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Image by: Peter Cutler

The following post is taken from: http://zenhabits.net/meditation-for-beginners-20-practical-tips-for-quieting-the-mind/

Meditation is the art of focusing 100% of your attention in one area. The practice comes with a myriad of well-publicized health benefits including increased concentration, decreased anxiety, and a general feeling of happiness.

Although a great number of people try meditation at some point in their lives, a small percentage actually stick with it for the long-term. This is unfortunate, and a possible reason is that many beginners do not begin with a mindset needed to make the practice sustainable.

The purpose of this article is to provide 20 practical recommendations to help beginners get past the initial hurdles and integrate meditation over the long term:

1) Make it a formal practice. You will only get to the next level in meditation by setting aside specific time (preferably two times a day) to be still.

2) Start with the breath. Breathing deep slows the heart rate, relaxes the muscles, focuses the mind and is an ideal way to begin practice.

3) Stretch first. Stretching loosens the muscles and tendons allowing you to sit (or lie) more comfortably. Additionally, stretching starts the process of “going inward” and brings added attention to the body.

4) Meditate with Purpose. Beginners must understand that meditation is an ACTIVE process. The art of focusing your attention to a single point is hard work, and you have to be purposefully engaged!

5) Notice frustration creep up on you. This is very common for beginners as we think “hey, what am I doing here” or “why can’t I just quiet my damn mind already”. When this happens, really focus in on your breath and let the frustrated feelings go.

6) Experiment. Although many of us think of effective meditation as a Yogi sitting cross-legged beneath a Bonzi tree, beginners should be more experimental and try different types of meditation. Try sitting, lying, eyes open, eyes closed, etc.

7) Feel your body parts. A great practice for beginning meditators is to take notice of the body when a meditative state starts to take hold. Once the mind quiets, put all your attention to the feet and then slowly move your way up the body (include your internal organs). This is very healthy and an indicator that you are on the right path.

8) Pick a specific room in your home to meditate. Make sure it is not the same room where you do work, exercise, or sleep. Place candles and other spiritual paraphernalia in the room to help you feel at ease.

9) Read a book (or two) on meditation. Preferably an instructional guide AND one that describes the benefits of deep meditative states. This will get you motivated. John Kabat-Zinn’s Wherever You Go, There You Are is terrific for beginners.

10) Commit for the long haul. Meditation is a life-long practice, and you will benefit most by NOT examining the results of your daily practice. Just do the best you can every day, and then let it go!

11) Listen to instructional tapes and CDs.

12) Generate moments of awareness during the day. Finding your breath and “being present” while not in formal practice is a wonderful way to evolve your meditation habits.

13) Make sure you will not be disturbed. One of the biggest mistakes beginners make is not insuring peaceful practice conditions. If you have it in the back of your mind that the phone might ring, your kids might wake, or your coffee pot might whistle than you will not be able to attain a state of deep relaxation.

14) Notice small adjustments. For beginning meditators, the slightest physical movements can transform a meditative practice from one of frustration to one of renewal. These adjustments may be barely noticeable to an observer, but they can mean everything for your practice.

15) Use a candle. Meditating with eyes closed can be challenging for a beginner. Lighting a candle and using it as your point of focus allows you to strengthen your attention with a visual cue. This can be very powerful.

16) Do NOT Stress. This may be the most important tip for beginners, and the hardest to implement. No matter what happens during your meditation practice, do not stress about it. This includes being nervous before meditating and angry afterwards. Meditation is what it is, and just do the best you can at the time.

17) Do it together. Meditating with a partner or loved one can have many wonderful benefits, and can improve your practice. However, it is necessary to make sure that you set agreed-upon ground rules before you begin!

18) Meditate early in the morning. Without a doubt, early morning is an ideal
time to practice: it is quieter, your mind is not filled with the usual clutter, and there is less chance you will be disturbed. Make it a habit to get up half an hour earlier to meditate.

19) Be Grateful at the end. Once your practice is through, spend 2-3 minutes feeling appreciative of the opportunity to practice and your mind’s ability to focus.

