Warning: This article references sexual assault, violence and suicide. Names and identifying details of individuals are changed.
Cindy had grown quiet. She sat on the couch adjacent to mine in the counselling room. She had been talking about a sexual assault.
It had happened a year prior. Today she was speaking about the impact it had on her life. She was now anxious in crowds. She had come to see femininity as weakness. She suffered from intrusive thoughts. The world was a colder and harsher place.
And there was something else that was difficult to say. She said that she brought this on herself. It was her fault.
I’ve heard sentiments like this before. Many victims of trauma will blame themselves, even for things over which they had no control. I’ve heard people take ownership for being robbed, for being beaten, for friends overdosing, for loved ones committing suicide. “I shouldn’t have been there.” “I should have taken that call.”
This way of thinking used to trouble me. Cindy clearly didn’t do anything to cause an assault.
A few years earlier, I would have tried to convince her she wasn’t to blame. I would have failed- not just failed to convince her, but also to understand her.
Instead of tying to persuade her, I became curious. I had recently been to a workshop run by a cognitive therapist, Dr. David Burns. He urged counsellors to explore what he called the hidden benefits of negative beliefs. Our worst beliefs, he said, often serve us in some way.
“What do you get out of believing that it was your fault?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I wish I could stop believing it.” She couldn’t see how this thought helped her. So I reframed the question.
“What do you imagine would happen if you stopped believing it was your fault?” She thought about this. She struggled to answer at first. Then she said, “That means there is nothing I can do to stop it from happening again.”
And there it was. Cindy did not blame herself out of a desire to suffer more. She was protecting herself. If Cindy did something to bring this assault upon herself, then there is something she can do differently to keep it from happening again. Self blame was a shot of adrenaline keeping her alert to the potential of being victimized again.
Another of David Burn’s teachings is that anxiety is not about the past; it’s about something happening right now. Cindy was using the shame of the past to keep her feeling safer in the present.
My conversation with Cindy made me rethink self blame. An event is traumatic, partly, because our control is taken from us. We were so affected by what happened that we seek to regain control long after the situation has passed. One way of regaining control is by believing that we can keep this from happening again.
I can hear the objections already. Isn’t self-blame disempowering? And how does it help a person to let them go on believing that it’s their fault when it wasn’t? I understand these arguments. But they do not come from empathy. It bothers you that this person has the wrong belief, is torturing themselves. You try to fight that belief to make yourself feel better. But it does nothing for them.
In Non-Violent Crisis Intervention we learn about working with distraught people. One of the things we learn is to never tell someone to “calm down.” One instructor asked, “Have you ever been upset and were told to calm down? Did you feel calmer?” No, of course not. We tell someone to chill because we are trying to gain control, which takes control away from them. They get more upset.
This is what we do with self blame. When we hear someone assume responsibility for something that happened to them, we argue them into submission until they give up and nod. You have attacked a belief that, on some unspoken level, served them. You have just wrestled away someone’s power. And they usually respond by turning deeper into shame because they continue to cling to a belief they know is irrational. In other words, your effort to free someone from a painful belief has led them to be more trapped in that belief.
I don’t speak purely from a passionless distance- a cold, clinical theory. I was sexually assaulted. The shame and the need to call myself the fool, this is powerful. It hung over my body and filled me with a sense of disgust that I could “let that happen.” Yes, I thought it was my fault.
So how do you help this person without correcting them?
Lead with empathy. Respond with understanding. Listen. Think about all the times in your life you have blamed yourself for something you couldn’t control. It’s a more natural behaviour than we realize.
Instead of:
“It wasn’t your fault,”
Try:
“Sounds like you are really blaming yourself for what happened.”
Empathy is harder than argument. To truly connect with a person in their helplessness, you must face your own. But in doing so, you are making it ok for another person to feel weak, vulnerable, angry and sad. And you truly become that person’s safe space.
You may wonder, how do you then get those beliefs to go away?
You don’t. The process is different for everyone. These beliefs may change just by being able to express them, or they may endure for a long time.
But I will tell you what happened with Cindy.
Cindy missed our follow up session. It was a month before I saw her again. When I saw her, I brought up our previous conversation. I can’t remember my exact wording, but I asked her something to the effect of, “Last we met, you expressed a strong belief that what happened was your fault. Where are you at with that?”
I remember well what she said. “I spent about a week afterwards thinking about that. I realized that was just stupid.”
Cindy did not need me to convince her it wasn’t her fault. She convinced herself.
Comentarios