rape

[scared]

Hi,the problem is,the college gave us a list of placements in year one,which I have been through lots of times.I have lost count of the number of places I have rung both in my first and second years.Thats all the help the college give you.They leave it up to us to find our placements,and have no links to any agencies.Hence why is it so hard to get a placment.Some places I have rung,say they only take second year students,which is no longer a problem for me.Some have very expensive training courses that are time consuming and not practical for me to do,and some say they only take students from the local university.So thats what I'm up against.I agree that extra time to decide is the only practical thing I can do now.I do not want to leave my course as it has taken me 3 years to get to where I am now (as i did a counselling certificate before this course),and I only have 4 weeks left til the course finishes,so I am determined not to give up now.The thing is,I am not working at the moment,and really want to get my counselling diploma and do some paid counselling work.I also want to find another job so that I am counselling part time,and doing any other part time job.As I have been on benefits for over 6 years,and want to get off them,or at least be less dependent on them.So the longer it takes me to get my 100 hours done,the longer it will be before I can look for a counselling job.I have been waiting to get a part time,non counselling job for ages,but have my time taken up with going to college one day a week,and my placement two mornings,possibly more depending when my clients can come and see me.So everythings in limbo.Once my course has finished I will have that day free to work part time anywhere,and will keep doing a placment (whichever i have).I think thats the main issue for me.I feel frustrated because mu course is finishing,but I still have at least 6 months to a year before I can get a counselling job.It is better for the others on my course,as they all have other jobs they will go back to after this course finishes,and may not work as paid counsellors at all.Whereas it is a new career for me,as I am not going back to my last one.
I have been trying to relax,and did have a nice bath the other night,but I am still proeoccupied.One idea I had,was that I phone my supervisor next tuesday,and say I m going out for lunch on the wednesday (she already knows its my birthday,and asked if i was sure i wanted to meet because of that),and that i cant meet her at 12,like we arranged.And ask if we could meet the next week (we meet weekly),and if she would be happy to wait until then for my decision.She may say she needs a decision before then,to let my potential client know whats happening,so I'm not sure what to say if she says that.

[scared]

I suppose what my problem is,is that i dont have enough faith in my feeling that i do not want to carry on at the placment to act on it,and leave.I am not sure that I trust my intuition,as I have followed it in the past,and sometimes things dont turn out well.I keep thinking yes i will leave,then talking myself out of it,then thinking if im really not happy at the placment I should leave.I think because everyone else in the group is happy with their placments,and the area they are doing,I think why shouldnt i be happy too.But because I have not done as many hours as some at college,i get worried that i will not get my hours in time.Mind you,there is one girl in our group who is doing telephone counselling,and had not started seeing clients yet,although she has done her training for the placment,and will be starting soon.And another one who has only done one counselling session.I have been told that a lot of places have training that starts in september,then you can hopefully see clients.But there are some placments,who take students on and train them,then interview then to see if they want them to do client work,and then say no,which means i could waste several months trainnig somewhere,only to not get clients at the end of it.So im looking for somewhere where i can see clients straight away,or after a shorter training.

[scared]

I have thought many times about giving up my course because of how others have bullied me,and i have come very close to leaving.But then i thought,no,i have worked too hard,and willnot leave the course because others dont like me.Thats their problem,I am a very determined person,and dont like to give up on things,no matter how though they get.In fact,the week things came to a head at college,and noone wanted to have me in their research group,i was devastated,and spent a long time talking to my tutor.I was angry as she said i would need to work on my own.I didnt think that was fair for me to do the work of a group,on my own.But the next week my course tutur and my personal development tutor got my whole group together and said we had to work things out.Many strong words were said,and the group left to talk about me.That was really hard.Then they came back,and one group agreed to 'take me on'.sO it was sorted out.I have to give my tuturs credit for supporting me,against 7 other angry people,by saying that i couldnt work on my own (my tutor discovered it was not allowed in the assignment criteria).I got a lot of strength from that,although that was before my rape memories came back.But i still have that strength,but have been finding it harder to use it lately,and almost fell to pieces.I hope i am starting to get stronger now,as it seems i have a battle between the bad feelings and my own strength.I do feel my depression is a lot better,but i have a lot of anger and am very irritable,rather than so scared,like i was a few weeks ago.Is this what other rape victims go through? I also have an awful memory.It has always been bad,but i forget everything at the moment,Someone on another site told me i could have ptsd,i think they may be right...

[diana_holbourn]

It's a difficult one. At least having more time to decide will hopefully take the pressure off you a little bit. It might be better to ask your supervisor if you can have a couple of weeks of extra time rather than to tell her you can't make the meeting, since if she's annoyed because you said it would be allright before, she might hold it against you. Hopefully, she will let you have extra time to decide. If you can try to think of one, two, three or more things you can do in the next week or so to help you make the decision, and then ask for extra time and tell her what you plan to do, hopefully she'll agree to it, knowing that at least things are progressing.

