Directness or Indirectness When Approaching a Friend in an Abusive Relationship?

I just came out of a discussion group on relationship abuse and domestic violence. I'm mulling over some of the different things we talked about, like subtle signs of abuse and how to approach a friend, especially if s/he is still not quite at the stage to be able to recognize the warning signs him/herself. A lot of what I heard from the other students in the group is that it's really important to be careful when talking to your friend, because they may not want to hear it, or they may need to come to the conclusion that what they're in is unhealthy by themselves. Most people suggested bringing things up casually, and not actually saying what you're noticing or worried about outright. The name of the game seemed to be casual indirectness.

I'm not sure I agree with this. I think my own personal experience with two different abusive relationships has significantly clouded my views, though. In my first unhealthy relationship, the main element was isolation. Even when I discovered for myself that things were not okay, I didn't have anyone to talk to. I fell into severe depression, and I repressed every instance of sexual coercion until I could even begin to think about it a year later. I desperately wanted someone to notice and to talk to me, to reach out to me first and confirm my growing suspicions and dread, but I was so isolated that I figured no one approached me because no one knew. However, in the second abusive relationship I was in, I know people knew. The walls in my fraternity house are very thin, and there was enough screaming and crying and door slamming that there was no way the people around me could not know. But still, no one ever approached me, no one ever asked me if I was okay. There were people I had superficial "Hi, how are you?"/"Great, thanks!" relationships with who had to have known but never ever showed signs that they noticed or cared. That, I think, was what kept me in that painful relationship for so long-- the conviction that I had no one to turn to even if I left.

The rampant, wrenching self-doubt that pervades a victim of relationship violence is most enabled by other people's indifference. In both of my situations, I needed someone to approach me and say that they noticed, they cared, and most importantly, that the situation I was in was unhealthy, abusive, and not okay. It's not because I didn't know that I was in a bad situation; I'm a smart person who has read the literature and gotten the same talk as you did in middle school health class. Many people who end up in abusive situations are smart people who know, deep-down, that something is wrong. It might actually be their intelligence that binds them, because it suppresses their gut instinct, that little voice that tells them something is wrong, and causes them to rely on external validation. (Think scientific method, think burden of proof, think of all those things you learn in school. Education taught you to doubt what you think instinctively or what you're told until you receive absolute proof.)

Reading those lists of warning signs is usually not enough. Receiving general information about relationship abuse doesn't prepare you to diagnose yourself or find the strength to help yourself. Making that jump from a theoretical abusive situation to the one right in front of your eyes is one of the hardest things for an emotionally exhausted person to do. Even in what seems like the most clear-cut case to me now-- like the night when I was raped-- I needed someone to tell me it was rape for me to even try to begin feeling okay with believing it. I wanted so desperately to be able to call it rape, to put a name on it and to begin to distance myself from something I could identify as not my fault, but I needed someone else's input. I needed someone to agree with what the little voice in my mind was telling me. I just needed to hear it from someone, to have that particular combination of "I care enough to approach you" and "I notice too; you're not just making it all up."

Is that weird? Is wanting someone to come in and echo your thoughts, to be your mirror and your support, the exception instead of the norm? As I listened to these other students discuss ways to beat around the bush with a friend who is involved in something clearly unhealthy, I couldn't help but wonder why no one advocated being straightforward and calling it what it was. It definitely depends on the person-- I can see how some people might react with defensiveness-- but there are people who need to hear it from someone else to have the strength to take action for themselves. Please remember that these people do exist.

I wish I could describe how to tell if someone is like that. It breaks my heart to think there might be someone out there who is stuck and feeling helpless and wondering if people really can't see. I guess the best I can do is to say that if you're trying to decide whether to approach someone and ask if they're okay, do it. Maybe you're afraid that your friend might lash out defensively and stop talking to you; that's a legitimate concern, and sure, some people might do that, but please don't let that stop you from trying, because there are people out there who hope someone will take that first step and talk to them. It can be intimidating to try to talk to someone, and you might feel like you don't know the right thing to say, but as long as you're supportive and nonjudgmental, it's always helpful to know that someone notices and cares.

Suicide Prevention Training Workshop Post, Part 2

I was thinking about this downstairs as I tried to clear my mind while separating pumpkin seeds from pumpkin innards. I guess this is what I wanted to say in the last post, in case it wasn't clear:


If you feel suicidal, I'm sorry. 
I hope you get the help you deserve;
I do care. 
I want to try to do as much as I can to help, but I'm not perfect, 
Just well-intentioned. 


