Category: boundaries

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Slowing into the pause & breaking harmful patterns

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness. ~Rollo May, The Courage to Create

she learned to walk away
from everything
that didn’t inspire her
toward greater things
~Mark Anthony

a successful life is created
with two words: yes and no
have the courage to say yes
only when it feels right
and no to the old patterns
that do not serve you
~yung pueblo

One way that complex trauma impacts us in our adult lives is in our relationships, be they with friends, family, or intimate partners. Many of us with complex trauma are not good at tolerating painful emotions, like sadness, frustration, or disappointment. 

In fact, most of us don’t have a lot of tolerance for the more “positive” emotions like happiness, joy, and pleasure either.

Any feeling – sensation and emotion – can feel too much and can trigger our fight/flight/freeze/fawn response. The feelings can be overwhelming and so we need a way to release them, to get them out of us, because actually feeling them is intolerable.

So, we start fights. Or turn away and cut people out of our lives. In the moment we may freeze and feel stuck or placate and people please and then later move into the space of either wanting to fight or flee. Depending on the situation we do one or the other of these or we do some in rapid succession. 

Our reaction is generally immediate and coming directly from our back (or reptile) brain. There is no thought that is going into it. We don’t slow down to engage our front brain and are fully in our survival instinct. Because feeling our feelings feels like our actual lives are in danger. It feels like they might consume us. It feels like we won’t survive the sensations and emotions that are swirling within us.

I know for me a go to reaction was always to flee. And by flee I mean turn my back and cut people out of my life. One disappointment, one time of feeling rejected or abandoned, and it was “proof” that the person wasn’t trustworthy and therefore I needed to shut them out of my life. My armor would go up and if need be I would start fights if they wouldn’t “let” me leave. 

It has taken a lot of time, therapy, practice, patience, and self compassion to find my way to pause between the action of an emotion being activated and responding.

Because for most of my life I reacted, immediately, and without thought. What I want for my life, for my relationships, is for me to be able to thoughtfully respond, to slow down and evaluate the facts of the situation and previous situations so that I can respond intentionally and mindfully.

This has meant coming into my body. This has meant learning to tolerate all those intolerable sensations and emotions. This has meant practicing keeping my front brain (where logic, reasoning, creativity, problem solving, and compassion live) online while also experiencing the sensations and emotions that live in my back brain.

It hasn’t meant stuffing my feelings down. 

It has meant allowing myself to experience them and learning to know they won’t actually kill me. They will be uncomfortable, I may not like it, but I certainly won’t die.

When we are able to engage our front brain while also experiencing our feelings, we can begin to look at situations more objectively. We can look for patterns, for habits, for cycles. We slow down not to make excuses for the other person, but to see if our own pain is actually stemming fully from something they did or said or if it also stems from a long ago wound that never healed. 

And then we can decide how we want to respond to the person. We can intentionally decide if this is an opportunity for our own personal growth and processing. We can decide if it is an opportunity for us to communicate our needs, to repair in relationship and to stay. Or to communicate our needs, set a boundary, and possibly leave.

It is true that when another person triggers our feelings of disappointment, frustration, abandonment, and or betrayal that it was indeed their action or words that did this. It is true that our hurt is in part due to the what the other person did or said.

And.

They don’t deserve the full force of our fury or rage or pain, most of which comes from past hurts from others we trusted.

Sometimes when another person triggers our painful feelings it isn’t intentional, or may be a matter of circumstance or what they did or said is actually a perfectly reasonable or normal thing, but it sets off our alarms anyhow. Sometimes these triggers are not an indication of who they are as a person.

And honestly, sometimes it is.

Which is why we need the pause. So we can slow ourselves down and determine what we actually know about the other person. What we actually know about ourselves. What patterns we have seen. What other actions and words we have witnessed or not. 

We need the pause so we can engage our frontal lobe and respond in a way that lets us stand in our own integrity and authenticity. Without needing to cause another pain. Without lashing out. Without cutting people out because in that moment we are hurting and find it unbearable.

