Destruction of Belief Systems
Rape is a crime unique in the level of the destruction it causes to the self. The aftermath of rape is the destruction of the belief systems that are the very foundation of how we exist in our daily lives. When we experience the destruction of one belief system there is a domino effect that follows in the collapse or impairment of most or all of our belief systems. Rape always changes our belief in the world as a safe place, in our ability to accurately judge who the good people are, where the safe places are, and our ability to discern situations or to protect ourselves. It destroys our sense of trust in ourselves and in the world. No further healthy negotiation of many of life's interpersonal complexities is possible without that trust. The aftermath becomes at worst a challenge of our very mental health and at best a challenge to our ability to have healthy intimate relationships. There is no such thing as rape without serious, long term consequences to the emotional life of the survivor.We frequently are reticent to call what has happened to us "rape". If it is rape, we must accept the complete loss of control and that is an unbearable reality to all human beings. If we have no control then how can we exist? The fear would be too great. But deceiving ourselves brings us no strength because there is no escape from the truth. Our minds might be able to convince us that our experience was not rape, but our souls will always be the bearer of that truth. We will become conflicted people, incapable of understanding why things turn out the way they do in our lives over and over again, incapable of learning from our patterns.
When rape occurs during our formative years (pre 26), it interrupts the very foundation that is meant to carry us through our lives. We become stuck in aberrant coping mechanisms that we carry for the rest of our lives. Is the damage reversible? OF COURSE, but it takes a skilled and methodical process that is not always easy to find. And we are sometimes our own worst enemies because the shame we feel, the misplaced blame we attribute to ourselves, keeps us wanting to pretend that if we just forget the event and get on with our lives we can make it all go away. Unfortunately, few of us can do that. We need the help of those trained to help us rebuild our belief systems; help us clarify our misconceptions about our self-blame; help us reform healthy life skills; and help us find the strength and power that is within each of us to rebuild our lives in healthy and productive ways.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, over 90% of those women seeking psychiatric help have been the victims of traumatic abuse in their past. In the aftermath of a sexual assault, we will all develop some sort of coping mechanism to get us through. While these mechanisms do their job in the short run, they can lead us into harms way if we are not taught that they are only meant to get us through, not to become a lifestyle or a pattern. the emotional isolation we sometimes experience after an assault might be necessary to give us time to sort some things out, but as a long term mechanism it only causes us more pain. But how do we learn to trust again when our basis for that belief system has been destroyed? Being fearless of our truths is a first step, but it is a painful one. the same holds true for wanting to believe that we can "just get over it". Without a careful restructuring, we cannot "just get over it". We can relive it in a variety of ways. We can continue to find ourselves in situations in which we feel powerless. We can self-correct in maladaptive ways like always, making sure we are in control even when it is not appropriate. We can have our whole life changed due to something for which we have responsibility . No matter what we have done the consequence for our actions is NEVER to be raped. No matter what.
We can take the control back. We can spend time to undo the damage and get on with our lives, leaving the rape behind as an experience: something that happened TO us, that is not OF us. True control is taking the steps to regain ourselves and all of our power and to lead a life in which we are cognitive of responses that belong to our rape. True control is learning to respond from ourselves, not from the experience.