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Tips for Secondary Survivors

Many people experience trauma in their lives: car accident, death of a loved one, 911, hurricane Sandy. These things leave us overwhelmed, scared, confused, in pain. We might struggle trying to understand why did this have to happen. We might constantly relive traumatic memory, or avoid reminders of it. We might be denying the impact it had on us, or be angry and look for someone to blame for our pain. We might start questioning people in general, world, or God. Or we might blame ourselves. Abuse is a type of trauma that is inflicted on one person by another. Maybe I was raped, or beaten up, or yelled at daily and played mind games with, or maybe my parents did things that a parent isn't supposed to do to a child. The effect it had on me might be compared to a natural disaster, except abuse is perpetrated by a specific person (which I might have had a strong emotional bond with), often as a repeating pattern rather than a single occurrence, and usually isn't something I could talk of freely. I'll never be the same after such an experience, but I can repair the damage, re-adjust, grow, and have a happy, healthy, productive life. Takes time though. Often - years. Each survivor faces their own unique issues, but there are some common traits that many survivors share, and many supporters find confusing, frustrating, disturbing, or otherwise difficult to handle. Here's an attempt to explain a few of them. Abuse royally messed up my relationship skills. Part of the abuse...

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Living With Agoraphobia

i've been struggling with agoraphobia for the majority of my life. It's waxed and waned over the years, swelling and receding in its severity, but it's never fully gone away. There have been times where it was so severe i've been bedbound for a few days. There has been times where it was held back, and going outside wasn't a big deal. There are times where i can go outside easily with trusted companions, but cannot step foot out my door to even check the mailbox on my own. Each time i've battled the extreme 'flareups' that agoraphobia throws at me, i'd had different approaches, depending on where in particular the irrational fears were stemming from. This current bout, though, has been one of the most difficult to fight, and one of the longest stretches i've had to endure it. i started to write about it on Fort about a year ago, at first just venting frustrations, but the thread grew into more than just an explosion of emotions - it shows glimpses of my journey, thoughts, plans, ideas, failures, successes... When i was approached about sharing this particular battle of mine more publicly on Fort, i felt a little bit honored. i often feel that Agoraphobia is misunderstood. i know i'm still attempting to wrap my head around it, even after all these years of living with it. It's a very lonely, isolating condition, and at its worst, it's completely irrational, yet totally unbudging against all forms of logic. And if putting my story out there will help reach others, to...

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Cycle Of Abuse

The cycle of abuse theory was developed in 1979 by Lenore E. Walker, a licensed psychologist who interviewed 1,500 women involved in domestic violence and noticed that their stories followed a similar pattern. She described it as a controlling patriarchal behavior of men who felt entitled to batter their wives. In reality, both men and women perpetrate domestic abuse on their partners, and the pattern is similar regardless of gender. It doesn't apply to every abusive relationship, but many survivors find it relevant. The cycle consists of four main phases that repeat over and over, alternating abuse with reconciliations. It makes you unsure if you're being abused or making a big deal out of nothing, since the relationship includes both the good and the bad times. Also, reconciliation phase often involves mutual apologies and promises (e.g. "I won't punch you again if you don't provoke me"), which makes the situation appear normal; all couples fight and reconcile, so you lose perspective on the difference between a healthy relationship and a violent one. This on-and-off nature of violence allows it to gradually intensify over the time without you noticing it, like a frog in a pot of boiling water. Each incident isn't drastically worse than the previous one, so you don't know where to draw the line, and end up tolerating things you wouldn't dream of tolerating when the relationship just started. Recognizing the pattern might help break free from it.