The pause requires us to be in our bodies, to be able to tolerate uncomfortable even painful emotions and sensations. It also allows us to enjoy the fun and pleasurable emotions and sensations that can also a part of living as a human.

Learning to live embodied, to tolerate, experience, and sometimes even enjoy the sensations and emotions of our fully human lives is a life long process. There are not five easy steps and then you are done. It is not a one time thing we can check off. It is a constant practice that will have its own ebbs and flows.

The pause will not come to us quickly. It will take time. At first you will notice while you are reacting that you are indeed having an immediate response. With time you will be able to “bring yourself down” more smoothly and quickly. Then, you will begin to notice that you are about to lash out and eventually stop it. In more time, with more practice, you will be able to catch yourself at the very beginning of being triggered. You will be able to feel the sensations and emotions and also be able to explore them, analyze them and the situation logically. And then intentionally decide how we want to respond.

Having patience and compassion for ourselves during this process, while learning to come into our body and to tolerate all the different, varied, and nuanced sensations and feelings and learning how to find that breath, that pause, when some or all our old wounds are triggered is vital and part of the process.

It is true that what was done to us by others is not our fault, we are not to blame for their actions. And we are responsible to learn to respond to new hurts in ways that hold us in our own integrity, in a way that does not continue to pass on harmful patterns, in ways that allow us to break painful cycles for ourselves and the generations to come.

/…/

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Gaslighting & Cultural Relational Trauma

Playing the victim role: Manipulator portrays him- or herself as a victim of circumstance or of someone else’s behavior in order to gain pity, sympathy or evoke compassion and thereby get something from another. Caring and conscientious people cannot stand to see anyone suffering and the manipulator often finds it easy to play on sympathy to get cooperation.
…
so often victims end up unnecessarily prolonging their abuse because they buy into the notion that their abuser must be coming from a wounded place and that only patient love and tolerance (and lots of misguided therapy) will help them heal.
~George K. Simon Jr., In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People

Gaslighting.  This is something most of us have experienced in our lives, whether we are conscious of it or not.  Because of what gaslighting is, it is highly likely it’s happening and you don’t realize it.

According to Wikipedia:

Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or members of a group, hoping to make targets question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target’s belief.

Instances may range from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim. The term owes its origin to a 1938 play Gas Light and its 1944 film adaptation. The term has been used in clinical and research literature, as well as in political commentary.

Something to note about gaslighting is the manipulator doesn’t have to be intentionally doing it.  Anytime anyone questions your own experience or tells you what you remember isn’t true – that’s gaslighting.

Here’s a thing though – gaslighting doesn’t just happen in our personal relationships.  Gaslighting happens All The Time culturally.  It is a part of our patriarchal culture and wounding.

Gaslighting is part of our patriarchal wounding and cultural relational trauma.  It is traumatic and re-traumatizing for those of us who live in a patriarchal culture (all of us).  This gaslighting shows up in the form of telling us our Noes do not matter.  Our consent is irrelevant.  Our boundaries don’t need to be respected or even acknowledged.

This gas lighting, I find, is particularly insidious.  And that is of course intentional and by design.  Gas lighting has us believing that either our experience isn’t real or that our experience is our own fault and not the fault of the other person or our culture.

This shows up on a broader scale as victim blaming, slut shaming, or actually being told that what we saw or heard or experienced wasn’t real or that we “misunderstood.”

This also shows up in the statistics of violence of against women.  How every day, on average, three women are murdered by current or former intimate partners.  How one in six women experience rape or attempted rape (and these are only the numbers reported, we know from lived experience that this number is much closer to six in six women).  How 1 in 3 women have been victims of some form of physical violence by an intimate partner within their lifetime (again these are only the reported numbers).

This shows up when a man “mansplains” to us our own lived experience or what we meant to say or write.

This shows up when we say something, it is ignored, and then a (typically white) man states exactly the same thing and gets praise.

