Triggering (SI/Sexual Abuse) - can any one give me a hand?
Hi everyone, this is my first post, i read the stickies hope i've got it all right.
Down to bussiness
I've been seeing this girl far about a month and a half now it i really like her. It's a long distance relationship (for teenagers anyway). She lives about 60 mile from me and we met at a summer camp.That is were i notice some scares on her wrist, nothing to bad but about a week after camp i was talking to her on AIM and i asked her about it. I just wanted to know why she cut her self. Not because I wanted to be an asshole but i used to cut myself too. I told her my story she told me her's and that kinda broke the ice for both of us. She hasn't cut in over a month now, i'm really proud of her for that. She still has low self esteam, i just talked to her on the phone and she gets stressed when it's not gonna do anything but waste her time. I talked her though it, shes gonna be fine.
Now this is what bothers me. Last sunday we were at the mall after seeing a movie. and she had told me that she needed to talk to me about something over the phone about 3 days before. She wanted to tell me in person. So i waited. She told me that she had been sexualy abused in previous relationship. First thing i did was give here a hug. Then she said that she had been having nightmares about "it" sence the week before when We made it to 3rd. Now i felt bad about it because i started he whole thing. I pulled her closer to me, i kissed her first, so on and so on. I know she was into it, later that night she started to return the favor then... her mother came into the room.
I felt bad because i had brought this all back to her. But i relized that it's just selfish to show my impulse emotions (making her feel bad for telling me). She has kinda shut down all my attemps to talk to her about and all i want to do is make sure that she is all right and help her get past this. It's not about me wanting to get in her pants, i would leave her if it would get her past this.
so if you have any advice let me know
other stuff that may help with your advice giving.
She is my first girlfreind, I'm 17 she's 16, I see her once a week, we talk for about an hour a day. I talk to her again at 9 to night
my grammar is bad i know, let me clearify if things don't fit quite right.
Well I think that if she is talking about the abuse or memories you should ask "would you like a hug/kiss?" before you actually do it, because even though we can tell your motives are just to comfort her, it could accidentally upset her. It would help to reassure her that you love her for who she is, and that you only want to do anything sexual if she is completely comfortable. If you are ever in the midst of omething sexual and you see her eyes fill with fear or she doesn't seem "there" stop for a moment and ask if she's okay. Also, I would def reccomend you tell her to talk to a counselor or therapist about this abuse and how it has affected her life. A professional could also help with her cutting along with recovering from being hurt. *hugs* Good luck
Like Troubleshooter suggested, ask her for permission before you do things like hug or kiss or whathave you. Sexual Assault is about power and control and people who have had that happen to them need control. At least that's my take on it.
I agree that it could also show her that you're there for her, not just what she can give you, not just there to take.
But I also think that talking to someone trained about these things could help. Is there a guidance counselor at your school? Or sometimes religious figures (like a minister or rabbi or priest or whatever) are okay to hit up for this type of thing. Or you could find some psychiatrist or something along those lines.
Talking about this sort of thing is ALWAYS hard and difficult and awkward. If you feel that talking about it would help, you could either wait until she brings it up or you could bring it up after you talk to someone about this with something along the lines of 'hey, so i was thinking about what you told me before and i was wondering if it's cool if we talk about it' or something like that. But don't force her. However, if she doesn't want to talk about it, don't force her.
Anyway, good luck, and feel free to post here more if you think it would help or you run into any other problems. We're cool people here.
To sum up: Ask for permission, try to talk about it a little, YOU talk to a trained person if possible, don't force things, ask for permission. Oh, and don't force things. (Guess what I feel the two most important parts are?)
wow in the time that i spent thinking for ways to get her to talk about it i never once thought of asking her "would it be ok to talk about it" rather than "would you like to talk about it"
its kinda interesting that you say for abuse victims its about control. The reason she told me she started cutting was for control.