20) Notice when your interest in meditation begins to wane. Meditation is
hard work, and you will inevitably come to a point where it seemingly does not fit into the picture anymore. THIS is when you need your practice the most and I recommend you go back to the book(s) or the CD’s you listened to and become re-invigorated with the practice. Chances are that losing the ability to focus on meditation is parallel with your inability to focus in other areas of your life!

Meditation is an absolutely wonderful practice, but can be very difficult in the beginning. Use the tips described in this article to get your practice to the next level!

For more information on meditation and ways to reduce anxiety see these links: 

http://www.wikihow.com/Meditate-for-Beginners

http://www.anxieties.com/133/gad-step2c#.Uyl2Q_l_t1Y

http://www.getsomeheadspace.com/meditation-for-beginners.aspx

http://www.getsomeheadspace.com/meditation-for-anxiety.aspx

http://www.tm.org/resource-pages/86-eat-meditate-exercise

http://www.freemeditation.com/meditation-basics/meditation-tips-for-beginners/

http://stopandbreathe.com/2011/03/04/meditation-101-a-10-step-beginners-guide/

http://psychcentral.com/lib/9-ways-to-reduce-anxiety-right-here-right-now/00017762

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/anxiety_self_help.htm

http://www.wikihow.com/Relieve-Anxiety

self-harm

WARNING: the following post may be triggering for some.

What is self-harm?

Self-harm is when you hurt yourself as a way of dealing with very difficult feelings, old memories, or overwhelming situations and experiences. The ways you hurt yourself can be physical, such as cutting yourself. They can also be less obvious, such as putting yourself in risky situations, or not looking after your own physical or emotional needs.

Ways of self-harming can include:

• cutting yourself
• poisoning yourself
• over-eating or under-eating
• burning your skin
• inserting objects into your body
• hitting yourself or walls
• overdosing
• exercising excessively
• scratching and hair pulling.

After self-harming, you might feel better and more able to cope for a while. However, self-harm can bring up very difficult feelings and could make you feel worse.

If you self-harm, you may feel embarrassed or ashamed about it. You might be worried that other people will judge you or pressurise you to stop if you tell them about it. This may mean that you keep your selfharming a secret. This is a very common reaction, although not everyone does this.

Why do people harm themselves?

There are no fixed rules about why people self-harm. For some people, it can be linked to specific experiences, and be a way of dealing with something that is happening now, or that happened in the past. For others, it is less clear. If you don’t understand the reasons for your selfharm, it’s important to remind yourself that this is OK, and you don’t need

to know this in order to ask for help.

Any difficult experience can cause someone to self-harm. Common causes include:

• pressures at school or work
• bullying
• money worries
• sexual, physical or emotional abuse
• bereavement
• confusion about your sexuality
• breakdown of relationships
• an illness or health problem
• difficult feelings, such as depression, anxiety, anger or numbness, experienced as part of a mental health problem.

Some people have also described self-harm as a way to:

• express something that is hard to put into words
• make experiences, thoughts or feelings that feel invisible into something visible
• change emotional pain into physical pain
• reduce overwhelming emotional feelings or thoughts
• have a sense of being in control
• escape traumatic memories
• stop feeling numb, disconnected or dissociated (see dissociative disorders)
• create a reason to physically care for yourself
• express suicidal feelings and thoughts without taking your own life
• communicate to other people that you are experiencing severe distress.

Sometimes people talk about self-harm as attention-seeking. If people make comments like this, it can leave you feeling judged and alienated. In reality, most people keep their self-harm private, and it can feel very painful to have your behaviour misunderstood in this way.

If you do self-harm as a way of bringing attention to yourself, remember that you deserve a respectful response from those around you, including from medical professionals.

How can I help myself?

If you are thinking about stopping or reducing your self-harm, finding ways of helping yourself can feel very empowering.

This section gives some ideas for things you can do to support yourself better. Some can be done when you feel like self-harming. Others can be done at any time. You may need to try a few to find out what works for you. These techniques may be helpful on their own, or alongside professional help. (See ‘What treatment and support is available?’)