This shows up in Freudian psychology that blames the mother for all our problems and also tells us that as women we have sexual fantasies about our fathers (um, no.  No I do not.).

This shows up in all the parenting books that tell us what to do and how to do it instead of trusting ourselves.

This shows up in all those stories of how we are too much: too emotional, too loud, too reactionary.

This shows up in all those stories of how we aren’t enough, how we can’t do anything right, how we are broken and need to be fixed, how we have to keep trying harder and harder and striving more and more to become “perfect.”

This shows up in a thousand ways every single day of our lives.

We are gaslit by the media.  By our culture.  By our families and friends.

Some of it I believe is intentional.  And also, some of it, I believe, is not.

Regardless, it’s still gaslighting.

All this gaslighting, which is actually part of our lived reality, creates fear and terror and confusion.  Fear, terror and confusion keep us small and quiet and obedient and compliant. It keeps us chasing our own tails.  It keeps us pointing fingers at other women as The Problem.  It keeps us isolated.  It keeps us complicit.

When we are sitting in isolation, distrusting and judging other women, we are allowing the patriarchal culture to keep us leashed.Because our culture and the systems it propagates knows that when we are singular and isolated we can’t do a whole lot of harm.

Because it knows that if we come together in community and solidarity, it is fucked and will be burned down to the ground as we breathe fire in unison.

Because it knows the way to keep us leashed is to keep us distracted with the stories of how other women are bad and out to get us and how we ourselves are also not enough and too much and don’t deserve to exist.

One of the effects of gaslighting and other forms of patriarchal wounding that I find to be most harmful is the isolation and distrust of other women.

The reality that we are not in community.

The reality that mothers are to blame for everything that is wrong with their children, be they infants, adults, or anywhere in between.

The reality that we shame the hell out of other women for speaking up or demanding their boundaries be respected.

The reality that we completely disregard another woman’s No.

The reality that we, particularly white women, will claw and trample all over each other to get the crumbs of success (white) men deign to offer us.

This leashing runs deep.  It goes back thousands of years.  It is connected to the trauma inflicted on us as women, for generations. It lives in our blood and bones, muscle and being.

It is real.  We are not making it up.

Epigenetics shows us how trauma is passed down through our DNA from our ancestors.  And when each generations experiences trauma of one form or another or many forms, that gets added to what is passed down.  It becomes cumulative and maybe even exponential.

We all carry this unprocessed trauma of our ancestors.  Add to it the trauma of our lived experience be that physical or sexual violence (or both) or the trauma of living in a culture that considers us Less Than.

It’s no wonder we in-fight with other women.  It’s no wonder we question our sanity.  It’s no wonder we often stay quiet and isolated and small.  It is no wonder the leash stays on and the current president is in power and are left feeling lost and confused.

This is all by design. This is all intentional. This is how oppressors keep the oppressed from fighting back against them.

One of ways we can take off the patriarchal leash, one of the ways we can start to shift, one of the ways we can begin to tear all this shit down, is by noticing.

Noticing the ways we allow others to tell us what our lived experience is.

As we notice and acknowledge we can also begin to unravel all the wounding and trauma and stories that lives with us.  We can become curious about our whys and hows and whos.  We can begin to say No and I will do better and I will do different next time and then actually do better and different.

It will be a slow process.  It will be messy.  We will make mistakes. We will fuck it up.

We will need to learn to sincerely apologize.

We will need to learn to tolerate being wrong.

We will need to learn to tolerate making mistakes and being imperfect.

We will need to learn to listen.

We will need to learn when it is important to speak our truth and share our voice and when it is important to move aside and allow others to be in the center.

We will need to learn to trust other women.

We will need to learn to be trustworthy to other women.

We will need to learn to be build each other up, to support each other.

We will need to learn what it is to be in true community, to understand we all have this leash around our necks, we all have our own unlearning to do.

And that we can do this all together.

In community.

Unearthing and examining and dismantling and dislodging our own wounds and wounding behaviors.