If I don't notice, 
I'm sorry. 
Sometimes I notice that you're depressed but I don't know what to do; 
I'm sorry. 
Sometimes I notice you're depressed when I'm also depressed, and I don't have the emotional energy to do much more than just keep myself functioning; 
I'm sorry.  

Sometimes I can relate to you and your pain;

I'm sorry that you're going through this.

Sometimes I can't relate to your pain;

I'm just as sorry that you're going through this.

Sometimes I say the wrong thing;
I'm sorry.
Sometimes I can only look on helplessly, giving you the half-smile-half-grimace of sympathy like this :-/ ;
I'm sorry.
When you're feeling sad, or hopeless, or lost,
I really am sorry.


I do want to try to help,
But I don't always know;
I don't always know the perfect thing to do;
I don't always know what will make you better.
But please know that I care.
I appreciate you, and
My life would be emptier without you.

Brushes with suicide and how to try to help someone

Earlier this afternoon, some friends and I went to a one-hour-long Suicide Prevention Training Workshop by the QPR Institute. I went for a number of reasons, even though I knew I might be triggered. I went because I wanted to learn something new, something I couldn't just pick up from reading a webpage or a pamphlet. I also went because I wanted to see what they would try to teach the participants about noticing warning signs and helping someone who is contemplating ending their life. I wanted to see what people are being told about suicide prevention, these people that I, or you, or someone else, may one day turn to in a time of need.

I was disappointed. The presentation was boring, dry, and all typed up on a powerpoint, and I felt like it served to perpetuate the feeling that suicide is still just a theoretical problem. The model was Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR): ask someone if they are suicidal, persuade them to hang on, and refer them to someone better trained to handle these situations, e.g. a counselor. Sounds great, right? It's the perfect model to use to teach well-intentioned but clueless people because it sounds so neat and effective.

I went through a period of my life where I contemplated suicide somewhat regularly. It was always impulsive, in a situation of extreme emotional pain when I simply didn't know how to continue and just wanted to stop existing. Only once did I ever go so far as to plan out and begin to write a suicide note and seriously consider taking pills; that was the day my previous therapist told me I was using my rape as an excuse to not follow her strict treatment regiment for Borderline Personality Disorder (which is what she had diagnosed me with). Let's take a trip down memory lane...

This was one month after I was raped my senior spring. I kept wanting to talk about it with my therapist at the time, but she kept pushing the discussion back to breathing exercises and meditation (a Zen-based treatment for BPD, I guess?). When I tried to explain that I didn't think these exercises were working, she told me it was because I wasn't trying hard enough. She chastised me and voiced her disapproval at what she saw as stubbornness or laziness. I left her office both angry and depressed, oscillating between feeling outraged that my therapist would turn such a deaf ear to what I needed to say and feeling like a complete failure.

I returned to my fraternity house crying; no one noticed. I went up to my room and just sat there. I don't remember how I passed the next few hours-- sleeping, crying, staring at the wall, curled up under the covers, I honestly don't remember. Then a close friend of mine, someone I trusted and cared about and liked as more than a friend, came home from work, and came up to see me. He was exhausted because he'd been staying up late with me a lot but he had a regular job so the lack of sleep was getting to him. I remember being quieter than usual. I had stopped crying and raging because I had reached the absolute limit and was writing out a suicide note in my head. It calmed me, and I felt myself being lifted out of my depression a little; it was almost like there was hope, after all, because it would be all over soon. This friend of mine, we'll call him Z*, was hanging out with me in my room, clearly exhausted, and I was telling him he could just sleep in my room, that I would be fine. Somehow, though, he realized that something was terribly, terribly wrong, without me saying much at all, and he basically kidnapped me on my way back from the bathroom, rushed me out the door to put me in his car, and took me for a drive. Later during what ended up being a meandering several-hours-long drive, I opened up to him a little about what had happened with my therapist earlier that day. It felt timeless, somehow, like he had all the time in the world to spend with me and hear me and help me, so I trusted him. He saved my life.

That experience will always stay with me. I was depressed a lot during that spring and summer, but somehow, the one day when I needed it most, he knew pretty much exactly what to do. However, I cannot count on someone always recognizing the signs in me, and I cannot count on instinctively knowing how to help someone else. I only feel confident in my ability to help someone when I can relate to them, when they seem to be a mirror image of my past self somehow. When I see someone crying, or seriously depressed in the silent, somber, detached kind of way, I reach back into the depths of my own experience and try to do for them what I wish someone had done for me. When I read posts on the Pandora's Aquarium message board by survivors reaching out for help, I try to be as supportive as I can, and I write what I wish someone had said to me. While still shaky and not quite 100% healed myself, sometimes I can use what I have gone through to try to help others.

