Your Traumas Are Not Your Fault

People often judge victims of any type of abuse. They say, “she asked for it” or “did she got molested AGAIN? She must do something wrong herself!”

I don’t believe these cries! If anyone ever got abused in any kind of way—boy or girl; black, white, and anything in between—nobody deserves to get hurt, stalked, or touched! NOBODY!

Let me make one thing clear: if you’ve been abused/traumatized before in your life, it’s much “easier” to get traumatized a second time or third—or fourth. It’s definitely not because you’re exaggerating or anything like that. You’re not “asking for it” either “like having troubles.” It just isn’t your fault.

Many times people say “she said she was raped by three different men. Well, she probably changed her mind during the intercourse, you can’t call that rape.” People are always looking for a reason why things happen. We as a society tend to judge the person we know, the person who’s speaking up. Because we can visualize that person, we feel much less content with the idea a really dangerous person is still walking amongst us. You know what I’m saying? We like to judge people to make ourselves less scared and vulnerable. If someone gets in an abusive relationship for the second time with another person we say, “she is kind of looking for it, why does she go for those type of guys?” It’s hard to understand that there really are abusive people who are able to trick anyone. That makes a lot of people vulnerable. It is way easier to think the victim is naïve and foolish.

For those people, let me tell you something new: it can happen to anyone. And once you’ve been a victim, you will always be one. Of course, you can work through your problems. You can heal; you can grow. But the trauma will remain inside and when something similar happens, if you want it or not, it will tear open the old wounds.

We as a society tend to judge the person we know, the person who’s speaking up. Because we can visualize that person, we feel much less content with the idea a really dangerous person is still walking amongst us.

Last week, I realized this myself. I didn’t understand why some “harmless” situations made me feel so, so, so bad. I just couldn’t understand. But then I realized what happens when something is a tiny bit similar to my underlying trauma, I go back in time. That’s called PTSD. If someone touches me on my leg, it feels bad and threatening to me even if it was an accident. What happens is my body and head are going back to a bad place and a bad time. It feels almost identical to the trauma that happened. In fact, at that point, I get traumatized again by my head. So if I say it felt threatening, it tells you something about how I feel, about how I experienced that situation.

That’s why victims get traumatized easier. The trauma is already there, it just needs one millisecond to make us feel the same way again.

Please don’t you ever question yourself if something feels bad. You can’t expect others to not trigger you, but that doesn’t mean you have the right to feel not feel triggered. Sometimes normal situations touch an old wound and often it even hurts more this time. Because you know it doesn’t have to be a traumatizing situation, but your past will make it feel like one.

I hope one day this will go away, but I'm afraid it won’t. The only thing we can do is accept our pasts and our feelings. We have been hurting more than enough, there’s no need to do that again to yourself.

And for anyone else who doesn’t understand how “small situations” feel so big for some people, please keep in mind the story I’ve been telling. Once there is a trauma, any situation related feels like reliving the trauma and can create a new trauma.

~written by Namasté allday~