"Stand for who you are and what you've done"
"There is no shame in what you've done, only in what you haven't learned from it"
They've done several studies and they've said that's the main reason rapists rape and assaulters assault. It's really not surprising that the victims get a little weird about control sometimes (I'm saying that as a victim).
That's part of why I started cutting, was for control. That's a reason I do a lot of things is for control. I need it. But... it's not the best way to go about things sometimes.
so i talked to my giudance counsular today and she told me to try to talk to her, but be extreamly patiant, and give her a way out of everything, even littel stuff like makeing sure the doors to my car aren't locked when we're in it. makes sence right?
last night i talked to her about it and she didn't realy say anything. All i could say was that that i'm here if she ever wanted to talk about and that if she would like to slow things down that wouldn't be an issue. yes i asked if it was ok if we talked about it.
"Stand for who you are and what you've done"
"There is no shame in what you've done, only in what you haven't learned from it"
So this hasn’t gone so well. I saw her, for the first time since last Sunday when she told me about the nightmares. She where’s a bandana around her wrist and she said it was for work, made sense to me. We were on the couch I got up to use the bathroom I came back and she had the bandana off and that is when I saw the cuts in her wrist. I couldn’t even think. I asked her for a hug and asked why. She turned away. I asked if it was because of me leaving every week. She nodded yes. Then I told her that I didn’t want to hurt her anymore. I told her that she had a the choice, We could stay together and I could help her get through this, Or I would only leave one more time, we would be friends and I would still help her through this.
Either way I want her to be done with all this SI, I love this girl as friend; maybe some day as a partner too.
I told her that she didn’t have to make the choice right there. I talked to her today and she is going to call me tonight with an answer.
I told her to make the choice that would hurt her less. I figured that if this SI was about control then I should give her the control here. I told her that as well.
I just feel like I’ve hurt her more than help her, that was never my intention. The whole reason I talked to her after camp was to see if I could help her.
I think she’ll chose to be friends and if she is on the fence that is the one I want her to chose. I want her to be happy.
I guess I will know in a few hours, it’s so hard to wait for this.
Thanks for a place to put this.
"Stand for who you are and what you've done"
"There is no shame in what you've done, only in what you haven't learned from it"
I was a little wrong when I said that SI is just about control. For me, it is largely about control and that's how I look at it. For some people it's about overwhelming emotions. For others, it's about punishment.
I'm sorry I gave you bad advice, sometimes I forget things. You know, you could point her in the direction of this website. There are some good articles on here and she's welcome to e-mail the supporters, as are you for that matter.
I am glad that you're trying to help her. I wish more people had friends (or boyfriends) that tried to understand.
I'm sorry it didn't go well.. but while self-harm is obviously a very bad thing, it could be something she's relying on at the moment. Therefore it might be better if your aim wasn't to stop her SI-ing, but rather to help her with the cause of it. The trouble is.. it's quite hard to give advice like this.. like Amaryllis said. There are a myriad of different reasons people self-harm and a myriad of ways in which people respond to sexual abuse. Either you need to talk this through with her, or you need to encourage her to talk to somebody else about it, because only she would have even the faintest idea of what's going through her head :)
The important thing is to make sure she knows how much you care about her. If that were me I'd rather somebody said something a bit tactless than said nothing at all for fear of upsetting me :) Victims of sexual-abuse often feel as though what happened to them cut them off from society.
I hope this was useful - just bear in mind that it could be total crap :P
we're back to being freinds. wich isn't to bad, we both laughed and cry over the phone for about an hour and a half last night. I'm glad she made a choice, she has talked to some other peopel about it. I told her about this site last night. I really hope she ends up happy.
We're still gonna talk alot, basicly the same thing we've been doing, minus the visit every week.
thanks for your help, it really did help, it made it a alot easyer to talk to her about this. You adivce wasn't crap, and if it was i wouldn't have talken it.
Thanks
"Stand for who you are and what you've done"
"There is no shame in what you've done, only in what you haven't learned from it"