However, I am completely at a loss when someone doesn't react to sadness and hopelessness like I do. I don't know how to handle bitter anger. I don't know how to handle intellectually depressed people, i.e. people who lead you on philosophical or psychological debates when you try to help them. I don't know how to handle people in strong denial. I don't know how to talk to someone who intimidates me because they've helped me before so I feel like I'm their subordinate so who am I to try to help them? I am afraid to talk to people because my emotional capacity to empathize shrank so abruptly when I got hit by a truck, also known as PTSD, and I haven't quite regained it all yet. I remember being terrified one day last spring when someone was sitting in the chapter room, obviously sad, and I went to talk to them, not because I could really empathize and feel their pain and really want to help, but because I knew I used to be able to empathize and I knew what I would have done in the past and I knew what as a friend I was supposed to do. My ability to take on other people's pain had disappeared, and I felt awful, like I was somehow fake or cold or not quite a person anymore.

I think I've wandered off the track in this post, and I'm trying to figure out where this was all supposed to lead. I guess I wanted to reflect on how the QPR training session I went to brought back all these memories and how the prescribed method in the training session felt so contrived and unhelpful to me today. Personally, the resource I have found most helpful has been this page. I've linked to it before, in the post I wrote to try to help anyone thinking about suicide. I don't know if it will work for everyone, but that is the model I will try to follow if I ever have to help someone who is contemplating suicide.

I'm kind of emotionally drained right now. When I was planning this blog post on the walk home, I had so many ideas about what to say and where to go with it, but I've lost them. I didn't have enough time after the workshop to think about it and debrief with myself and my blog before I had to go to another meeting, where the tone was completely different and I had to put aside all those feelings because everything was lighthearted and not at all about depression and suicide.

I'm feeling really lost right now. I might have to just post this now and return to this topic later.

(To be continued...?)

"Hey-- I have something I want to tell you..."

Dear Readers,

I have a dilemma. When I become closer to new friends I make, I want to tell them about this part of my life. I want to share my story with them and help them see why this is an issue I am so passionate about.

I, however, am awkward. :(

I don't really know the best way to tell people. I feel like this isn't something I should just blurt out, so I try to preface it with "I have something I want to share with you." Isn't that an awkward phrase, in all its incarnations? I certainly think so. It's even worse if it's a set-up meeting, like if I email someone to say "I'd like to sit down and talk with you at some point." And then we meet up, and maybe they follow me somewhere, and they sit down awkwardly, wondering why kind of bad news this might be. To make matters worse, I'm usually never upset when I tell people-- I'm usually in a very calm, normal, even cheerful kind of mood. How's that for cognitive dissonance?

So what I've been doing lately is starting by asking if they remember how I took a year and a half off during my senior year. They pretty much all do, since I'm, y'know, a member of the class of 2008. The reason I've always given to people at first is that I was burnt out and having a change of heart with what I wanted to do after I graduated so I took some time off to work and get re-energized and re-organized. And so now I tell them that I also took the time off for medical leave, for post-traumatic stress disorder. This is usually when I start to see a look of increasing cognition in their eyes, the knowledge that I'm about to reveal something awful that happened to me at some point. And that's when I say I was raped. I usually only mention the occurrence my senior spring; I used to tell people it wasn't the first time, that I've been sexually assaulted in the context of a relationship before, but I've stopped doing so for several reasons: I've forgiven him, because I understand that it wasn't malicious, and because it doesn't usually help with the inherent uncomfortableness of telling someone to add an "And by the way, that wasn't the first time..."

So yeah. Now there's an awkward silence. There's always an awkward silence. This is when I add that it happened at my fraternity house, by a brother of my own fraternity. Aaaaand then I run out of things to say, so I fidget, and feel bad that I'm saying this all so matter-of-factly, and I muse about how it would probably have been easier had I been crying or somehow visibly upset because then they can give me a hug and not feel so awkward and useless as they stand there and try to figure out how to react.

For me, it's like telling someone about some events that happened at some point to someone-- not even really a story, because when I tell stories, I usually try to project and inflect and use my tone and body language to convey nuances of the story that my words overlook. But I don't know what nuances there are in this story, in my story. There is an event. There are some additional details. And there is awkward silence. What else is there? What more can I add? What else can I say?

