Friday Fun Client Stories

What a long, busy week. Meetings - trainings - client calls - more than the usual hubbub. I suspect we have hit that point in which most productivity is achieved --- you know - that magical time between the end of summer and the holidays. Pretty much, from early September to Halloween is the most productive time of the year.

Here is this week's client story.

One of the aspects of victimization that bothers folks the most is just how the event totally consumes the victim's life. Intrusive thoughts - being "on guard" all the time (not just in case the perp is encountered but also other people's reactions both good and bad). Lots of times when victims shut down or insist they don't want to continue working with the court system it's because really they just want their lives back without every waking moment being about the rape.

Several years ago, I had a client in the ER who experienced the type of rape we are taught to fear most. It was a terrifying and violent assault. The perpetrator threatened her young child with serious injury to buy her cooperation. But, she used her smarts and managed to get him out of her house before he harmed her child or had the opportunity to harm her more than he already had.

Also, she was one of those rare victims who was very expressive in her pain. She wailed. You know how you read about women grieving and the wailing and tearing of hair and beating of breast? This is what I saw with her. It may have been the only client I've ever had who was that visibly upset in front of us.

After the rape, she would come to my office and curl up on our couch and cry for 45 minutes. She didn't want to cry in front of her children - but she felt like she had to "let it out." As you can imagine, she got tired of being this sad, this upset constantly.

Then, her child provided her with a distraction. The child shoved a popcorn hull up her nose and it got stuck. My client spent a day going from doctor to doctor looking for someone who could remove it. Finally, late in the afternoon - she found a doctor willing to remove it. Later, she told me that she realized that the whole day she was running around to doctors, she wasn't thinking about the rape. She realized that it felt good to set it aside for just a few hours.

The next week, when the child did it again - she knew which doctor to visit. And, it was the last time they had pop corn in their household for quite some time.