Would the college allow you to try to find a placement with an organisation not on the list they gave you? What about contacting national counselling organisations and charities and asking them if they know of any schemes in your area where counselling organisations or charities or anyone like that take on nearly-qualified students for a while and supervise them without wanting them to train for ages?If you contacted as many as you could in the next week and did hear something promising, you might feel a bit happier about leaving the placement you're in.

But if you did feel you had to stay in the placement, is there any way you can think of to make it less stressful? For instance, might the supervisor be willing to let you start by counselling people with only mild learning disabilities and gradually work up to taking on clients who were more and more difficult to counsel?

As for anger and irritability, I think it is common among rape victims. Some people find exercise helps to work some of it off. And writing an angry letter to an attacker and then destroying it helps some people. Also, relaxation techniques can help with anger as well.

You might well have PTSD. But stress can temporarily make the memory poor. It should improve once you start to feel better.

[scared]

I really hope my supervisor gives me some time to work out what to do.Is she says no,then I will have to either agree to take on the new client,and counsel her for as long as she needs,until i have found another placment,or leave my placement now.I just feel so helpless at the moment.I have been feeling a bit better over the last few weeks in some ways,as it has taken me a few weeks to accept that i was raped,as i had a lot of guilt.Then one day it just clicked,and i realised i was not to blame for his behaviour.I still get anxious when i see things on television or in papers.The worst thing,is realising that i will never forget what happened to me,and that i will have to live with it.I feel robbed,that my virginity was taken away when i didnt want it.i feel like something has been taken from me,that i will never get back.And i feel angry and resentful towards my rapist.Also,i am waiting for some test results to come back from the doctors.I went to the doctors a few weeks ago,as i had a bad neck,and i collapsed in the doctors.i had a really bad pain near my bladder,and felt really faint.The doctor asked me if i had pain during sex!I was in agony and i was a bit shocked.i said i didnt have sex,as i felt awkward about saying i was gay.It eased off gradually,and my dad had to pick me and my daughter up from the doctors,as i couldnt drive myself.I have since had pains near my bladder.The doctor gave me a prescription for antibiotics.I went back to the doctors a week later,and she did an internal exam and a swab.She said it could be chlamydia or a urine infection.She said i could have chlamidyia from a relationship a long time ago,as some people dont know theyve got it for a long time.Sh asked me if there was any possibility i could be pregnant,and i said no.I feel annoyed with myself that i didnt say i am gay.I am still waiting for the results.I came home feeling really dirty,and was terrified that i had got it from my rapist.I also felt worried that i had given it to my daughter during labour,as i read it can happen.I would never frogive myself if i have.I felt so upset,as i had been starting to feel a bit better about myself,but now i feel like i did when the rapa memories resurfaced.It just makes me feel sick to think he could have given the infection to me.The waiting is awful.So i feel i have so much on my mind,and noone can help me,i dont know what to do..

[diana_holbourn]

What happened to you sounds horrible. But though you probably won't forget it, there may come a time in the future where it doesn't cause you so much emotional pain, when you can use the experience to help people in your counselling; for instance if you have experience of things that helped in your recovery, and some of the people you counsel say they were raped, you might be better at suggesting things that work for them.

I think if you'd passed chlamydia to your daughter in labour, they'd have picked it up quickly, because I think what it causes in babies is conjunctivitis, that can lead to blindness but it's curable if picked up quickly, which it would be, because the symptoms are very noticeable, or it can cause a form of pneumonia, but you'd know about that because the baby would have mild breathing problems. And the infection can apparently be treated with a short course of antibiotics. So she probably wouldn't have any permanent damage. So you wouldn't have to feel bad if you had passed chlamydia to her. And besides that, it wouldn't have been your fault anyway.

[scared]

Thankyou.I think i am going to ask my supervisor for more time to decide.If she says no,i'm not sure what i'll do.The way i feel at the moment is that if she says no,i might just seay i will leave the placment.As i have realised that i need to get the best placment i can,and would like ot have the best experience of counselling others,so to get this i need to ask her for what i need (if if i feel scared of that at the moment).I'm not sure whether to agree to take on the new client,and no more,and see her til she decides she no longer needs it,and carry on finding another placement.Or to just end the placment.I think the way my supervisor is when i speak to her next will make my decision for me.Because if she is not willing to negotiate how i proceed,then i will let it go.

[scared]

I think that the next time i go the see the doctor,if she asks me about pain during sex,or anything like that,i am going to have the courage to say that im gay.It annoys me when people assume im straight as i dont look like a butch lesbian,and i have a child.I think doctors could learn to ask more ambiguos questions to people about sex,rather than assuming heterosexuality,but im not sure what.

[diana_holbourn]

I hope everything goes well with your decisions about your placement.