As we come together, as we act in rebellious solidarity in community, we will see how our stories and experiences are similar and yet unique.  How we weren’t making it all up.  How it wasn’t just in our heads.

As we share our stories and experiences in community we will see how we have all been gas lit by our culture.  By the myth of the Perfect Woman.  By the myth that women are sinful and evil.

This is an act of resistance.  This is an act of rebellion.  This is an act of defiance.

And it is how we will burn it all down to ground with our fiery breathe.
It is how we will rise from the ashes, together.
In community.  United.  Together.

/../
This essay was originally shared as my weekly newsletter in August 2017. It has been edited and revise for publication here.

To read my latest newsletter you can subscribe here.

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Sitting in discomfort

Revolution and rebellion and disruption looks like many things. Sometimes its work out in the world and sometimes its that inner work of unearthing, examining, dismantling and dislodging.

Most Monday afternoons I go to see my therapist. She specializes in two particular modalities of trauma therapy, which is why I chose her. To process and dislodge both some relatively recent traumatic events with my kids, and to process my own various childhood traumas.

For the first year plus, every time I sat down on her couch she asked if I want to do one of the two modalities. I would invariably tell her, No. No I do not. Because this particular form of trauma work, while gentle in many many ways, is also intensely uncomfortable. I literally feel the trauma shifting in my body and it creates a type of dissonance under and on my skin that is… well, uncomfortable.

It isn’t icky feeling or unbearably painful. It is simply not a pleasant sensation. At all.

And so no, No I did not want to do that. Because really, who would intentionally sit there in this intentional physical, emotional and psychological discomfort for 20-40 minutes at a stretch.

Anyhow, I would say my no, we’d laugh, talk about the short game of avoidance and the long game of actually dislodging this shit from my body. We’d do some breath work, I would get present and then I say, okay, let’s do this work.

And we’d do the work and it’s uncomfortable and things would shift and sometimes I *felt* emotions and sometimes I cried and sometimes I’d get an intense pain in a particular part of my body and we;d get curious about it then sometimes I would feel even more emotions and so it goes until I would say it’s time to stop. And we check in with that No More and see if it’s short game saying “I’m uncomfortable and I DON’T WANNA” or if I really have reached my capacity of processing for the day. And so it goes.

In the last six months or so, this has shifted.  Now when I walk in I state straight away “I want to do the trauma work” or “I need a lot of time to talk today.”  We don’t need to have discussions about avoidance.  The work, while uncomfortable, is now something I am more than willing to tolerate because I have seen for myself some of the short and long term benefits of the work.

My point however is that being uncomfortable isn’t fun. Not for me, and really probably not for anyone. By definition, being uncomfortable is NOT enjoyable. And for most of us, in our short game of fear or shoving it down or not wanting to deal or feel, we avoid discomfort like the plague.

Here’s a thing though: we need to remember our Long Game. What our real intentions for being in the world are. What do we have to do to make it happen.

I’m doing my own trauma processing and dislodging for a variety of reasons, many of them about other people (like my kids). But the real, the core reason I’m dealing with my own shit is because I don’t want to ever be frozen in front of a TV screen unable to move as a sexual predator stalks about ever again. I don’t want to ever be frozen in inaction again. I want to be able to move and act and roar and fight.

And, well, I also need to walk my talk. Because I invite all of you to sit in your uncomfortable feelings, to push outside your own comfort zone, to learn that even if we *feel* our our emotions and their physiological sensations or make mistakes or feel uncomfortable because we are challenging our racist uncle at the family feast or defending a boundary with our mother while visiting, we *will* survive. And we may even learn a little bit about selves in the process.

In the all the work I do, facilitating groups and individual work, I invite the participants to push themselves outside their own comfort zones. To become curious as to why they don’t want to “go there.” To expand, contract, then expand a bit more. I always offer tools to help titrate or process or soothe, as needed. And then, when ready enough, we bravely push out into discomfort again, get curious again, ask the whys and start to unravel all the stories that have kept us stuck and small and frozen.