There is no magic solution or quick fix for self-harm, and making changes can take time and involve periods of difficulty. It is common to make some progress and then get back into old behaviours again. If this happens to you, remind yourself that it's not failing – it is simply part of the process.

If you do not feel able to stop self-harming completely, it is important to be honest with yourself and consider what else you can do that would feel helpful. For example, you may be able to work towards reducing or stopping your self-harm in the future, even if you find it too difficult to stop self-harming immediately.

Work out your patterns of self-harm

It may be that things happen so fast, it feels impossible to realise you have an urge to self-harm before you find that you are hurting yourself.

Keeping a diary of what happens before, during and after each time you self-harm, can help you work out what gives you the urge to self-harm, and recognise when the urge is coming on. It is helpful to do this over a period of time – maybe a month – so that you start to see patterns.

Learn to recognise triggers

Your triggers are the things that give you the urge to hurt yourself. This could be anything from people, situations, anniversaries, certain times of the day, physical sensations or particular thoughts or feelings.

In your diary, note down what was happening before you last self-harmed.Did you have a particular thought? Did you have an argument? Did you have to see someone you don’t like? Did a situation or object remind you of something difficult?

This can be quite an intense experience and bring up difficult feelings and emotions. If you feel confident to try this on your own, make sure you do something relaxing or enjoyable afterwards. If you find doing this distressing, you may want to ask for support from a trusted friend, family member, or professional. (See ‘What treatment and support is available?’ for more information.)

Learn to recognise urges

The next step is to identify how you experience the urge to self-harm. Urges come in lots of different ways and may be different for you at different times.

Urges can include:

• physical sensations, such as a racing heart, nausea, or very shallow breath
• feelings of heaviness, fogginess or blackness
• disconnecting with yourself, such as feeling like you are outside of your own body or losing all feelings of sensation
• strong emotions, like sadness, fear, despair or rage
• specific thoughts, such as 'hurt' or 'I'm going to cut'
• making decisions that you know aren't good for you, for example by excessive working or exercising rather than experiencing your feelings.

for the full article, including more advice on self-harm and how to help yourself or someone you know visit: 

 http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/self-harm/how-can-i-help-myself/#.UyWMDfl_t1Y

more advice and information on self-harm can be found in the following links: 

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Self-injury/Pages/Introduction.aspx

http://selfharm.co.uk/home

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/self_injury.htm

http://www.nshn.co.uk/

http://www.liberonetwork.com/anxiety-and-anorexia-as-self-harm

http://www.youngminds.org.uk/for_children_young_people/whats_worrying_you/self-harm

hope

 

a list of useful websites for help and advice about domestic violence:

 

http://www.womensaid.org.uk/default.asp

 

http://refuge.org.uk/get-help-now/

 

https://www.gov.uk/report-domestic-abuse

 

http://www.ncdv.org.uk/

 

http://www.mensadviceline.org.uk/mens_advice.php

 

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/abuse/Pages/domestic-violence-help.aspx

 

http://www.brokenrainbow.org.uk/

 

http://www.mankind.org.uk/

 

http://www.speakouttoday.co.uk/

 

http://nour-dv.org.uk/?gclid=CNP9pKmY97MCFanItAodE30AGg

 

http://www.domesticviolencehelp.us/

 

http://www.thehotline.org/get-help/

 

http://www.purpleberets.org/violence_police_families.html

 

 

 



p t s d

 What is PTSD?

PTSD is a reaction to being exposed to an event which is outside the range of normal human experience. Sometimes it is referred to as post traumatic rape syndrome too. It is a normal human emotional reaction to an abnormal situation. Everyone reacts differently to different situations and it doesn't have to be a life threatening experience for someone to respond in this way. It just has to be perceived by the victim as a traumatic event. It is a psychological phenomenon. It is an emotional condition, from which it is possible to make a full and complete recovery.

PTSD affects hundreds of thousands of people who have been exposed to violent events such as rape, domestic violence, child abuse, war, accidents, natural disasters and political torture. It is normal to be affected by trauma. There is help, and it is ok to ask for help. PTSD is not rare. It is not unusual. It is not weak to have PTSD.