I feel like I'm going about and doing this all wrong. Maybe I shouldn't make it so scripted, so set apart from the happenings of daily life. Maybe I shouldn't make a distinct decision to tell them at all, and just say it when it feels right. But I don't think there will ever be an appropriate moment to just suddenly inform someone that I was raped, at least not in any way that isn't antagonistic-- e.g. if someone makes a particularly tasteless rape joke and I feel like smashing the mood and grinding it to pieces beneath my heavy black femmenazi steel-toed boots. I just don't know. This is something I want to share with people. This is something I want them to know so they can be conscious of not just what I'm dealing with but really more of the issue in general. I want them to realize that rape is not something that happens somewhere out there to other people, not something that befalls women who may or may not have deserved it, not something that is wielded about gratuitously by angry butch feminists who burn bras and threaten to topple male society. Rape is real, and it does happen to people you know. That is part of what I want to say.

But they, these people I am telling, they are my friends. Most of them will be as sensitive and caring as they know how to be; they don't deserve to be the full target of my anger at other people who insist on denying and disbelieving. I feel like there has to be a way for me to drop the weight of this revelation on them without crushing them unduly. How can I make this a dialogue? How can I tell my story but also invite them to share their thoughts and impressions with me?

One thing I learned recently is that a reason TMI ("too much information") makes conversations so awkward is that the receiver of the information feels compelled to reciprocate. It puts the listener on the spot, and that's not my intention at all. To address this, what I've been doing is wringing my hands awkwardly  and trying, haltingly, to reassure them that they don't need to reveal something of equal magnitude to me, that they don't have to reveal anything at all. And then they look like they feel bad because they're listening but they don't know what to say, and I feel helpless because I don't know how to fix this situation.

I always wonder what they're thinking when I tell them. I'm sure many factors come into play, such as how out of the blue this conversation was, how well they know me, how much they've already guessed. I always wonder how odd it is for them to hear this from someone who is so calm and detached from their words, from someone who doesn't herself understand why telling people has become an emotionless recitation of short sentences and a puzzling array of silences around which to navigate. I don't know where my emotions are. I don't know if they are buried or simply not there. Maybe last year I cleaned the store all out and it hasn't restocked. Sometimes I think about crying, but I can't, because it's not thinking about the event anymore that makes me sad or angry or any kind of emotional (other than panicky, sometimes). It's thinking about the aftermath, and that's a can of worms I try not to open up on the first date with someone who didn't realize what they were getting into when they agreed to listen to me. Whenever I talk about the aftermath, the emotions bubble up and out and overflow everywhere, into my words, my voice, my tears, but it's like a floodgate opening, all at once and sudden and intensely drowning. But not the telling of the events of March 25-26. I don't have the emotions for those; I lost the tape for the audio book and can only show you the pictures and sentences on the page.


How can I make this better? Believe it or not, this is not a rhetorical question-- I do want your input. If I told you about this in person, do you remember how I did it? Is there anything I could have said or done to make it less awkward? Could I have made it more of a dialogue between us somehow? If I never had the chance to tell you in person and you found out through some online means, can you imagine a conversation we might have that would work out well?

Now that it's been a year and a half later, I'm not just telling people because I need an outlet to share my pain. I want to tell people so they understand my intense drive to try to fix the world for rape survivors. I want to tell people so I can show them this blog and ask them to show others to spread the word. I want to tell people because this is part of who I am and I am not ashamed of it. There's so much I want that I don't know how to achieve. Please share some insight with me-- I'd appreciate it!


Sincerely,
Awkward in Amsterdam
(...except I'm not really in Amsterdam.)

Once Upon A Time, There Was A Bully.

There's someone I hate more than the man who raped me. This person has done his very best to insult and degrade me each time I've had to tell him about the traumas I've been through. He was in a position of power over me each time-- once as a significant other, once as an officer of the fraternity to which we both belonged. He has spouted every kind of vitriol ranging from accusing me of liking it to asking me if it was "really rape, not like the last time" which was also rape, just one he didn't believe, to telling me to keep quiet because if word that a rape occurred in our fraternity, it would ruin our reputation on campus and no one would want to come to our house anymore.

I remember that conversation well. It was a conversation I was forced to have, as he wielded his officership over me and demanded to know what had happened. His words bit deep into my memory, reminding me of the traumatic few days that followed the rape. I vividly remember the tears of anger and frustration that stung my eyes as he lounged so nonchalantly, so arrogantly in the chair across from me. I remember telling myself that he and I have a rocky history, that he despises me-- a fact that he declares publicly to anyone who cares to listen-- which means that I shouldn't take his words to heart, but I can't help it, and the words sink in anyway.

Over the course of the next few months, my fraternity does nothing to prove him wrong or hold him accountable as an officer for trying to silence a rape victim. When I'm not crying my heart out in pain or lost and dissociated for hours on end, I seethe and I rage at the apathy that has alienated me so. In many respects he represents all that was wrong with how my fraternity handled the situation, and even much of what is wrong in the world. Victim-blaming, victim-shaming, ignorance, and the arrogance to believe he is always right-- these are the very seeds that sow rape-culture.