Because I deeply believe that we have remained frozen for far too long. And I deeply believe all of us are carrying trauma in our bodies, be it the trauma of our own lived experience or the trauma passed down to us through our ancestors and in our DNA.

Our trauma impacts us in many ways. It impacts our ability to set boundaries and know our consent. It impact how we relate to other people, and especially as women how we relate to other women.

This is why I do the work I do.

This is why I offer the TIE™ for Sexual Trauma group each year.

Why I work with the individuals I do.

Why I continue to do my own work of unraveling and dislodging and learning.

Because while there is the macro work out in the world of tearing this shit down, we will never build something new and different until we do our own inner work of dismantling and dislodging.

In rebellious solidarity, always.
xoox

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More on Rape Culture

… in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women’s experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.

~Judith Lewis Herman

I believe it is important for us to understand the different aspects of our oppressive and harmful culture.  This essay was originally published in my newletter in May of 2017 and has been edited for publication here.

What does rape culture look like?

It’s a million different things.  I believe that the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why depicts rape culture perfectly.  Also you can watch Audrie & Daisy; A Girl Like Her; and/or The Hunting Ground as other films (two of them documentaries) of rape culture.

Rape culture looks like the sexualization of young girls.  Also see beauty pageants and the likes of Toddlers & Tiaras.

It looks like rapists receiving lenient sentences.  See: Brock Turner.  Or rapists and sexual predators being awarded positions of power and prestige.  See: Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh.

It looks like being re-traumatized when we do report a rape.  See: being in the wrong place at the wrong time; what was she wearing; she should have known better; she shouldn’t have been drinking; etc.

It looks like being gas lit when we describe our experiences.  See: Oh, he didn’t really mean that; You misunderstood; You’re too uptight; Stop taking everything so seriously; and my personal favorite – They were only joking.

It looks like random men trying to friend you on social media.

It looks like random men sending you pictures of their penis through social media.  It also looks like the social media platform doing essentially nothing and blaming the victim when it is reported (see example below).

It looks like men in power making ludicrous public statements about women and rape (see other example below).

It looks like being afraid to say no.

It looks like not knowing how to say no.

It looks like not understanding boundaries, ours or others.

It looks like being told you don’t know your own body.

It looks like being told to obey authority.

It looks like being told to unquestioningly trust authority.

It looks like not feeling safe walking down the street in broad daylight.

It looks like not feeling safe walking down the street at night.

It looks like not feeling safe in our own homes.

It looks like mansplaining.

It looks like manspreading.

It looks like having a self-admitted sexual predator as the President of the United States.

It looks like…

It looks like…

It looks like…

I could go on listing things for pages and pages.  But I hope you get the point.

Sometimes the insidiousness and pervasiveness of rape culture can feel overwhelming.  It can feel like too much and that it will never change and that nothing we attempt to do about it will ever matter.

I get it.  I so deeply get it.

I have my own personal experiences of sexual assault, abuse, and harassment.

I grew up in a family that pretended the incest wasn’t happening.

I grew up in a culture that told me it was my fault.  I should feel deep shame.

I was told I wasn’t really raped.

I’ve been asked what I did to “encourage” my sexual assaults and harassment.

I was told I was asking for it.

I’ve been called a bitch for calling rape culture and rapists out.

I’ve been threatened with physical violence when I have called rape culture and rapists out.

To date my daughter’s physical safety has not yet been threatened due to me using my voice, and I’m sure that day will come too. (See: any number of vocal feminists on social media.)

I share all this to say Me too.  And You are not alone.  And I get why sometimes some of us do NOT speak up and out. And I believe survivors.

And also.

I know that remaining silent, looking the other way, pretending things aren’t that bad, is all an act of compliance.

I know that not talking about rape culture, not calling it out, not talking about consent and boundaries, not talking about all the ways our culture conditions us to to obey, all of this is complicity.

