According to the Dept of
Justice 2016 statistics, every 98 seconds an American is sexually assaulted.
This translates to 1 out of every 6 women and 1 out of every 33 men experiencing
an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. For both college students and non-students,
in about 80% of sexual assaults, the victim knew their offender.
I am
one of these statistics.
My rapist wasn’t a stranger
who attacked in the dark, he was someone I knew for nearly four years, a
classmate, someone I trusted and considered a friend. Today, I will speak about how my recovery
changed my life.
Before the assault, I was a naïve and highly
driven 20yr old. Twice I had made the college dean’s list, was in the honors program and was on course to successfully transfer to UCLA as a psychobiology
major with a 3. 8 GPA. After the rape,
my GPA fell as low as a 0.333. I no
longer knew who I was or who I wanted to be. It took all of my energy just to
make it through each day. But I
couldn’t. Someone had taken everything I knew and believed in and left nothing
for me to hold on to. A rape leaves
every aspect of your identity subject to destruction and you must rebuild it if
you are to survive. There is no universal
passage through the trauma, suffering or healing. The path to recovery is a personal journey
that looks different for each survivor. I can only speak to my own recovery.
Recovering from rape changed my life by learning how to manage my PTSD, rebuild
my sense of self and to become resilient.
First I will talk about how I learned how to cope with my PTSD, second I
will cover how I rebuilt my sense of self, and lastly, how I became resilient.
During
my recovery, I continually faced obstacles with my PTSD and had to learn to
manage the emotional and physical symptoms. PTSD can be emotionally crippling because the
flashbacks and nightmares keep you trapped in the trauma. Flashbacks are unwanted, recurrent memories of
the trauma that can lead to negative intrusive thoughts. Through years of
therapy, I learned to use stress inoculation therapies such as exercising and
surrounding myself with positive and comforting people in order to reduce
stress reactions. I also learned to use a cognitive behavioral therapy
technique called reframing to counteract the negative thinking and ruminating
thoughts.
Next,
the nightmares are frightening because they involve both emotional and
physiological reactions. I learned to use image rehearsal therapy in order to
change the ending of the dream to a more positive outcome. I also learned to
use orientation techniques to ground myself back to reality after the
nightmares through journaling. Moving on to the physical effects of PTSD, you
can have a profound impact on your health and how you interact with the world.
I experience increased resting heart rate that went from 85 to 110 bpm. The
trauma had reset my nervous system. I
tried mediation and yoga to slow down my heart rate. It did not return to its
previous rate but o/time I learned to adjust to it. I also experienced shortness of breath due to
the heightened sense of arousal. I tied
a red string on my right index finger to remind me to breathe more often. Eventually, I bought this silver ring with
the engraving “Nothing is Impossible” as a constant reminder to breathe and
always be a present in the moment as a survivor.
Unlike the training and
therapy techniques I learned to cope with the symptoms of PTSD, there was not a
clear path to rebuild my sense of self.
Next, I will tell you about this part of my journey. When I began to rebuild
my sense of self was when my life completely turned around. I had
to reclaim myself through forgiveness which for me lead to some internal
understanding of the event. It felt like
my worth was determined by my rapist, that my body was not my own and my
choices were meaningless. Forgiving my rapist and myself allowed me to regain
some control over my life. In letting go, I gained so much more insight
into who I was, what I wanted and what was most important to me. Learning about myself and my strengths through
this experience allowed me to apply that knowledge to my everyday life. I finally felt like I had nothing to hide and
he couldn’t take anything else away from me.
Making sense of the event and reframing the negative allowed my goals to
come in to focus again. I realistically
redefined my goals and they were no longer blocked by feeling ashamed or by my
PTSD symptoms. I was no longer a victim but a survivor and I could take back my
life. I could now see that my degree from UCLA would mean so much more than
graduation, it would mean that I had not only survived but thrived.
So far I have told you about
how I managed the PTSD symptoms, and how I rebuilt my sense of self. For my
final point, I will focus on how I became resilient. Realizing that I am a
survivor allowed me to believe in my ability to deal with whatever came my way.
When you bear the unbearable, there isn’t anything you can’t overcome. After becoming subject to academic dismissal
at UCLA, my resiliency kept me driven. With the help of my doctors and
professors, I successfully appealed my dismissal and went from a 0.333 to a 3.2
GPA with a year. In 2008, I walked
across the stage and received my bachelor’s degree. I have made great strides and growth not just
as a person but also as a more adaptive student. Most recently, even after 11 denials, I did
not give up on gaining admission into a graduate nursing program.
In spite of all the
challenges, by reconstructing the negative narrative of my rape I gained
control over my PTSD symptoms, rebuilt a stronger sense of self and became
resilient. To conclude, after 14 yrs., finally publicly speaking about my
recovery allows me to use my experience as a positive platform to reverse the
stigma of rape and hopefully give a voice to other survivors. Just because
injustice, harm or evil is done to you, doesn’t mean you also have to become
these things. You have a choice and only
you are in control of the person you choose to become. I wouldn’t change what happened to me because
through this journey I found a gift; I found what I was truly capable of.