I cannot think of him without the strongest mental repulsion, stronger than that against thoughts about my rape or my rapist himself. I still see him because he is still here. We tend to ignore each other as much as possible. However, today he said something so dismissive and minimizing of my story that the dam broke and my pent up rage abruptly came back. So I did the unthinkable: I informed him that I wanted to speak to him.

I confronted him tonight. I told him how it was absolutely not okay to tell a rape victim to not share her story because it would ruin the reputation of the house. The same faint sneer I am so used to seeing appeared on his face, his expression of total indifference. His claim was that he was thinking solely of legal liability and being sued by the rapist. Yeah, right-- that's total bullshit, because his words to me a year and a half ago were that if news of this got out on campus, people would no longer come by our house and we as a fraternity would be ruined.

He claims he was acting as a high-ranking officer in the house and doing what he thought was appropriate. But I confronted him about his well-publicized dislike (or rather, "completely lack of respect," as I have the honor of being one of the few people he says he has ever lost respect for in his life) of me, and if he would have acted differently had the survivor not been me. His answer? Yes. So first he claims to be acting as an officer of the house, but then admits that it was really about his personal feelings about me. Fantastic! So I informed him that I was glad he would not be so misogynistic against other women and he stalked out of the room.

I was intensely riled up after that fail of a conversation. I raged and I cried and I dug my nails so hard into my palm that I left angry red crescents in my skin. I don't know exactly what it is that bothers me-- the immaturity, the arrogance, the refusal to believe any part of his belief is wrong, the injustice of it all. He actively despises me, a fact I have been informed of repeatedly by his royal highness himself, and has pretty much done everything he can to bully me, guilt me, and hurt me. I absolutely hate him more than I hate the man who raped me. Somehow, though, he remains a welcome member in the house with whom my friends interact on a regular basis. He saves his vitriol only for me, in such a way that no one really believes me or cares enough to intervene. When I vent to them, one moment people are nodding sympathetically, and the next they are conversing friendlily with him.

I feel alienated, even more so than when I was struggling through my intense PTSD last year. People were genuinely sympathetic then, and they shared my anger and hatred of my rapist. It was too easy to hate the man who raped me, as he was someone people were prone to disliking anyway for his personality and prior behavior, someone who lived in another state and would never come back. People united behind hating my rapist; that was the extent of the effort they were willing to put into supporting me. But asking them to judge a current brother of the house for his behavior was too much for me to ask, apparently.

And so I try to deal with my frustration on my own. I don't understand how to handle this; I don't understand how to let this go.

Abortion Of A Pregnancy Resulting From Rape

This video was posted on Facebook by someone I knew growing up. (For what it's worth, she is devoutly Christian, married, and pregnant.)

This video made me sputter and flail angrily.





Great. So after that fantastically guilt-trippy wank about "not making the child a victim," a woman in that audience is totally going to go talk to the pastor about how her life was just ruined by a man. Rape is a crime of power, and clearly being guilt-tripped by someone you trust into keeping a child you never wanted from a man you didn't want to be involved with as a reminder of something you never asked for is a GOOD IDEA.

*slow clap* Wow. Giant massive idiot wankery. I like how he framed his entire answer in lots of fluffy "but I really actually care about your feelings!"

It's late, I have an exam tomorrow morning, and so I should go to bed, but this is the first of probably several posts that will express my HULK SMASHY RAGE over this. I will try to be more coherent and less sputteringly angry in the future.

Song: "Remember The Tinman" -- Tracy Chapman

A little bittersweet, touching, ultimately empowering? Not triggering.




There are locks on the doors
And chains stretched across all the entries to the inside
There's a gate and a fence
And bars to protect from only God knows what lurks outside
Who stole your heart left you with a space
That no one and nothing can fill
Who stole your heart 
Who took it away
Knowing that without it you can't live
Who took away the part so essential to the whole
Left you a hollow body
Skin and bone
What robber what thief who stole your heart and the key
Who stole your heart
The smile from your face
The innocence 
The light from your eyes
...
But still all sentiment is gone
But still you have no trust in no one
If you can tear down the walls
Throw your armor away remove all roadblocks barricades
If you can forget there are bandits and dragons to slay
And don't forget that you defend an empty space
And remember the tinman
Found he had what he thought he lacked
Remember the tinman
Go find your heart and take it back
Who stole your heart
Maybe no one can say
One day you will find it I pray