People probably just assume you're heterosexual because most people are, like they might assume that someone who went to a pub would want an alcoholic drink even though they might be teetotal. I don't think you need to feel under pressure to justify the reasons you don't have sex to your doctor. After all, I'm sure lots of heterosexuals spend quite some time not being sexually active, for lots of different reasons, and the reasons aren't really any of a doctor's business, and hopefully doctors won't ponder on them, because all they're supposed to be doing is finding out more information about the disease. Hopefully, that's all most of them will be interested in. They probably assume you're having sex just because most people probably will be, not because it's something that's expected and they think anything's wrong with not doing so. So I don't think you need to feel ashamed or anything about not giving them an explanation if you're not keen on giving them one.

[scared]

I didnt say I dont have sex,I do,but I meant not with men.But thanks for your advice.I meant that I felt under pressure whether to disclose my sexuality or not,not whether I was having sex or not,if you see what i mean.Becasue quite often doctors do not know much about gay peoples sexual health or practises,as there are specific issus gay people may have,that are different from heterosexuals.

I told the doctor I wasnt having sex on an impulse,as I was in pain,and couldnt explain that I was gay at that point,and did not have sex with men.

[diana_holbourn]

I was thinking that if you do something that's not the norm like not having sex or not having sex in the way a doctor would expect, it's not necessarily their business. But if you do have special health concerns, it might be as well to mention it, and I wish you all the best, although the spread of sexually transmitted diseases is lowest among lesbians.

[scared]

Hi,Im not sure i'd agree that not having sex is not the norm.I think the media likes to give the impression that everyone should be,or is having sex all the time,or wanting to have it,when thats not necessarily the case.But i understand what you are saying.It is possible to transmit some stds to another woman,and I guess when I saw the doctor,I wondered if she was aware that unprotected sex with another woman can transmit stds.I agree,it might help to discuss specific health concerns with my doctor if I needed to,to make her more aware that there are different definitions of sex,encompassing gay of straight sex,and that the only definition of sex should not be heterosexual penetrative sex.I remember being tought at school that the definition of sex was a man and a woman engaging in penetrative sex.I feel quite strongly that doctors shouldnt assume that most people are heterosexual,as at least 10 per cent of people are gay,and many more are bisexual,or sometimes asexual.I think any assumptions a doctor has about their patients sex life need to be challenged,if they are conveyed to a patient in a direct way.Particularly if they make the patient feel uncomfortable.When i did my nurse training,i was taught to admit patients onto hospital wards,and one of the checklist of assessments was about sexuality.And i was taught never to assume heterosexuality of patients.I think assumptions on the whole are very dangerous.

[diana_holbourn]

That's an interesting one. I wonder how much if any training doctors get at medical school about specific health concerns of gay people. And I wonder how they could ask questions to check a person's sexuality and what kind of sex they have without sounding too blunt. Then again, if they were discussing sex anyway, perhaps questions like that wouldn't sound any worse than the others.

[scared]

Hi,I have been having counselling since january of this year,and am worried whether i am becoming too dependent on it,particularly since my rape memories came up six or seven weeks ago.I think because she was the first person i was able to tell,it was very important to me that she believed me,and that she understood what had happened to me.At first when i told her,she just listened.Then after several weeks I asked her how she saw the situation,as i wondered what she was thinking.She told me what she thought,which put the blame onto my rapist,that she thought it was rape,and that it was not my fault etc.She was great.But each week since i started to tell her,I have been almost obsessive about making sure I got to my session with her,and found it so hard that i could not go over the two week easter break from college.It worries me that I felt that i needed her to convince me that what happened was rape,and to believe it.I think in my mind what she believes is more important to me than it should be.I had a panic a few weeks ago as my course finishes at the end of may,and i was worried that i would not have many weeks left to see her.So iasked her in the next session how long i could keep seeing her,and she said it could be open ended,but until the college term finishes at the beginning of july.I was so relieved.I spoke to her on the phone after I had seen her last tuesday morning,as i was feeling really down.And i asked her again if she thought what had happened was my fault,and said that i needed to hear her say it was rape.She said she felt that it wasnt really her role,that i had to believe it myself,that it had to come from me.I understand that she was right,and feel worried that ive made her feel awkward by asking her again.I am going to see her again tomorrow,and I dont know whether to mention that i feel im getting dependent or not.I began to realise this several weeks ago,and feel a bit less dependent than i was,but am counting down the sessions we have left (about 8 or 9),and wondering if ill cope when they end.I have told her things that ive never told anyone,and feel really close to her,and it almost upsets me when she talks about preparing for our ending,and what work we can do,as i realise that to her,im just another client.What can i do? i hope you get this tonight and can reply,if not nevermind,but i really need ur help..

[scared]

I have just been watching wife swap on television,and this man was shouting in this womans face,who had come into his home.I feel really scared,terrified even.I know its only on tv,but how can i stop myself getting affected by things like that?