Official Diary｜Trueman

A few nights ago, I finally couldn't bear all kinds of "harassment" from Line's official accounts, so I decided to delete most of them. After the end, I saw that there were more than 400 friends in the friends section, and I thought it was time to organize this list. I have the impression that I have never sorted out since I started using Line in the third year of high school; when I swipe up one by one from the bottom of the name sorting, about three out of every four decided to delete, and some of the names of "friends" were related to my profile picture. Not even impressed at all. Later, when I swipe to the ID starting with J, I saw a very familiar name. After I clicked on the photo, I realized, ah, it turned out to be him.

J is the beginning of his native name, or is it a nickname? I forgot. I just remember that he gave himself a nickname that means "Light". But back then I called him by his English name, which started with T.

In the photo, his hair and beard are a little gray; in 2017, he didn't have a beard. In the folder labeled "Travel in 2017" in my cloud drive, there is a picture of his back In the photo, he was working on a client case at his work desk.

I didn't delete that photo. I don't know why I don't delete it, can't or don't want to? I think it's like I haven't thrown away the suit I was wearing when he took me out for drinks the night it happened over the years. (But I threw it away the other day because I was sorting out belongings Belongings recently, but it has also been stuck in the closet for nearly five years.) The counselor once asked me why I didn’t throw that suit away, and at the time I can't answer why. Maybe it's to leave a piece of evidence, or to remind myself of the existence of this thing? I really can't describe the feeling clearly.

When I looked carefully at this person’s LINE header, although I knew that I could call him and scold him with just a click of a button, but I couldn’t release my anger. Is there something blocking my feelings? ? This feeling of being blocked and unable to come out is very similar to the first night when he was on top of me, I felt his hands start to pull my panties, even though I knew I didn't want to, but my body was "Give up"—and by give up I mean, my hands tried to resist his movement for a second or two, but my body froze after that.

Notice! Here I use the word "abandon", but in fact "abandon" may have the meaning of self-condemnation . I have to remind myself that I was not wrong, this was the "only" choice I could have at the time to keep my mind from collapsing .

But probably from the moment of "giving up", my brain has learned a deeper " defense mechanism "; and this type of defense mechanism is a history of sexual harassment (and almost being sexually assaulted) that I experienced as a child. accumulated. I still can't get rid of it, remembering the feeling of my relative putting his hand on my right thigh and stroking it back and forth; it was disgusting, but despite the nausea, I couldn't leave that place as a child . There are many, many, many similar situations, and I cannot list them all here today, because there are too many complex emotions in them.

The defense mechanism (called defensiveness in the book) is a concept I learned in a book I read recently; the book is " Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy " by Carl R. Rogers, and I will know this book It was when she read Liao Mi's " This Abnormal Man " at the end of last year that she mentioned this book in the article.

On page 224, Rogers writes:

Defensiveness, as I have written in the past, describes it as this: an organism's response to experiences that are characterized by being perceived as threatening to the self, or inconsistent with an existing self-image, or inconsistent with the world relations. These threatening experiences can be distorted or denied in consciousness so that they are temporarily harmless. I myself often cannot see very accurately the various experiences, feelings, reactions, etc. that are obviously different from the existing self-image. Much of the psychotherapy process consists of the client continually discovering that he is experiencing feelings and attitudes that he was previously unaware of—that is, that he did not “own” as part of himself.

I agree with the description of this paragraph, and I think it clearly presents some changes in my counseling process.

I remember that in the middle of the consultation, I was finally able to share with the counselor some of my feelings about the sexual assault in words. Before this, I didn't know how to describe it. The feeling was that I couldn't get it out, my chest was tight, but my throat seemed to be stuffed with cotton, and there was no way out.

If I go back to the moment when I took a photo of T's back, the reason why I made this move at that time may be because I have a (distorted) attachment to him, that is, the photo is for "commemoration"; But looking back now, this distorted attachment seems to have sprouted at the moment when my underwear was ripped off; at that moment, although my body froze, there were all kinds of defensive thoughts rushing in my head, For example, I remember reassuring myself, "It's okay, it's just a one-night stand", or, "I don't have sex anyway", etc., and such reactions are precisely because-I have to distort the huge threat in front of me into " Acceptable scenario ” so that the threat can temporarily mitigate damage. To put it more bluntly, I had to (force myself) to like this person, I had to romanticize this ugly relationship, or it was too painful.

Just as Truman discovered that the end of the "world" is just some artificial scenery, it was Lin Yihan's "Fang Siqi's First Love Paradise" that first made me discover the flaws in this relationship. That was the first time I personally uncovered this scar through external stimuli, or to be more precise, the first time I saw a wound on my body and it was bleeding profusely.

In the process of psychological counseling, when I slowly established a slightly trustworthy relationship with the counselor, one day I will naturally be able to describe this distorted relationship to the counselor in words, as well as the What is the hurt in this relationship, and what is the feeling I encountered in the process; and I can finally practice peeling off the defensive shell, trying to "own" these things that belong to me Feelings - that may be fear, regret, anger, nausea, etc.; these feelings are finally no longer suppressed by "I", and I can slowly practice living with these feelings.

I remember a few months ago, when I saw the news and social media content about the overturning of the " Roe v. Wade" case in the United States, my emotions were greatly fluctuated. There is a strong urge to kill with a knife deep in my heart. Of course I didn't actually execute it, but this was the first time I had written down this feeling in a diary, and clearly realized that it was my ongoing anger about my own experience and sexual issues. This anger in the past is lurking in the deep and invisible, maybe it is because of the relationship between society or family education? So we are so used to making big things small and small things small when facing unreasonable or injustice, so when violence and harm befall us, we suddenly forget the power of anger.

There is no right or wrong to having an emotion, it is there and it is real.

I wish I could see and accept who I really am.