I know that it can be terrifying to speak up and out (that is intentional and by design, by the way).

I know I have been so scared speaking up that my whole body shook.

I also know it is much safer for me to speak up and out than it is for others. (This is my privilege and I intend to use it to the full advantage of all of us.)

I know that if I don’t speak up and out change won’t happen.

I know that when I speak up and out I am creating ripples and shifts in our culture.

I know when I speak up and out, others hear my voice and know they are not alone. 

Countless FB and IG friends, along with myself, have received a private messages from a not-known-to-us men over the last couple years.  In these messages there is almost always an image of, supposedly, the sender’s penis.  Total strangers.  Unsolicited in any way.

One particular friend ended up in FB jail for 24 hours because she took a screen shot and then publicly posted the picture to a couple of his friends/family pages so they would see what he was up to. (If you have a stronger reaction to her retaliation than you do to the fact that a total stranger felt it was okay to send her a picture of his dick via private message, then… well that is a perfect example of rape culture in action.)

She reported it to Facebook as sexual harassment and essentially they did nothing.  Oh, they gave him a warning.  If it happens again (as in he does it again AND the woman he does it to reports is properly) he may be put in FB jail.  Then she was told not to talk to strangers on messenger.

*eye roll*

Isabel Abbott posted the following quotes by US politicians last year.  All of the men quoted here are Republicans, and let me be perfectly clear that Democrats uphold and are complicit in rape culture too.  They are, perhaps, simply more secret about it.  (You can see Isabel’s original post here. Also, in the comments she provides the original context for each quote below)

(note: offensive and distressing words about sexual violence below)

“Rape is kind of like the weather; if it’s inevitable, relax and enjoy it.”
-Clayton Williams

“If a woman has (a right to an abortion), why shouldn’t a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman. At least the rapist’s pursuit of sexual freedom doesn’t (in most cases) result in anyone’s death.”
– Lawrence Lockman

“Rape victims should make the best of a bad situation.”
-Rick Santorum

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that thing down.”
Todd Akin

“In the emergency room they have what’s called a rape kit, where a woman can get cleaned out.”
– Jodi Laubenberg

“Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something God intended to happen.”
– Richard Mourdock

These are men in power.  These are men who are making the laws of our country.  These are men who have wives and some of them daughters and all of them have mothers.  These are men who see absolutely nothing wrong with the words they have said.

This is rape culture.

And.

These men didn’t become powerful without women :: they all have wives who supported them in various ways, and more importantly women voted for them.  Without the women’s vote, they would not be in office.  

Let’s sit with that for a second.

Let’s also sit with the fact that 45% of white women who voted in the presidential election in 2016 voted for Trump, a self-admitted sexual predator.

We have a lot of work to do to unearth and unravel and dismantle and dislodge from our being, the culture we are currently living in.

All of us. 

It could be easy to blame our current culture on men.  In fact it would be really super easy to do that.

And yes, men are responsible for their actions and words.  Absolutely.

And yes, we need more men to stand up and speak out against rape culture.  To call their friends and brothers and dads and uncles out on it.  To teach their sons to respect boundaries.  To dismantle their own internalized toxic masculinity.

Yes.

And.

The rest of us need to do the work too.

As in us women.

Mothers. Aunties. Voters.

We need to unearth and explore and dismantle and dislodge all that we have internalized and been conditioned to believe.

So we can know our own boundaries.  So we can understand consent.  So we can learn to say no and yes.  So we can respect the noes and yeses of others.

So we can stop supporting sexual predators, rapists, those who physically threaten and assault us and others.

So we can burn down rape culture and create a world of consent culture.

Our first steps in burning it down, are being able to see it.  To name it.  To know what rape culture is and what it looks like in daily practice.

Our first steps are also finding our voice and learning ways to speak up and out.

Even knowing we may not be safe in doing so. Even knowing this is going to make us and those around us very uncomfortable.

There is great risk involved in tearing down our current culture.  Great risk to the status quo.  Great risk to our own perceived comfort and safety.