Traumatic experiences bring to the fore survival skills which are valuable and useful at the time of the trauma, but which usually become less valuable, less useful and less effective with time. Sometimes survivors become stuck in problem behaviours when their pain is not acknowledged, heard, respected, or understood. Denial plays a great part here (it didn't happen, or it shouldn't affect you). Put-downs, dismissal of the pain, mis-diagnosis and other forms of secondary wounding keep survivors stuck.

Symptoms may come on soon after the trauma or fifty years later. That is what is meant by the post in PTSD. It is normal too for symptoms to come up again when faced by further trauma and in very stressful times. It is normal to be affected by trauma.

Society has it's own way of dealing with trauma which can both be belittling or denying. For a survivor to be told that what happened to them wasn't that bad, or was no big deal or continually being told it was time that they were over it, or just try and forget it ever happened cause secondary wounding in trauma survivors. It reinforces the mistrust of everyone and everything that trauma evokes in all survivors who no longer can believe that the universe is fair or just.

This ability to do whatever it takes to survive is instinctive. We all have it, and in traumatic enough situations, it will come out or we die. Extreme situations which trigger this reaction again and again may cause survivors to do things in order to survive which can be hard to look back on later.

Similarly shutting down feelings in order to do whatever it takes to survive, or do your job and help others survive, is a reality based survival skill. Numbness is the answer. It is effective. It will help you live.

Unfortunately when survivors numb their fear, despair and anger, all their feelings, even good ones, are numbed. Numbness is comfortable. Thinking about what they have been through is so painful survivors wind up avoiding thinking about, feeling, or doing anything that reminds them of the trauma. For example, if they feel the trauma was their fault they may spend the rest of their life having to be right so they won't ever be at fault again. If they were happy when the trauma hit, they may avoid happiness forever.

Recovery

Recovery is a slow process which doesn't come easily or without pain. The survivor must be heard, feel they are understood, believed and find the ability to reconnect to a community. Recovery takes time. The survivor sets the pace. Recovery is not a race, and can't be given a set time limit. Recovery doesn't erase the trauma as if it had never happened, it just makes it easier to deal with.

Further trauma will always affect survivors. PTSD symptoms may come back during times of further stress, but the negative effects can be minimised as the survivor learns what they are and feels able to take care of themselves.. True healing is knowing it is okay to ask for help again.

Recovery is about learning better ways of coping with trauma and letting go of fear, even fear of change. Slow growth is good growth.

You can't rush survivors and we must not dismiss their pain. Instead of comparing pain, survivors and survivor groups are encouraged to respect each others pain and to focus on what they have in common and to share recovery. Each person's unique experience and pain is respected.

PTSD symptoms, numbing, hyper vigilance and flashbacks, are strong hints that you need to get help! They helped you survive, but they do not go away by themselves. People have to alter their lives to control them. They can become both ineffective and a source of constant pain.

It takes time to get better. Getting better is the reward for taking the time to recover. Getting better, however, is a slow process. The state of almost constant physiological arousal which many trauma survivors live in makes it difficult for them to take in the kind of information needed to heal. This is part of the brain chemistry of survivors. It is not resistance or stubbornness on their part. People can talk about changing but all survivors may see is their lips moving. The words and concepts make no sense. They are incapable of taking what is being said on board because they are too busy taking in information for their survival. Things like who is in the room, where are they sitting, where is the door, which is the quickest way out, do they look hostile or friendly, how are they reacting to me?

Until they start to feel safe a survivor won't be able to react to anything or anyone. They have to feel safe and feel as though there is an element of trust there. When they have been treated with respect, not discounted, not pushed to hurry up and recover, which are secondary wounding experiences and make PTSD worse, they will feel safe and know it because they will be able to hear and understand what the therapist or group is saying in a new way.

When they can hear, survivors can begin to work on safety issues. They can begin to understand and protect themselves from triggers. They can learn to handle emotions such as anger and fear. Survivors can develop the capacity to respond rather than react, like having a pause button instead of an on-off switch. 

