Know fear/No fear

1 Peter 5:8

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

Keep your eyes open.

There's been a lot of talk in my field about this book:  The Gift of Fear
I haven't read it. I'd like to.

The basic premise of the book is that we are given fear as an evolutionary assistant. The gut feeling that says "Something is not right," that tells you, "Get out." We've all had it. Often we ignore it, sometimes just because we don't want to be "rude." Women especially are taught to "be nice." Anyone who knows me well knows I have a hair trigger temper when it comes to that admonishment specifically.

One of the excerpts from this book chills my blood. It's about a woman, who, not wanting to be rude, allows a man she has this negative gut feeling about, to help her with groceries. He ends up forcing his way into her house and raping her. It's a common story, right? This is an uncommon woman. After he rapes her, he shuts the window of her bedroom and tells her "Stay there." From that action, she immediately thinks "He's going to kill me." So as he walks out of the room toward her kitchen, she wraps herself in a sheet and follows silently behind him. Where he goes straight to go into the kitchen, she bolts left, out the door, and to a neighbor's apartment. Turns out he had gone into the kitchen for a knife. He didn't want anyone to hear her scream, thus the window.

I think when survivors re-examine the events of their trauma, they often think "What could I have done differently?" Or worse "I brought this on myself." I think we can turn it around to make it into a healthy response, so that instead of self-blame, we have protection for the future. No survivor of sexual violence of any type is at fault for the act. But we can take the actions leading up, and make sure we are safe from here on out.

We like to think we won't be victimized, it won't happen to us. Denial is powerful juju. I can't tell you how many times I've beein in situations that could have turned dangerous very quickly because of that invincibility thought pattern. Most of the time, I was fine, nothing bad happened. But I am (usually) "lucky" that way. I have the hypervigilance interwoven into my daily interactions because of my earlier trauma. I have to be with someone I have reason to trust, or it has to be subdued in some way to get me to relax in a strange situation. But others don't. Others would ignore the gut feeling as "silly," I think. And I have as well, I've thought "I'm overreacting." Possibly because of my knowledge of my own hypervigilance.

The bad guys bank on that. And none of us want to think we're weak. So we power through and we think we're making the decisions, that we're in control. But the truth is, we lost it the minute we let them in, because they are master manipulators. Even worse, if it's someone you have reason to trust.

This is an excellent website in general, I've been a member for years, but this, specifically pertains to my mission here:

Preventing Sexual Assault - RAINN.org

Some don't like to address the "prevention" part because they think it seeks to blame the victim. If we could have "prevented" the attack then it's our fault right? Not so. It seeks to empower the victim against further violation. Once we as survivors accept the fact that we were vulnerable in the circumstances in which we were taken, we can take measures to reduce that vulnerability in the future. This does not mean we are at fault, only that we must arm ourselves.

Instead of seeing "Don't go out alone," as an admonishment, see it for what it is, a guide. If being out alone was the circumstance prior to an attack, so be it. We all make decisions, and we take responsibility for them if we're healthy. That doesn't mean we take responsibility for the attack. Going out alone may be dangerous, but so is driving. If we got into a car accident, we wouldn't say "Well, shit, if only I hadn't been going to work that day..." We'd accept it if we caused the accident. But we wouldn't blame ourselves for driving.

Attacks are not caused by circumstances. They are caused by attackers. We can empower ourselves for the future by acknowledging that certain circumstances may make us more vulnerable to predators, but not that we ourselves invoked the predator. Blaming yourself allows them to get away with it, it takes the onus off the person to whom it purely belongs, the attacker.

Ignorance is not bliss, as most of us can attest, once it's shattered. Knowledge is power. Power is strength. Once we acquire it, we can live our lives clear-eyed and forward-thinking, not fearful and helpless.