is anyone struggling with the news?

Hi lizardlady. It is hard hearing about so much of it in the news all the time. A part of me wants to cheer and say "See! It IS true and it is NOT okay!"
It is triggering for sure, because talk about sexual assault is now everywhere. So it definitely hooks in to old stuff for me. Part of me has considered sharing more about what has happened to me with people around me too. I am not quite there yet. But I am considering it, which is new.
It feels like I have been silent so long, protecting the abusers with my silence for so long. My silence is their protection. I don't WANT to protect them anymore. I want to be able to speak my truth and to own my truth without worrying about ruining THEIR reputation, THEIR good name, THEIR life.
But why was it okay for them to ruin mine??? Why was it okay for that all to be done to ME?
So yes, seeing this all over the media is also triggering for me in that sense. But I think mostly for me it is an empowering sort of trigger. I feel like it might be okay to stand up and say what happened to me wasn't my fault and it wasn't okay.
One day, though. Not yet.

I see this as being much bigger than Trump. It is a far, far greater problem than Trump. It is of course extremely bad that the most powerful man in the united states displays the same kind of predatory and entitled behaviors as most sexual predators. But this isn't about Trump. This isn't a conspiracy to get him impeached. This is about women who have had enough and women who don't want to be used as sexual playthings for men who have power over them anymore.
If you have never had anything like that happen to you you are a very lucky person.

I never said I never had anything like that happen to me. I said what is happening is a lot like m on mentality.

I have been raped 3 times.
Sexually harassed til I feared for my physical safety
And my violin teacher tried to molest me

That's just touching on the traumas concerning this topic. To assume something about someone's personal life based off their opinion (which by the way is what your view is as well) about something is, is very wrong.

Blech. Sorry you had all that stuff happen to you.
Yes, it is wrong to assume because assumptions are not always right. I did hazard a guess you wouldn't have had much trauma based on your opinion, but I wouldn't presume to be "right" about that - thus the "if".
But it is true that I don't understand why you would assume that there is some conspiracy going on given that you know sexual trauma. The culture of men having "ownership" and "power" over women is rampant. We know this happens. We know that women often feel too ashamed or vulnerable to speak out about it. Research shows there are very clear and specific behaviors that indicate a woman may be lying about a sexual assault or rape for secondary gain, with one of the most prominent being that women retract their allegations as soon as charges or public scrutiny are involved. There is super clear research on this. Women don't make this stuff up. I don't understand why someone would think they are, especially someone who has experienced sexual trauma herself.

Yes I have been struggling with this subject as it seems to be overtaking in the news and social media. I have been trying some of the DBT skills distress tolerance here is a good resource https://www.sunrisertc.com/distress-...e-skills/#tipp.
I have panic attacks and I have been trying to watch some comedy and funny things that don't pertain to anything of the nature of people hurting one another, some writing, and have had a open dialog about this subject with a few people "friends" other than just my therapist. If you ever want to talk feel free to PM me. I wish you the very best.
Paisleystar

Some of the responses to this question are very upsetting - women making up stories as part of some conspiracy deal. Thing is, I truly believe we don't hear 90% of things that happen to women, girls, men, boys & other genders. We only hear about young, mostly-famous white women reporting their abusers. We rarely hear about black people who've been abused, or disabled folk. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Trans people have some of the highest rates of sexual violence in the UK, but few seem to care, or they gaslight them.

Of course, there's always gonna be someone who'll lie, but my first thought when someone tells me about what they survived, is to believe them.

I don't watch the news, as it's often very triggering for me, but I see reports on Twitter, Tumblr etc. Please don't write off other survivors of abuse.

#Ibelieveher and him and them.

I am not willing to take over this post with a debate bc you happen to disagree with me. It's fine to disagree with me. We are all allowed opinions. If you truly want to have a discussion, pm me - otherwise, we are done with this conversation (since it takes 2 to have a conversation and I will no longer be participating in it here).