Searching for the right help is important. You need to be comfortable enough with the therapist or group. On the other hand searching for the perfect group or a therapist who will never make a mistake can put off recovery for life. The therapist or group is not going to fix you. They will however provide you with information and a variety of coping skills, but it is you who does the work and heals.

Each person heals in their own way, there are no hard and fast rules, just as there is no pill that can cure PTSD. Yes drugs can be used to help with the side effects of PTSD, like helping sleeplessness or hyper arousal. Unfortunately there is no simple clear cut solution for such a complex phenomenon. I firmly believe that survivors have to confront what has happened to them, and by repeating this confrontation, learn to accept the trauma as part of their past. There is no magic wand. However counselling and therapy can help to find an easier path through the trauma and set you on the path to healing.

information taken from: http://www.aaets.org/article178.htm

partner rape

 

 

warning: some of the following information may be triggering.

 

It is still a widely held myth that women cannot be raped by their husbands or partners.

Many people believe that sexual intercourse without consent, in this context, doesn’t really constitute rape at all, or if they do, that it is somehow not as serious as an assault carried out by a stranger.

The belief that by marrying or co-habiting with her attacker a woman has somehow given up her right to say no and should be expected to comply with his sexual demands is commonplace and causes great harm to women who suffer assault in this context.

The damage done when a woman is raped by her partner can be extremely serious. The experience of rape for a woman in this situation is compounded by a complete breach of trust by someone once loved – often the foundation of her personal life and security. Inevitably, this can leave her fearful of what confronting that might mean.

Sexual assault by a partner can be very difficult not only for women to disclose or walk away from, but even, sometimes, because of circumstantial pressures, to fully admit to themselves.

A significant minority (13%) of the broad cross-section of the Scottish population (700 interviewees) who took part in research carried out by Progressive on behalf of Rape Crisis Scotland in August 2007 believed that most women who are raped are raped by strangers.

Other research findings give the lie to this in the clearest possible way:

• In 2002 the UK Home Office published the findings of a British Crime Survey to which 6,944 women had responded. Nearly half (45%) of rapes reported to the survey were committed by perpetrators who were victims’ partners at the time of the attack. Strangers were responsible for only 8% of rapes reported to the survey
• The survey also found that partner rape entails the highest occurrence of multiple rape (62%) and attacks by partners and ex-partners are more than twice as likely to result in some injury to the victim (39%) as attacks by strangers (19%)
• In her landmark study Rape and Marriage (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990), Diana Russell reported on interviews with a random sample of 930 women in the San Francisco area. Of all the women who had been married, 14% had been raped by their spouses at least once. Of these, 1/3 reported being raped once; 1/3 reported between 2 and 20 incidents; and 1/3 said they had been raped by their spouses more than 20 times.
• Another study estimated that 10 to 14% of all married women have been or will be raped by their spouses (Finkelhor, D., and Yllo, K., License to rape: sexual abuse of wives. The Free Press, New York, 1985)
 

”It was very clear to me. He raped me. He ripped off my pyjamas, he beat me up. I mean, some scumbag down the street would do that to me. So to me, it wasn't any different because I was married to him, it was rape — real clear what it was.

It emotionally hurt worse. I mean you can compartmentalise it as stranger rape — you were at the wrong place at the wrong time. You can manage to get over it differently. But here, you're at home with your husband and you don't expect that. I was under constant terror even if he didn't do it.”

 

 

http://www.thisisnotaninvitationtorapeme.co.uk/relationships/#myth_tab

 

 'Force-only' rape is usually understood to include only enough force used on the part of the abuser to control or hold his wife in position, eg holding down the victim by her arms or wrists to prevent her defending herself or escaping. This form of rape is common where there is a larger contrast between the physical size and strength of abuser and victim, or in abusive relationships where physical violence is infrequent or non-existent (insofar as one does not categorise sexual assault itself as a violent act). In most cases of 'force-only' rape, coercion plays a large part. The victim may also be so confused and numbed by constant emotional abuse, that she simply does not know how to act or react when sex is forced on her.'