Here’s a thing though :: we aren’t safe in the culture we currently live in.  Our sense of “safety” is a lie.  A lie meant to keep us complicit and compliant.

I am willing to risk being disliked.  I am willing to risk being hated. I’m even willing to risk my own physical safety to a certain degree to create a world I want for my children and for you and yours.

These are not actually risks per se for me.  They aren’t risks because in many ways they are things I don’t actually care about (other than my physical safety).

There is far greater risk in allowing the world to keep chugging along as it is and sending my children out into it.  Knowing the statistics.  Knowing the statistics are only for what is reported.  Knowing the reality that I am sending my daughter into.

I want something different for her. And for my son.  And for you.  And for me too.  

I want those statistics to be a dark spot on our human history and no longer our human reality.

And so.

I will continue to speak up and out. I will continue to write about the ways our culture oppresses and dehumanizes us. . I will continue my work in anti-authoritarian activism and will continue to promote consent culture. I will continue to call out my profession and the ways it is complicit and compliant. I will continue to raise my kids to understand and respect noes and yeses – their own and others. I will continue to help others unearth, dismantle and dislodge the ways rape culture has gotten into their own bodies and minds and beings. I will do everything I can to BURN IT DOWN and help create a world where this atrocity no longer exists.

I am not alone in this work.  And neither are you.

Together we will do this.  I deeply and wholly believe that.

/../

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Rape Culture and why the criticism of 13 Reasons Why irritates me

They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest.

~Louise O’Neill, Asking For It

[This was originally written for my the readers of my weekly newsletter in May 2017.  I have edited it for publication here.]

For the first time ever I am putting a Content Warning here. In the paragraphs that follow I will be discussing rape and rape culture and some of my personal and professional reactions to the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why (Season 1) as well as some of my reactions to the criticism I have read about the show.

I understand and know personally how difficult the topics of rape, rape culture and suicide are for many of us. If they are difficult topics for you and/or if you are in a sensitive space today, I invite you to close his essay go give yourself some self care instead of continue reading.

Also please know that I believe you. 100,000%. Always.

If you would like to continue reading, scroll down a bit. If you don’t want to, please close this and go on about your day. (Note there are a couple spoilers to Season 1 below.)

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I’ve read many criticisms of the graphic portrayal of suicide in the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. I’ve seen posts and articles railing against the “irresponsibility” of Netflix to “glorify” suicide and countless comments from mental health professionals (i.e. my colleagues) going on and on about how now there will be an epidemic of suicides across the country and how the show doesn’t once mention mental illness as the “real” cause of suicide, etc, etc, etc.

With every criticism, particularly from therapists and psychologists, I became more and more irritated. I disagree with their stance and opinions, yes, but my reaction was more visceral, more intense than a simple professional contradictory opinion. I was pissed. I was rolling my eyes. And at one point with one discussion I was literally shaking.

It took a conversation with my own therapist, or rather me being in a space to simply talk without interruption or needing to defend my opinion and reaction, to understand why so much rage was coming up with these comments and “professional statements”.

Where I came to was this:: Not a SINGLE therapist or counselor mentioned in any way, shape, or form the depiction of rape culture and how it contributed to Hannah’s suicide.

Not one.

No where.

As I continued talking I realized how I feel many mental health professionals miss the mark when it comes to talking about topics like anxiety, depression, and even suicide. How they ignore the impacts living in this culture has on all of us. How living in a culture where women and girls are only seen as valuable when it comes to the male gaze. How sexual assault and harassment take their toll on our mental and physical health – DAILY. How witnessing rape and or being raped impact us to the point of considering and for some attempting suicide (According to the National Center for PTSD, it’s estimated that one in three women who have been raped contemplate suicide, and one in 10 victims attempt it.) How culturally it is more important to us to protect rapists than the person who was raped. (Remember how Brock Turner received an incredibly lenient sentence because the (white male) judge didn’t want to impact Brock’s precious future? Or more recently the backlash against Dr. Ford in her testimony against Brett Kavanaugh?)