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Emergency Escape Plan

Being involved in a violent relationship is kind of like living on top of a volcano. Some people leave once they realize it and never look back. Others run off during the eruption, wait out the danger, and come back once things calm down. Many go back and forth a few times, but eventually leave for good. Whatever your long-term plan is (staying or leaving), it's crucial to ensure your basic safety in the here and now, while you're still sharing the house with your abuser and the volcano can erupt any minute. The beauty of an emergency escape plan is that you don't have to hide it, because it's applicable in any emergency: fire, flood, earthquake, burglary, etc. Any reasonable person would commend you for being conscious of safety, your partner won't question your motives, and your friends and family won't suspect abuse (if you wish to keep it secret). You can even disguise your plan as a joke, a game, or a hobby (e.g. zombie apocalypses). It consists of simple adjustments that are easy to implement, but that would drastically increase your chances of surviving violence at home, and eventually escaping it.

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Info for Teens

Everybody has the right to happiness. With adults it's their headache to reach it. With minors - it's society's job to provide you with a healthy, safe, supportive environment where you can thrive. Nobody can make you happy but yourself, but adults responsible for you (like your parents, your teachers, your doctors, your local police officers - everyone around you) have the responsibility of providing you with your basic needs, things no one can be happy without. Society cares about you, wants you to reach your full potential and turn out a happy, healthy, smart, responsible, well-adjusted individual. This is why we have laws in place to make sure you get what you need to do that: You have the right to a safe home, adequate clothing, school supplies, food, medical care. When you don't have a winter coat, your home has no electricity, you haven't seen a dentist in years, there's no food in the fridge, or mom and dad yell at each other every night so you can't focus on homework - this is a bad environment to be in because you can't function like this. Nobody can thrive while cold, hungry, or sick. You have the right to education and guidance. If you can't read - you won't get very far in life, you know. If you don't know how to do laundry - it's going to be hard once you move out of your parents' house. If you never learned how to balance a checkbook - things will be rough when you get your own bank account and start paying your own bills. You have the right to learn all...

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Grounding Techniques

Emotions are a good thing to have: they let us know what feels good (so we know to keep it), and what feels bad (so we know to change it). Without emotions we would be clueless as to where do we want to go with life. That’s how it’s supposed to work anyway. Unfortunately, trauma can shake us up pretty badly, and some things might not fall back into place right away. We end up having emotions that aren’t guiding us towards a better life, but that keep us stuck in pain and misery instead. Moreover, these emotions often flood us at the wrong time: when we are at work, driving, grocery shopping, babysitting, or trying to have a calm evening with a partner. Suddenly, completely out of the blue, anxiety hits us below the belt, or we start replaying old trauma in our head as if it were happening all over again, or we get furious at our perp, or deeply sad about our ruined childhood, or get an irresistible craving to get wasted/high, or an urge to self-injure. Aside from bad timing – these feelings can get quite overwhelming, and thus hard to manage. While technically valid and understandable, they aren’t helping us in the here and now. There’s no reason for us to be relieving that traumatic experience while we are driving to work. If we need to do it – we’ll pick a better timing and surrounding for it, such as our therapist’s office for example. And meanwhile we can’t allow all those old feelings to overwhelm us at random, so we need to distract our mind from...

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False Rape Accusations

This is Luke Harwood from Essex, UK. When he was sixteen, a girl filed a rape complaint with the police against him. The police officers believed her story, but felt that Luke was innocent because the incident she described didn't constitute rape; she was misunderstanding what rape is. They explained it to her, and she withdrew her complaint. However, two years later she told a friend that Luke was a rapist, but that the police wouldn't press charges against him. She probably thought she was just telling her story, reaching out for support. Her friend, however, felt that justice needed to be served, tracked Luke down with two of her friends, and brutally murdered him. All three were sentenced to life in prison on multiple charges, including perverting the course of justice. Luke was eighteen years old. He had a son, Archie, and was expecting a daughter, Lilly-Rose. He was killed because of a false rape accusation. The prevalence of false rape accusations is a controversial topic; everyone seems to agree on the numbers, but interprets them differently. Here are the numbers (sources are listed on the bottom of this page): 2% of rape accusations were proven true, i.e. the accused was convicted of rape. 2% were proven false, i.e. the accuser committed perjury. 63% were never investigated because the alleged victim never filed a police report. 33% were a combination of unfounded claims (i.e. the incident described by the alleged victim does not constitute rape) and...