Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault
If you’re a survivor of sexual assault after the release of the Epstein files, perhaps you’ve been flooded with a lot of things that you thought you’d dealt with in the past. I want to put a trigger warning on this video out of respect for many people having different experiences, and ask that you listen to this or watch it when you have some personal and private time.
I’m Dr. Drew Ramsey, I’m a board-certified psychiatrist, and I’ve spent thousands of hours with patients talking about assault and sexual assault. I wanted to make this video in the wake of the release of the Epstein files to talk to you if you’re having experiences, you’re being activated or triggered, and to talk about what’s happening and what you can do about those today to help you with your next steps forward.
Often, patients are very triggered, and it’s a little confusing as to why, especially if it’s something that happened a long time ago. I wanted to make sure and let you know that this isn’t backsliding. This isn’t because you haven’t done your work. This isn’t in any way indicative that you are still struggling with the active phases of trauma.
It’s what has happened, and all these headlines in the news, and more importantly, the details of horrible, horrible things, bring up so much about assaults.
It’s filled with so many complex emotions, shame, grief, triumph, anger, disgust, and trauma come up in so many almost sinister ways. It haunts us in nightmares when we sleep. It comes up in the middle of stressful situations, or I think the part that’s most confusing when people are activated or triggered, and you’re not clear why.
A lot of times patients feel like this is backsliding. You know, I did the work, I dealt with that trauma, why am I feeling this now? And it’s one of the ways that trauma is so pernicious and so horrible. You can do such great work in therapy, and it just takes someone maybe being aggressive, making an off-color joke, or grabbing your arm in a bar, and suddenly you’re brought back into one of the most horrible experiences of your life.
When I’m working with patients, I wanted to make this video for all of you who are sexual assault survivors to talk about the importance of right now, today, and how you care for yourself.
It’s very, very important that you break out all of the tools that you have at your disposal about self-regulation and use the knowledge that you have and the work that you’ve done, whether that’s in formal therapy, whether that’s in your journal, whether that was talking to a friend or fellow survivor, that work of processing your trauma, it counts. And just because you’re having symptoms now, that doesn’t mean that you haven’t done the work that you need to do.
But it does mean that you have some work in front of you today and in the coming weeks. And I want to talk a little bit about that. I very much want to normalize the experience of having trauma and having it reactivated, but in no way do I want to normalize what has happened or what is in the Epstein files.
I want to talk about some of the prominent symptoms that happen with trauma, and I also want to talk about some of the resources available to you. Some of the symptoms that come up with trauma, one is dissociation, not feeling like you’re in your body or in this present reality with us. This is very common in trauma because it’s part of how people deal with acute trauma. We leave our bodies a bit to deal with the extreme things that are happening. It’s a way of protecting ourselves.
But then, later, when we hear echoes in the trauma, and you feel this echo in your body, people begin to dissociate. Other symptoms can be surprising to people like losing your appetite or feeling really nauseous, not being able to sleep, or feeling uncomfortable socializing. These are all symptoms of trauma activation. And it’s really important to acknowledge these and find the space in your life to care for yourself.
Some of this care is the very basics. I worry sometimes it sounds silly, but I’ve heard over and over again from trauma survivors that they need a little reminder that you are worthy of eating healthy meals every day, that you don’t need to use food as an emotional regulator. You can use it as a sense of nourishment, as a sense of power, that you are going to continue caring for yourself. Bathing, showering, and those basic self-care hygiene rules tend to go out the window. Oftentimes, people have a really awful and disparaging view of themselves after trauma. And one way to kind of lean into that is to stop caring for yourself. You’ll stop showering, stop caring for yourself. You’re going to, in some ways, lean into or slip into thinking about yourself in the ways that perpetrators think about you. It’s not worthy of care. It’s not worthy of hygiene. It’s not worthy of nourishment. You are. You know that. And it’s so important that during times when your trauma is activated, you make active efforts to reclaim that. It’s part of the process of healing, and it’s part of the process of being victorious over perpetrators.
If you are being pulled into the past, it’s very common, and it’s very important to recognize that right now. Maybe it’s in your dreams and nightmares that have gotten reactivated. Maybe you’re feeling hesitant to go outside or socialize, and you’re getting more isolated. Maybe you’re feeling it in your body with nausea, loss of appetite, or feeling hypervigilant, that you’re always on edge.