These are not discussions we have historically had within the mental health community. It is only in recent years that any discussion of how our greater environment (including our culture) impacts our mental health. We, therapists and psychologists, seem to want to pretend that a person lives in a vacuum and that our mental health has nothing to do with our daily lives. And while there is acknowledgement that childhood experiences can and do impact our mental health, we don’t talk about the systems that create and allow those experiences to exist. (This is beginning to change, thankfully.)

I’ve said it before and will say it many times more:: We live in a culture that hates women.

And frankly the professional “outcry” about this Netflix series only emphasizes this truth.

If we (mental health professionals) think for one moment that living in a world where we (women) are considered less than human, where we are unable to earn an equal wage, where what we wear and where we choose to walk or socialize are up for dissection when we are assaulted or raped… if we think for one moment that none of this impacts our mental (and physical) health, then we should absolutely give up our licenses and find another line of work.

Because if we don’t believe these things impact us, we are doing far more harm than good.

Because if we don’t believe these things impact us, we are being complicit to a culture that causes great harm.

Because if we don’t believe these things impact us, we are being compliant and doing harm to our clients, friends, and family members ourselves under the guise of being “professionals” and “authorities”.

Rape culture is real. It is part of this world each of us lives in. It impacts all of us, in varying degrees. It causes harm. It can cause depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and attempts.

These are facts.

And.

Those who experience rape and sexual assault (in any or all its forms) are not the only ones who are victimized by this culture either.

The people who perpetrate the rapes and assaults are victims too.

Because they are given the message, over and over and over again, that it is acceptable to objectify women and girls. Because they are given the message over and over and over again that no doesn’t really mean no. Because they are given the message over and over and over again that it is perfectly acceptable to take what they want, no matter what. Because they are given the message over and over and over again that they will not be punished for their crimes. Because toxic masculinity goes hand in hand with rape culture.

I am not saying that rapists and abusers are not responsible for their actions. They absolutely are. AND. They are also pawns in a system that subjugates women to a role of only being as valuable as the male we are attached to.

Bryce (the rapist in the series for those of you who have not watched it) is a victim. Not in the oh-the-poor-boy-and-his-future-Brock-Turner way. Rather in the way that he lives in a world that says there is nothing wrong with what he has done or continues to do. Because he was not taught about consent and boundaries from an early age. Because he was not taught that silence DOES NOT MEAN COMPLIANCE. Yes, he is responsible for his actions, as is every rapist and abuser, and we are responsible, due to our own compliance and complicity in this culture, for his actions too.

I am irritated (again) with my profession. I am irritated with the “outcry” they have against this show (and also the lack of outcry). I am irritated at my profession for historically not addressing rape culture. I am irritated at the world for not supporting victims and instead re-victimizing and victim-blaming them over and over and over again.

She shouldn’t have gone to that party.

She shouldn’t have gotten in the hot tub in her underwear.

She shouldn’t have drank so much.

She shouldn’t have worn that.

She shouldn’t have had her hair that way.

She shouldn’t have talked to him.

She shouldn’t have expected to NOT be raped.

She shouldn’t have expected anyone to stand up and speak up for her.

She had mental health issues.

It was all her own fault.

It was meant as a compliment.

She’s being too sensitive.

What a bitch.

She was asking for it.

Fuck. All. Of. That.

It is time that we as a culture start to name these attitudes. It is time that we stop victim blaming. It is time that we stop avoiding difficult conversations, including our own compliance and complicity in a culture that harms other humans.

It is time my profession pull its collective head out of its collective ass.  (I am happy to be able to say that since the original publication of this essay, change has begun.  And more change needs to happen still.)

It is time we begin to understand how living in this culture impacts us. It is time we stop blaming victims. It is time we begin to understand how deep the wounds and scars of cultural and ancestral trauma run.

It is time we stop causing the harm ourselves.

…

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