What my friend went through was vile, horrible, and disgusting. It only happened a few months ago, I don’t want to doxx her so I won’t reveal details. All I will say is she is working very hard to come to terms with what happened and heal, she is in therapy and has sought support from family and close friends.
Me and our mutual friends are very worried, however. One of her ways of coping is telling everyone about what happened. And I mean *everyone.* At very…strange times. For example we had lunch with a mutual, new friend. Only knew him for a week at that point. We were joking around about something totally unrelated, a sad book we like (nothing at all to do with SA) and out of nowhere she said “oh yeah that’s sad just like my assault.” Our new friend did not know about it and did not know how to react. After he did his best to be supportive and ask if she wanted to talk about it, she said no… then insulted him. Twice. She basically called him incompetent at being an adult. It was incredibly mean and unexpected, none of us knew how to react. She still refuses to admit that she was mean to him and brushes it off as a joke.
More recently than that we had another meal, another new friend, and once again in a coversation completely unrelated to SA/assault in general she brought the conversation very abruptly to her trauma similarly to the last time. Our friend took it in stride, we all agreed to change the subject to something less heavy… then she brought it up again, also in a weirdly casual way (imagine something like “well, just like when I was assaulted, house hunting was really hard”)
I’m extremely confused and worried by this. Is this a coping mechanism? Should I be worried? Should we try to talk to her about it? Or is it better to let it slide? I have no experience in supporting SA survivors, I feel really out of my depth. What is the best way to react when she does this? I obviously want to be kind and considerate to her since she’s going through so much. Thanks guys.
TL;DR friend who went through SA recently mentions it very often in the middle of casual conversations, not sure how to address it in a healthy/productive way
14 comments
This sounds like some sort of coping mechanism, but not a very good one. Maybe she is trying to take back control by proving that she isn’t afraid to talk about it. But either way, she is trauma dumping. And she definitely needs to keep going to therapy.
You need to set boundaries with her. I’d maybe pull her aside or talk to her privately asking why she keeps casually bringing it up and what type of response she’s hoping to get. Depending on her answer, you can go a few different routes. 1. Sexual assault is a heavy topic that many people have experienced. Not everyone may be comfortable with it casually brought up in unrelated discussions, or they may even be triggered by it. 2. Perhaps this is a topic best reserved for therapy. You guys are not trained mental health professionals and are unsure of how to respond to these random remarks. 3. If she is looking for attention or support, you can offer that in a conversation about what happened.
There are a few subreddits for SA and surviving SA, maybe they can help.
r/sexualassault
r/SexualAssaultSurvivor
r/SexualAbuseSurvivors
….just a few….
From the perspective of a CSA survivor, I would not be able to be around her if she spoke like that. A dedicated conversation where I can prepare and know how to be supportive, I think I could do. But casually dropped into a conversation? I’d probably have a panic attack. I would refuse to be around her at all if it happened more than once.
Somehow, she needs to be spoken to. I’m not 100% sure how you pull it off. Do you/your friends have a therapist of your own you could try to bounce ideas off of? She’s likely using this as a coping mechanism for her trauma. But she could easily cause trauma by doing so.
She’s processing what happened to her. Its likely that this is how her mind is all the time, day and night. As a victim myself, you can be having the nicest time doing something and suddenly an image of your assault just hijacks your brain. It’s called PTSD when this continues long afterwards. While this is very uncomfortable for you, I’d like to think you would give the same support you would want to receive if you had been through what she has. While you’re not responsible for her, I would definitely have an honest conversation with her and try to guide her towards help. You can’t medicate trauma, but talk therapy and things like EMDR can make a huge difference.
I absolutely think it’s a coping mechanism/trauma reaponse. I did the same thing when diagnosed with MS.
I might describe it as an effort to normalize myself and what I have been through. You do it to test how people will respond to your experience and how you think of yourself through their reactions.
Her experience is a lot more unsettling than mine which is certainly why it feels uncomfortable to you. I would strongly recommend a support group so she can relate to people she feels similar to. Seeking community seems like a reasonable response to what she has been through, which feels very isolating.
It sounds like she’s trying to take the ammunition out of her pain and isolating circumstances by casualizing it into everyday conversation. This is not a particularly healthy coping mechanism and I think you all need to talk to her about it because at this rate, she is going to make everyone feel uncomfortable (and people will start avoiding her).
Personally, when I am abused, the last thing I want to do is brag about it, so it looks more like an excuse to be a bully.
Everyone deals with trauma differently. It looks like her way of dealing with it is to be open and somewhat factual about it. Some people deal with things by ‘coming out.’ Just being ‘out’ and counted can create awareness and social change.
Look at what ‘coming out’ has done to change attitudes about queer people, mental illness, substance abuse, and various diseases.
You are making assumptions and judging her behavior based on those assumptions. She hasn’t shown any indication that she expects these random people to offer her support / therapy. She doesn’t appear to want in depth discussion with anyone but her therapist. It sounds like she doesn’t expect anything from people beyond factually knowing that she was SA’d. It’s part of her life, she mentions it and doesn’t want to be in the trauma ‘closet.’
I think you are overthinking this. She doesn’t sound like she needs or wants anything from you. She has a therapist who is supporting her through this, she doesn’t need friends telling her how to cope. Though I do find it interesting that you are more fixated on the fact that she was rude to a man than that she’s dealing with her trauma in her own way. That feels like you value his feelings more than hers. Maybe reflect on that a bit. There are things in life that are worse than having someone be a bit rude. And some ‘manners’ definitely silence people and enable perpetrators. Just food for thought.
Do you still see the new friends or did she drive them off? Im wondering if that is what she is trying to do since it seems to happen after she is introduced to new people.
Yeah I agree with other commenters, and see this in the light of a kind of processing – it’s as if she’s comfortable with it for and in herself, but now needs to try to reconcile that with her “new” reality IE it needs to be treated like it’s a real thing and not brushed under the carpet?
Admittedly she’s not going about it in a great way (which, honestly, is to be expected – and if it’s this soon, then that’s kinda positive in terms of how bad reactions and coping methods can get…) – but I can see the sort of logic behind it.
I mean, I’d suggest talking to her about it but framing it in a way that makes it clear it’s more about protecting *others* from the dark realities of the world rather than trying to say it isn’t like that or invalidate her or her experience in any way.
I can only imagine what she’s going through and it must be incredibly difficult to be asked to act normally after having your world totally shattered, so I do sympathize with her a lot – but you’re right, for her own benefit, and not making herself a social outcast, she does need to find a way to temper it quite a bit
Set boundaries and tell her she owes him an apology. He was just trying to help and her coping mechanism isn’t the best. In no way is anybody trying to downplay what happened but she can’t just bring it up out of the blue and then after someone offers to talk insult him, twice. Tell her hon understand that she was SA’d and how she deals with it is her business but in no way should she be using that to disrespect friends. Tell her that when she’s ready she should attend group therapy (only when she’s ready bc sometimes when you force the person it’s less likely to work). The way it seems is because she does it people might start pushing her away and/or avoiding her
Someone needs to pull her aside and explain that she is acting inappropriately. In fact it’s a bit of an assault to your new friend.
it sounds like she needs therapy to learn how to cope in a healthy way
Tell her that her peppering conversation with her sexual assault isn’t a good* coping mechanism for someone who’s been assaulted. The trauma might be deep enough that she actually needs to see a therapist and talk to someone capable of helping her cope, because random friends and acquaintances aren’t equipped and it’s making people uncomfortable around her.