And so often the feelings of shame come up. So often, sexual assault survivors are thinking through what happened and what they could have done differently. This type of thinking ignores that you’ve encountered a horrible, depraved individual, someone who has used power and force to dominate, and you should be very, very clear with yourself to place blame where blame is supposed to lie, and that is with perpetrators, not with victims.
So many sexual assault survivors I’ve spoken to sit in a horrible world of conflict. They want justice more than anything. However, that means naming the perpetrator. That means going public. That means perhaps having this individual’s name tied to yours on the internet for the rest of your life. And as you understand, many people want more separation than ever before. As you know, separating from the past, separating from the perpetrators, not having them on your mind, not having them control the narrative of your life is absolutely essential to healing. That’s why it’s so important today, right now, when this video finds you, to make sure and reclaim the day, to separate the past from the present.
In the present, you have done so much work to create safety, to create structure, to create relationships, and to get help. It’s important to lean into all of those right now. Sexual assault survivors know not everyone should hear your story, that the idea of being vulnerable doesn’t work all the time.
Everyone can’t be aware of what’s happened to you, and I’m not suggesting in any way that this means you should just start sharing. But I do want you to make sure and double down on your efforts to connect. It doesn’t have to be about your assault. Sometimes I have patients who take great solace in being of service, going and volunteering, having their hands busy. Maybe that’s at the food bank, maybe that is volunteering for someone very innocent, like a child who needs some help with their reading or writing. These are ways that you can actively step outside for a few minutes, step outside of your trauma and be of service to others in a way that is a mix of distraction, but also tapping into some of those good and wonderful feelings that happen when we connect, when we don’t feel alone or because if you are a sexual assault survivor, these headlines, they hit so hard.
There’s such a mix of emotions, of some justice perhaps, and then just absolute disgust at these individuals. A lot of you have done great work in terms of using self-reflective tools like journaling and writing. And one of my top recommendations, of course, is to connect with the community. For some of you, that will be a community of people who have suffered from assault or struggled with the aftermath. For others of you, it might be the community that supported you as you got through this. For other people, perhaps it’s individuals who don’t even know about the assault, but they give you great comfort, they give you great support.
If it helps you to reach out to someone, I want you to hear my encouragement that you do that, and you pick that person carefully. Not everyone is equipped to hear about assault and sexual assault, and it makes a lot of people really uncomfortable. That’s not going to help you right now. You need to speak with people who are thoughtful, perhaps well-trained, experienced, and regulated. Your nervous system needs to see that other people can receive this and can sit with you and can hold on to the narrative of what happened without it overwhelming them or scaring them or angering them to the point that they need to do something other than be with you and support you. You are not alone, and what you’re feeling and experiencing in your nervous system right now is a very reasonable and normal response to having sexual assault trauma reactivated by the release of the Epstein files and all of the details that have come with that.
There are resources available to you that are free and that are anonymous. I’ve listed a few of these on the blog that accompanies this video on my website. The first is RAINN, R-A-I-N-N. RAINN is the national sexual assault hotline. On the other end of this line, you’re going to find an experienced, thoughtful, well-trained individual who has an expert-level knowledge of the resources available to you and is very used to speaking to people who are very distressed. This is a wonderful resource, and I encourage you to call. It doesn’t mean you have to do anything with the information, but it’s good to understand what resources are available, particularly in your local community. The next resource is the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. This is a trove of information ranging from the research that’s being done to national organizations and local organizations that have tools and resources to help you.
I hope this video helps as you think about the next steps forward, and specifically as you think about today. I hope it helps you really break free of any guilt or shame that you have because you’re feeling symptoms, no matter what they are, and reactivation of your trauma. Having worked with so many trauma victims, I also know something that I want to share, which is that the resilience of the human spirit is unbreakable. Your spirit is unbreakable.
So care for yourself today and tomorrow, the next day, maybe a little bit longer from now. I know that you’ll be back to full health. It happens every time, and it’s a remarkable aspect of the human spirit. I wish we weren’t in this state again, hearing about awful events and having my patients and individuals like yourself be reactivated. But it’s important that you know that you’re not alone, to hear the normalization that this is what happens, and that there are tools in front of you right now that can help you take small steps back to health. Thank you for your time. I hope this helps. I’ll see you in the next video.
Resources:
RAINN: National Sexual Assault Hotline https://rainn.org
National Sexual Violence Resource Center https://www.nsvrc.org/