Take care n be good to yourself. ❤

I think anyone has a right to vent how they feel. When trying to muster up a way to even talk about it for a person who has been a victim, just talking about it in whatever way you can is an important start.

It's not ok and it never was ok either.

Individuals who abuse others or protect individuals who abuse others tend to NOT see others as anything more than "objects" that they can use for their own gain.

When it is said that individuals that are toxic in some way have insecurities and low self esteem they protect, the reality about that is that everyone has these "fears" to some degree. If you observe any primate there is always one primate that exhibits more power and strength than the others who becomes the leader that the other primates fear and yet the other primates instinctively "feel" it's important to have that primate to feel
"safe".

It's important to understand that these feelings are part of "normal" primate behaviors.
I know that is hard to wrap one's mind around, that it seems so wrong and yet somehow we experienced it and it really confused and frightened us. Yet, if you take a huge step back and learn about primate behavior, the basic way we were designed to exist by nature, and then you look at human history itself, you will see that we have ALWAYS existed within this very basic way nature designed us to exist. The X vs Y behavior that we consistently engage in has ALWAYS been there. There has also ALWAYS been a class system in humanity too. Look at the Snow Monkeys for example, they function based on a class system too, they have the elite group that is entitled and then there is a group that learns to exist "feeling" and "knowing" they simply can't be included in that more elite group. Well, just as in these Snow Monkeys that has ALWAYS existed in Human Primates too.

What has been slowly coming out is actually showing that a lot of individuals that reach some kind of "power" position often have a side of them that engages in behaviors that can be "primitively abusive" in nature. It doesn't MATTER whether it's X or Y either because IT'S ALWAYS THERE because it's simply part of our design. Just because a human being is able to articulate in a way that uses words in a way that has a superior tone, doesn't mean that person is not a person who can engage in practicing manipulations and lies. The reason for that is because we can never really escape our original design. Every single leader has had these imperfections, EVERY ONE. Pretty much every individual that rises to a prominent position has "Narcissistic Traits".

We have this ongoing fear when it comes to a "global" power, this one power that has all the power over all of humanity. WHY do you think that "feels" like something to fear? That is because that is not how we are designed to be. The truth is that human nature, is ruled by primate nature where we somehow have a need to have the X vs. Y and form groups that interact in "conflict" where whatever IS set up in an organized fashion is CHALLENGED. Also, within human nature there has ALWAYS been some form of "slavery" too. This has been part of how we develop ideas that require a lot of individuals willing to do the physical work that makes these ideas happen. This is pretty much everywhere you look when it comes to seeing all the things that human beings have created. It's in all the ruins, in all of what is called the seven wonders of the world, in every structure that is part of our human world. This is in all the fields that produce all the foods that human beings consume, it's in all the fish we consume and in all the produce and clothing and computers and anything that is mass produced. Every movie you sit and watch has a list of all the individuals that were part of what went into making that movie. And honestly, within all these things that come to be there are individuals who develop a "fear" of not questioning whatever person is in power that somehow makes this all happen. It's ALWAYS been that way too. What is different now is that we have much more exposure because of all of our technology.

I wake up and sit and have coffee and read and check things out on my computer. Yet when I do that I get to see MORE than I had in my past when I was not exposed to all these BAD things that happen in human nature. Truth is with all this technology we have, we are all so much more accessible and with that we can most certainly feel more vulnerable. However, it's gotten harder to hide secrets too. It has given individuals who experienced abuse a way to expose their abuser.

For example, each person who is responding to this thread has a chance to share and to do so in a way where they are relatively safe in anonymity. I have been able to share that in my own history I have come across a Weinstein type of individual. I have been a victim myself when I was also young and very inexperienced and did not know what to do when I came across certain individuals who would attack me in ways that I never knew could happen. For example, there are people that will insist this so called "locker room talk" doesn't exit, and yet I KNOW that's not true and I KNOW it most definitely existed and it still does. Actually, we have seen it before in all our archaeological discoveries too. There are fresco's of it that we have found buried in the ground that hides so much of our human history. There is a lot of paintings, and literature that shows how much this has ALWAYS been a part of our human history. It's simply undeniable. What Trump described in what he saw take place in that studio 54? That's happened before in our human history, SEVERAL TIMES TOO. I saw it myself and it shocked me too and it shocked me so much that even though I loved singing and entertaining, I walked away because of how much this "hidden" part frightened me.