 

 

some useful links about partner rape:

 

http://www.pandys.org/partnerrapesurvivors.html

 

http://www.aphroditewounded.org/definitions.html

 

http://www.pandys.org/articles/intimatepartnerrape.html

 

 

Partner rape is real rape.
It may happen once or many times.
It may involve coercive pressure or battery and torture.
It happens in very violent relationships, or in those that are otherwise respectful. Women are raped by men they love.

 

http://www.aphroditewounded.org/loustory.html

http://survive.org.uk/maritalrape.html

 

 http://www.hiddenhurt.co.uk/marital_rape.html

 http://www.voicesandfaces.org/survivor_victoria.asp

pornography

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"the industry-standard of pop-video crotch shots of girls in bikinis make it very, very clear: there should be nothing there. it must be smooth. empty. whilst some use the euphemism 'Brazillian' to describe this state of affairs, i prefer to call it what it is- 'a ruinously high-maintenance itchy, cold-looking child's fanny.' they're making us pay for maintenance and upkeep of our lulus, like they're a communal garden. it's a stealth tax. fanny VAT. this money we should be spending on the electricity bill and cheese and berets. instead, we're wasting it on making our chihuahuas look like a skanky Lidl chicken breast. watch any porn made after, say, 1988, and close-ups are like watching one of the Mitchell brothers, with no eyes, eating a very large, fidgety sausage.
hardcore pornography is now the primary form of sex education in the western world. this is where teenage boys and girls are 'learning' what to do to eachother, and what to expect when they take eachother's clothes off. as a result, we are at risk of a situation in which every boy expects to undress a girl to find a thorough wax job, and every girl - terrified by the idea of being rejected, or thought abnormal - waxes for them. my beautician told me she has had girls of 12 and 13 coming in for Brazillians - removing the first signs of adulthood as they appear, in a combination that - with overtones of infantilisation, and impetus in hardcore pornography - is pretty creepy, whichever way you look at it."

caitlin moran

“In spite of hopes to the contrary, pornography and mass culture are working to collapse sexuality with rape, reinforcing the patterns of male dominance and female submission so that many young people believe this is simply the way sex is. This means that many of the rapists of the future will believe they are behaving within socially accepted norms.”

susan g. cole

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germaine greer on the etymology of the word 'cunt'..  

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The Stranger Rape Myth is the idea that most rape is random and that rapists don't know their victims. The image that follows is of a crazy rapist waiting in the bushes or lurking in dark alleys. Stranger does happen and it absolutely real. Statistically, most victims and survivors are raped by people that they know. The Stranger Rape Myth is based on our societal need to distance ourselves from rapists. By calling them strangers, we can place perpetrators in the “other” category. This is much more comfortable than the darker truth of sexual violence: that the people who are raping our friends and abusing our children are our own friends, neighborhoods, coaches, and even family members. Perpetrators of sexual violence are not “other.” They are within our communities and are people that we know.

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'Women are told they are not supposed to do a lot of things, lest they will get raped and/or murdered. Most women have heard these messages. Don't wear provocative clothing. Don't leave your house at night. Don't walk alone. Don't travel alone in unfamiliar places. Don't go running in the park alone. Don't go camping alone. Don't do anything alone. As someone who has traveled alone by bike, backpacking and hitchhiking, I cannot count how many times people have told me that I am “lucky” that I wasn't raped.

If women follow all of these “avoid being raped” messages, they severely limit the ways in which they can move through the world. The question is, does this practice actually protect women from violence? Just like the myth of stranger rape, these warnings are not based on the violence that is being perpetrated or experienced. 64% of women who reported being raped, physically assaulted, and/or stalked were victimized by a current or former husband, cohabiting partner, boyfriend, or date. (Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women, Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, November, 2000). The most dangerous place for a woman, statistically and ironically, is the same place women are told to stay to protect themselves. If we were basing our violence prevention messages in reality, we would be telling women to carry mace in the kitchen and into the bedroom. Because the “don't walk through the woods alone” message is so divorced from reality, it does nothing to protect people from actual violence. So, what purpose does it serve? The fear of rape is used to control women and limit their lives. The threat of rape is used as an excuse to narrow what women ought to do and limit women's personal freedom.

The narrative of rape that we hear in the media is the story of a man overpowering a woman: with a knife, gun or sheer physical force, a man aggressively violates a woman as she tries to stop it, but cannot. The problem with the pervasiveness of this narrative is that, although it is one of the ways in which rape happens, it is not the only way. The experiences of survivors of rape and unwanted sexual experiences that fall outside of the paradigm of “forcible rape” are left with their experience unrecognized and delegitimized. If the sexual assault did not involve penetration, if the victim was drunk, if they said no but didn't really mean it or didn't say it enough-- then it’s not really rape. This inaccurate and narrow definition of rape creates the dramatic under-reporting and prosecution of rape in the United States. The US Justice Department estimates that only 26% of rapes and attempted rapes are ever reported to the police. And only 5% of perpetrators will ever spend a day in jail (US Dept of Justice, 2001)

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This “all or nothing” definition of rape hurts survivors. Most survivors of sexual violence experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). One of the first steps of healing from PTSD is naming and labeling the trauma. Survivors who don't meet the narrow definition of rape struggle to name what has happened to them. To even begin the process of healing, “imperfect” rape victims must overcome a culture that says what they have experienced does not meet the definition of rape; that what they have experienced has no name.

To adequately support survivors of sexual violence, we need to embrace fact that rape is not clear nor obvious. It is complicated. It can be ambiguous. It is often infinitely subtle. For example: you are my date and I have consented to having sex with you, but not consented to having sex with you without a condom. As we are both excitedly getting ready to have sex, you slip it in. I ask you to get a condom and you ignore me. I ask you to get a condom again and you hold me down. Is that rape? I would say yes. What would the police report say?

The problem with defining rape based on the victims words and actions is that everyone's sexual boundaries are different and any standard will leave some survivors in the “maybe it isn't” category. By this kind of measure, the experience of survivors can easily be determined to be invalid, their rape not traumatic enough.

But (people will say) if we abandon having a clear standard for rape how can we prevent it from happening? Instead of emphasizing whether or not a situation is technically or legally rape, let’s emphasize that all sexual encounters should clearly and obviously be consensual. The standard for measuring the health and integrity of sex should not be whether one of the parties acted in a criminal manner- but rather, the standard should be that the sex was pleasurable and empowering for all parties (however those parties experience pleasure and empowerment). We must shift the responsibility from the “perfect” rape victim who does everything in their power to fight off a rapist, to the responsible sexual partner who always obtains clear consent.'

after silence

The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness.... Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word "unspeakable".... Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried....Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims....When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom....

Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery

Words seemed to make it visible.

But speaking, even when it embarrassed me,

also slowly freed me from the shame I felt.

The more I struggled to speak, the less power

the rape, and its aftermath, seemed to have over me.

Nancy Raine, After Silence: Rape and My Journey Back

I survived this torture which left me paralyzed for years. That's what that night was all about, mutilation, more than violence through sex. I really do feel as though I was psychologically mutilated that night and now I'm trying to put the pieces back together again. Through love, not hatred. And through my music. My strength has been to open again, to life, and my victory is the fact that, despite it all, I kept alive my vulnerability.

Rape's not something where you just go, "Well, get over it" or "Believe in love and peace, my child, and it'll all be over." Well, fuck you, that isn't the answer. It's a great thought, OK, but you can go and stick crystals up your butt and get on with it. I'm all for love and peace, but that's not the side I work on. If somebody would talk about it, or worse, joke about it, I would be ready to kill. That's not healing. It was a very long time after that before I was able to be with anyone again. And it has never been the same as it was before.

People out there must be told about the self-loathing that follows rape and how it's the greatest breakage in divine law to mutilate themselves, as I have done.

Tori Amos

In this moment I'm not defined by the other things, the things that happened to me, the things I didn't choose. This is the part of me that defines me for all time, for always. The thing I choose completely.

Daisy Whitney

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