Post Traumatic Solutions

Last week I did an intensive and worked with a young woman whose life was transformed by a story I shared with her.

Although discussing childhood experiences is not the focus of my work with couples during intensives, Sharon talked a great deal about how she was raised. To say that she had it tough would be a vast understatement. Both of her parents were drug addicts and unable to properly nurture or protect their 6 children. As is often the case in chaotic families, the children “raised each other.”

Sharon shared that her parents divorced when she was 6, and that although her mother was working on becoming sober, her father was a heroin addict. Still, she was sent to her dad’s house for regular visits.

Her father often had other drug addicts hanging around his house when she visited. One of these men, Sharon said, sexually abused her. This happened on several occasions. Additionally, Sharon admitted that her own brother sexually abused her for 4 years and told her that he would hurt her if she ever told anyone. She never did.

As Sharon talked about these experiences, she cried, explaining that she felt shame and disgust because she allowed these things to happen in her life. Even though the abuse had happened long ago, the feeling of self-contempt was omnipresent. She believed that, somehow, she should have stopped the abuse.

I reminded Sharon that she was just a little girl when the abuse took place and that it was not her fault; her parents should have protected her. A wonderful protective parent today of three young children, she agreed, but still, she had been unable to shake the feeling that she was damaged goods.

That’s when I knew I had to tell her a story of a client whom I worked with many years before.

This client told me that she lived alone and that she was runner; every day at the same time, she would set off on her run, taking the same path.

One day, she returned to her apartment after her run, and the door closed behind her. There stood a masked man with a knife in his hand. At once, she realized that she might get raped, but was determined that she would get out of the situation alive. The man did, in fact, rape her, but when he got distracted for a moment, she got out of his grip, and ran across the street to a neighbor’s house stark naked.

The neighbor gave her some clothes and called the police. The police arrived and interrogated her as to what had just happened. This woman calmly and carefully outlined the events that had taken place.

Noting her calm demeanor, the policeman said, “Ma'am, I don’t get it. You were just raped at knifepoint and you are telling me this story so calmly. How is that possible?”

Her response forever changed my thinking about traumatic experiences. Here’s what she told the cop: “You don’t think that I’m going to let 15 minutes with that f---er ruin my life, do you?”

The rape did not ruin her life. For years, she volunteered at a rape crisis center, supporting other victims. She took pride in her resilience and wanted to share her perspective with others.

I watched Sharon’s face when I told her this story. Her eyes lit up. She smiled. Her body relaxed. I hoped that this story of resilience would begin to percolate in Sharon’s mind.

The next day, Sharon began the session by saying that a gigantic weight had been lifted. She said that all of her life, she had felt dirty and unworthy. But after hearing that story, she felt relief. Sharon told me that she looked in the mirror that morning, and for the first time, she liked what she saw.

Perhaps as you read this story and how my client of so long ago responded to that vile act that day, you might have been thinking, “Was she in denial?” “Won’t she eventually experience PTSD if she doesn’t do a deep dive into the trauma of what happened?” “Don’t victims of sexual crimes require years of therapy to heal their spirits?”

I get it. There was a time in my career that I would have thought those things too.

But after decades of working with people, I’ve learned that everyone is different, and how we deal with life experiences differs greatly.

How ludicrous it is to believe that each person must go through the same process to heal. How wonderful it is to know that the meaning we ascribe to our experiences is even more significant than the experiences themselves.

As this young couple left the intensive, the woman gave me a hug that nearly took my breath away because she squeezed me so hard. I had to fight back tears because I understood the emotion behind her embrace.