    

Rape and Shame

 79. RAPE AND SHAME

Hello and welcome back to Raped 25 Years. At this time I invite you join me on a short walk through my journey of healing from the trauma of sexual abuse and sexual assault. Don’t forget to stay to the end so that you can enjoy my gem of positivity.

I know the feeling of shame only too well. It started with the first violation of my three year old vagina by the traumatically cruel adult penis. That particular perpetrator taught me that sex was a shameful thing, because if I tell on him I would be punished.

To me, anxious shame feels like my stomach has gone into free fall. It’s that feeling you get when you’re in an elevator that has just started going down, and the world has shifted beneath your feet. You’re helpless and everything is your fault.

Every further rape as I have grown up into adulthood, has simply compounded that shame. The thought that I am so dirty that other people must be able to see my dirtiness too. It’s a pervasive a dirtiness that can’t “just” be scrubbed off. Believe me, I’ve tried; even with steel wool until my vagina bled.

The shame of what all those vile evil acts of sexual torture has seared a deep and lasting scar on my mind, body, and soul. It’s like I’m going to suffocate from the sheer weight of this shame. That my chest is being crushed and I just can’t catch my breath.

And now, I am in therapy. And I am being taught a new reality. Slowly I am learning that the shame was never mine to bear in the first place. That just because toxic people have tried to make me as despicable as themselves, doesn’t mean I have to take it on board and carry their sludge. 

The shame belongs with the perpetrators, and the perpetrators alone. Even those do-gooders in society, who said the rapes were mine by choice to own, and are even crass enough to say that I’d asked for it. Their opinions still don’t make the shame mine. That is my new narrative, and I’m holding on to the truth. And that is proof that I am healing.

Have you felt that dreadful, choking, suffocating shame? The shame that you put on yourself from the actions of a cruel, demeaning perpetrator? You are not alone. It is an inbuilt trauma reaction to something that you had no control over. But you don’t have to stay crushed under this burden. You have done nothing wrong. It was not your choice, no matter what society tries to guilt trip you into believing. And as you learn to put the shame fairly and squarely on who the shame actually belongs to, the perpetrators, you will find yourself where I am at right now. You will be stepping along healing, too.

This time the gem of positivity is an affirmation:

I will not allow anyone to guilt trip or shame me into believing I am less than who I am.

This is a truth that I am learning to believe. Perpetrators, and even society, would like me to think that the shame of the sexual traumas are mine to carry. But it’s not. Believing that the shame is mine makes me less than I know I am. I am strong. I am resilient. I am a survivor. And I will not let anyone else shame me into believing that I  am not. And these are your strengths too.

Thank you for joining me on this short walk in my journey of healing from sexual trauma. Don’t forget to leave a comment on one thing you are doing to defeat your feelings of shame. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby

Rape and My Vagina

 78. RAPE AND MY VAGINA 

Hello and welcome back to Raped 25 Years. At this time I invite to join me on a short walk in my journey of healing from the trauma of sexual abuse and sexual assault. Don’t forget to stay to the end so that you can enjoy my gem of positivity.

Back in post #25 I talked to you about my breasts. More particularly, how my thinking is changing from wanting to cut them off to accepting them as I heal. This time, I’m going to talk about that other sexual organ. That is, my vagina.

Just as with my breasts, I have hated my vagina for as long as I remember. I think of it as filthy, painful and weak. And those thoughts stem from being raped, from both my  childhood as a toy in a pedofile ring, and as an exploited adult.

During adulthood, my reviled perpetrators, were (and are) filthy. I don’t mean that they physically stunk, although many of them did. It was more their words and actions, that made them filthy.  Telling me that I’m “an animal in the sack” was never going to make me agree their evil treatment. Not when my animalistic tendency came from struggling to fight those graphically violent and cruel acts of depraved terror.

Pain, because there is nothing more excruciating than having an adult penis penetrate my three year old child vagina. As an adult, the pain didn’t get any less. Not when I was having to cope with thick piping being brutally thrust in me for the perpetrators enjoyment, while being pinned to the ground.

And weak? I can hardly feel strong when I’m having my vagina penetrated and violated. Traumatically, I often feel like if I had no vagina, I would never have been raped. In order to cope with my distress, I have from time to time even thought about cutting my vagina out of me. I have, in self harm, got as far as cutting my outer vaginal lips in the past.

Now as I heal, I’m also trying to reconcile myself to living with my vagina. And that means also changing the way I think about my “den of shame”. One of the first things I have done, is to name my vagina. The first name that came to my mind, actually means “strength, beauty, and peace”. I didn’t go looking for a name that meant these values.

I will admit right now, that this reconciliation between myself and my vagina, is still very much a work in progress. I haven’t just woken up one day and thought to myself, “I love my vagina and all it stands for”. There are still days where I have such intense hatred of a body part that has been so tormented and abused. Yet those days are becoming less. I’ve even managed to look at with fascination, appreciate, and draw my vagina. Which just goes to prove one thing. I can heal, vagina and all.

And now what about you? Are you stuck in the hate of your most precious self? You don’t have to stay that way. There are little things you can do to help yourself slowly learn to love your own vagina. Try giving it a name. Your vagina is your friend, and not another enemy. Just like the rest of you, your vagina deserves to be loved, respected, and even appreciated. And when you realise this one truth, you will find yourself on your own journey of healing.

And now for your gem of positivity. This time it is a simple, yet beautifully empowering affirmation:

I love and accept myself exactly as I am.

I am finding this myself. I can’t just cut off or remove intimate parts of my body, as much as I may want to at times. My vagina is part of me, for better or for worse. The key is how I view myself as a whole person. And part of that whole is my vagina, and I can accept myself for exactly who I am. I’m not just my vagina. But I can learn to accept my vagina as naturally part of me. Do you want that acceptance, too?

Thank you for joining me on this short walk in my journey to heal from sexual trauma. This time, I invite you to share what name you call your vagina. There’s no judgment here. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby.