A person who has been psychologically abused often tends to convince himself: “All this is nonsense... I've seen how others do it! We should not pay attention to this... We must move on”...
When we emotionally distance ourselves from our traumatic experience, it helps us reduce the effects of violence by creating the illusion of mental strength.
However, if people avoid thinking about the humiliation they've been through, it's only because they don't feel strong enough to talk about it out loud. The perception of oneself as “dirty” makes the victim of violence withdraw from society and prevents him from taking his rightful place among people. Being ashamed at the mere thought of self-pity, a person walks away from this problem, immersing themselves in work, giving in to their hobby or addiction. This silence is evidence of the existence of supermemory, which captures a story locked inside, a story that can't be told out loud.
It must be recognized that, over time, this protective mechanism may not be sufficient. Of course, this helps us suppress pain that might otherwise flood our inner world and control our mental world.
Trying to escape from reality, we only survive “half” when we are unable to share our story with anyone and are only able to reveal a part of us to others, trying to strangle another.
This is how we live our lives with and without ourselves.
However, as we continue to rely solely on our cold mind (“We must move forward... no need to chew on the old stuff”), one day we will have to face the fact that our lives have taken a strange path.
Avoidance does not apply to remembering the persecution itself, but only to the affect associated with that memory. We suffer less when suffering causes mental agony: “I no longer have a soul, no body, nothing that would be me anymore. I'm nothing that lasts...”
When a survivor of violence tries to overcome their fear of recognition, they are faced with tacit or overt condemnation. People around them become complicit in the avoidance process, letting the trauma survivor know that such things are not being talked about. That's when silence becomes the new creator of the self, a dumb tyrant who makes us suffer, preventing us from starting to work on rebuilding ourselves.
The rabies of realizing what happened is an important tool for resilience after violence. This rabies tries to break through written text, words and stories, through explanations. At the same time, silence, which freezes connections, increases the intensity of the impact of the violence I've experienced: “I'm constantly thinking about that “broken the mold” that happened in my head, but I must remain silent because no one can understand me.” Refusal to feel and talk about what you supposedly “should be silent about” leads to a repeated return of post-traumatic stress and each time creates shame in a person. When we have no control over anything, neither ourselves nor others, we cannot protect ourselves from new bouts of violence. This is how we can explain the strange fatalism that accompanies the process of revictimizing a person who has been abused. However, we can overcome shame by turning it into rage and, later, into pride. Remembering moments from our painful past means sewing the rags of a torn self and living a full life.
Svetlana Krylova, graduate student, Faculty of Social Sciences, National Research University Higher School of Economics
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