I can relate to the sentiment of how what has been coming out is in a way validating too. When I shared how an individual tried to befriend me and ended up manipulating me for their own selfish reasons and the other individuals says to me "YOU ARE WRONG, that is a nice person I like that person and he/she often said things that I agree with and that person was my friend?" It's a challenge, it's a challenge in how the unhealthy person was able to USE others to attack me and THAT is something that most definitely happens, especially when one decides to follow an X or Y.

What has been happening NOW is showing how it doesn't matter because toxic individuals are involved in BOTH X and Y. Not only that but these individuals tend to get VERY GOOD at hiding how toxic they can really be.

I don't know if this will result in improvement. Somehow, I think that we will never truly escape how we are designed to be by nature.

Well, that's not entirely true because there has been a lot of literature and even movies that have talked about these different kinds of abuses. However, it really was not all that long ago where individuals with handicaps or in someway did not fit into whatever happened to be mainstream at the time, were hidden and often institutionalized.

If you do some research and look at human history human beings were always trying to understand how to understand all sorts of human challenges and often took drugs that were thought to help that were actually making them sicker. Did you know that Abe Lincoln struggled with depression and took Mercury thinking it would help him? Mercury was and is "poisonous". And another thing practiced was thinking that if one married within their own family that it would keep the bloodline pure, and yet we have unearthed remains of individuals who practiced this and how this practice led to deformities instead.

Even with all we HAVE learned, there are still things we don't understand YET.

Did you know that when a female fusses and flips her hair around men that she is actually filling the air with her hormones? Human beings have always had an obsession about hair, seems rather silly UNTIL you learn the SCIENCE behind it. That's just a tiny example of something we never really knew about, but tended to obsess about. Also, human beings have always distanced from human challenges they did not understand.
We often forget that we are just animals even though we have all this intelligence and ability to learn and create in such amazing ways.

Just in case you thought I was saying otherwise - I do believe everyone has the right to their opinion and to express their opinion. I do not believe anyone should be attacked nor judged for an opinion. It is ok to "challenge" it. If someone claims something as "fact" and there is indeed good reason to see it may not be factual, then that too can be challenged - that may turn heated. Opinion based discussions though if an agreement cannot be reached should just be "agree to disagree".

Just wanted to clear that up.

I did highly take offense to what was said to me by Amyjay and had originally put an added response after my response to pm me but decided to delete it bc I realized it was purely an emotion based response. I do not think purely emotion based responses are good responses to make (in the majority of cases). I told Amyjay to pm me not bc she does not have the right to express her opinion but bc nobody has the right to turn this thread into something it was not intended to be about.

It was intended to be about whether or not the news of all the sexual abuse bothers people because of their past experiences. My response apparently was not acceptable to some people but I stand by it as valid because it is what I feel and I do have the "background" to "qualify" to answer this question.

Please continue on now in response to the original subject - does the current news of all the abuse resurfacing upset you because of any past experiences in your life?

Thank you.

P.S. Open Eyes, I am very appreciative of you and understand what you are saying. I am not meaning any of what I said against you - I agree with you fully. *hugs*

Really don't appreciate being told that things are better for minorities now. Unless you're black, Queer AND live in the U.K, this is just hurtful. We all have different opinions, but please don't erase my lived experience in doing so.

The "awareness" has improved, but that has not meant that the overall challenges faced have changed/improved. Your life experiences are REAL and important to talk about to continue the awareness to a point where there is an improvement when it comes to the ongoing challenges faced.

This thread has been closed for administrative review.