How Storytelling Helped Me Overcome Sexual Assault

Aug 2

Narrative Exposure Therapy and the power of letting go.

Trigger Warning: this article contains descriptions of sexual assault and abuse that may not be suitable for all readers. Fearless community, please read with care.

At fourteen, I attended a party with my brother and some friends. Though I’d had sips of alcohol on New Year’s with family or in restaurants when it was legal for a parent to allow a child a sip of wine with dinner, I’d never been drunk.

We played a drinking game and I rapidly descended into the kind of smashed that causes the room to spin. The twenty-one-year-old brother of my brother’s friend “took care of me” by holding my hair back as I vomited. I blacked out and awoke to him raping me, though I wouldn’t know to use that term until much older.

For decades, I remembered it as me being the dumb drunk girl at that party.

Victim or survivor? Date rape or rape? Inappropriate touching, sexual violence, or sexual abuse?

I’ve since learned this experience meets the clear and concise legal criteria for rape in the United States. It was not “date-rape,” as I’d first assumed since I knew the man in passing, nor “statutory rape” in New Mexico where the age of consent is seventeen years old.

No. It was rape, plain and simple.

Coming to an awareness of the legal definition of what happened led me down a massive rabbit hole since this was neither the first nor last time I’d had such an experience.

At seven, I experienced child sexual abuse at the hands of a neighbor, my best friend’s much older brother. At fifteen, I experienced criminal sexual penetration in either the first or second degree, depending on whether the amount of mental anguish this experience caused could be defined as “great.” The perpetrator of this crime was later convicted of multiple counts of rape, murder, and kidnapping.

This rabbit hole was illuminating and pointed to one of the reasons it’s so difficult for victims to understand what’s happened. Terms related to these experiences are used interchangeably, which leads to confusion about the specific difference between rape and sexual assault. Further exacerbating the problem, victims tend to gaslight themselves through self-blame, memory suppression, guilt, and self-loathing.

How, then, do we define our experience, much less survive?

For me, a major step was in learning the specific and varied definitions surrounding my assaults and abuse.

Having a law book tell me, in no equivocal terms, what happened, helped me overcome the berating voices shouting, “slut,” “idiot,” “asking for it,” “stupid,” and myriad other phrases and terms that still emanate. These same terms directed towards me by other people made them doubly difficult to conquer and having other, expert voices chime in on how wrong those voices are has been invaluable. Those legal definitions bitch-slap those voices, and have helped me survive.

My first big step towards survival was acknowledging the truth of what happened. The second was in learning to tell my story within the larger context of the #metoo movement of 2017. Enthralled by the energy of the surfacing stories, I was quick to pen my own narrative on social media without spending too much time thinking about the ramifications of doing so.

Fear seized me before pressing “enter” and publishing that three-paragraph experience. I turned to my partner and said, “I don’t think I can do this. Even my boss follows me.” Gripped with doubt at the realization my family, friends, co-workers, and supervisors would all know, my finger hovered above the “enter” button.

Gently guiding my finger to the button, my partner said, “That’s exactly why you need to do this. Think of what you’re saying if you don’t,” he continued, “That you shouldn’t be honest about coming out as a victim? That you should hide it? That you’re to blame for what happened to you?”

His words shone a light on all the others who share the same self-blame, whose shame means continuing to hide their stories. So I wept, hard, and hit enter.

I’m not going to lie — coming out as a survivor was not easy.

Met with looks at work I could only describe as a concern, pity, or some combination of both, few colleagues or friends spoke with me about it.

Those who did reach out did so behind the shield of private messages, texts, or emails of gratitude — often including their own stories of assault and abuse, along with requests to honor their public silence, which I will until I die.

None of my family reacted to my post except my mother, who called to ask, “Do you have any idea how reading that makes me feel?”

The purpose of her call was not about me; she wanted me to tell her it was not her fault. When she asked why I’d never told her, I said it was because I knew she’d do exactly what she was doing: make my pain about her.

We cannot tell our stories until we are ready to do so, and when we do, they may be met with silence, anger, guilt, or shame.

We cannot interpret this as dismissal. Our stories ring louder than we can imagine, and the more we tell them, the brighter they become.

It’s not just anecdotal evidence that supports storytelling as both therapeutic and a strong mode of survival. Fascinating research exists regarding Narrative Exposure Therapy, or NET, which the American Psychological Association explains allows a patient to establish:

“a chronological narrative of his or her life, concentrating mainly on their traumatic experiences, but also incorporating some positive events.” Initially researched for the treatment of PTSD, specifically in refugee and asylum-seeking populations, NET proponents argue that, in expressing these narratives, “the patient fills in details of fragmentary memories and develops a coherent autobiographical story. In so doing, the memory of a traumatic episode is refined and understood.”

Healing is not just about finding a therapist.

A great believer in therapy, I’ve seen numerous counselors, psychotherapists, and many of the various forms of “energy healers” and practitioners so common to places like my former hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

One of the more interesting and research-proven methods I’ve encountered for treating trauma was “Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing,” or EMDR, which also involves a narrative element. During sessions, a clinician had me recall disturbing images and stories from my past while focusing on external stimuli such as following her fingers with my eyes.

Researching and seeking this kind of support is fantastic, and I highly recommend it. That said, many high-profile resources for sexual assault survivors focus solely on this one aspect of survival, along with pursuing legal action, something I never did and, in retrospect, can’t imagine having the means or emotional support to do.

Before publicly telling my story, or even understanding it — before therapy, before learning the legal definitions of rape, consent, all of it — as a teen I had a group of friends who listened and leaned on one another. None of us understood sexual assault, rape, or any of it, but we did understand at a very young age how to listen to stories of abuse without judgment. I don’t know if this is because of the hippish communities we were raised in or the fact that all of us had experienced emotional, sexual, and at times physical abuse ourselves. For whatever reason, none of us shied away when another told her story.

As an adult, I learned the painful lesson that most people are not like this.

Many people aren’t ready to confront the magnitude of their own pain.

When such an abuse story unfolds, a hesitation often accompanies it, as if the listener is wondering what to do with their hands. Should they hug you? Offer a tissue? There’s a tendency to want to do something, usually well-intentioned, that misses the mark by a mile.

We have to find those who can listen and just listen so that telling the story becomes okay. If not, the experience will be viewed and treated as an open, festering wound. No one wants to stare at wounds like that, and no one wants to carry them.

Being a survivor involves being heard.

If you have not experienced trauma, violence, or assault, read about it, learn about it, become inured enough to it that, when a story is shared with you, you do not betray either spoken or unspoken pity, fear, disgust, or judgment.

Instead, hear the story as you would any other story, as just that, something in need of sharing, something that must be heard. Being a survivor involves allies. If you aren’t a survivor yourself, and if you are, be an ally.

We’re all in this together.

Thanks to Michael McDonagh for editing assistance.

Gentry Bronson