Triggered by the Abuse of Power
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I didn’t even realize I was triggered at first. I went about my business after reading the news reports but for some reason felt more anxious, got caught up in more worst case scenarios, found my heart racing more, couldn’t sleep…Which sounds like what a lot of us are going through these days, so it took me a couple days to connect the dots.
I had been reading about protesters being attacked by federal agents, being doused with tear gas, having their skulls cracked, being pulled into unmarked vans and not told why or by whom.
Eventually I realized these reports were triggering memories of being 18 and led into a backroom by detectives who told my mom to stay outside. In that back room the two of them accused me of lying about being kidnapped and raped, told me I was hurting the people I cared about, and told me to bite the bullet and get back to normal. When they finally let me leave I walked out of the police station, got into my mom’s car, and Lost. My. Shit. Like I’d never done before and have only done once since. I scared my mom. And our focus that day became calming me down. Not the fact that the police--the people who were supposed to be helping me--had denied my truth, the only power and agency I had left at that moment and turned it into a weapon against me.
We did what we could with the resources we had. I walked through the fields behind my house until some kind of regulation was restored, some sense of sanity and calm. But it wasn’t within our resources to do anything about what the two detectives had done. To complain or say, “This was wrong.” Because we were scared and hurt and these were authority figures with all the power.
In ways they made me feel more helpless than the rapist had. I spent years afterwards swallowing my truth and believing it was not only unwanted but dangerous to speak it. Only recently have I begun to be able to question those beliefs through an understanding of how trauma affects the brain and informs unhelpful beliefs and survival mechanisms.
Another consequence of those detectives not believing me was that the rapist wasn’t caught and went on to attack three more women before being apprehended, entirely due to the courage and strength of the final woman he attacked.
What triggered me in recent days was authority figures abusing people who are speaking their truth. Not just any truth--truths that lives and souls depend on. Truths that MUST BE HEARD.
In hindsight, from a less triggered state, I can see the many differences between my situation and that of those who are deliberately standing up for social justice and in defiance of racial inequalities. My experience is not the equivalent of theirs, but there is one thing we have in common: an end to the silencing effects of trauma. And a major difference: the whole world is watching these protests. I am watching. I was alone in that back room 20 years ago when my truth was denied, but today’s protesters are not alone. We are watching, we are protesting, we are voting, we are hearing and amplifying the truths that need to be spoken and heard.
For a long time people who abuse positions of power have used trauma as a silencer. But we are learning more and more about trauma, how it affects people, and how to heal it. It’s hard right now because there is so much trauma coming to the surface and the structures are not yet in place to offer effective, informed treatment and healing to everyone who needs it. But we’re working on it. We are healing. We will help others heal. And we will NEVER be silenced again.