Day 57: Between Healing and Numbness
Am I enlightened or am I just so detached as a trauma response? Unsure...
Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault
Things feel normal today, for the first time in about two weeks.
I woke up in my own bed after having about eight hours of sleep with my cat Princess crawling on top of me. I just flew back from Abu Dhabi, where I hosted a yoga retreat and spent the week with a friend. Things were not normal for me whilst there or before the trip, however. Three days before my trip I was physically assaulted by someone I was dating, and 30 hours after the incident, I realized he had drugged and raped me the previous week.
Side Note: I haven’t stated this anywhere, but I want to state it now. He drugged me by handing me a bottle of water. He asked me “Do you want a bottle of water before we do this breath work YouTube?” And opened it and handed it to me. That’s the last thing I remember before 5:56 am. I was bleeding in the morning and felt like I had sex, but the thought didn’t even cross my mind that he’d drugged and raped me, because you just don’t think people are capable of that kind of violence. It was only when I conciously saw the level of violence he was capable of a week later that it clicked for me. I just assumed the breathwork had made me really tired and I’d fallen asleep. I want to point this out because up until this point I thought I needed to drink alcohol to get drugged, and I thought because I was sober, I’d always be in control of my body and safe from harm. But I now know that you can drug people with normal food and water and that my assumptions were not true. I suspect it was GHB that he used to drug me. I want to highlight this to bring awareness to other women.
When I realized that this had happened to me, my life was unravelling. It was a level of trauma I couldn’t comprehend. How could someone drug and rape someone and then pretend like nothing had happened and have a four hour breakfast buffet in a five star hotel with them the next day? It terrified me. And why did he drug and rape me one night and not the next? I was just confused by it all. It also terrified me that had he never physically assaulted me one week later, I would have never woken up to how violent and dangerous he was, and realized that he drugged and raped me the previous week. I would be living in this alternate universe where everything was fine. Ignorance is bliss. And it honestly amazes me that I was able, in the middle of all of this, to get on a plane and fly nine hours to the Middle East and go lead a yoga retreat.
My bedroom in Bali is so magical. It has floor-to-ceiling windows on two of the walls, and because it's elevated, it's just surrounded by green. I call it the Tree House. When I got on Zoom with one of my Yoga Sutra Study classes this morning, my student said, "Is that a fake background, Alex? Or is your room just that magical?"
No…it’s really that magical.
I am happy to be home, but my body is also physically shutting down. It's exhausted and sick. I’ve gotten a bad cold. And I think it is because my nervous system was on overdrive for the last two weeks trying to process everything. It’s just finally catching up with me and shutting off.
Things feel normal, and I have even been considering posting a more detailed recount of the day I got drugged and raped—but then part of me wonders if the “normal” is just a new phase of detachment, and I'll regret that later on—which is why I've held off.
I did a cord-cutting meditation with my therapist yesterday. This is the absolute best meditation practice for dealing with resentments. Usually, you visualize a cord, cut the cord, and it dissolves. For the first time ever, when we did this cord-cutting meditation, there was no cord between myself and the person I was visualizing, which was him. I’ve been leading cord-cutting meditations for years, and usually, there is a thick cord connecting myself and the individual. But between me and him it was just air. In the meditation, you take a utensil and use it to cut the cord. Usually it’s scissors or a knife. I just saw myself slicing my hand through air between us. It was bizarre.
But it honestly doesn’t shock me that there's no cord, because I don’t feel any anger towards him. I don’t feel any anger at all. When I do get waves of anger, it’s not towards him; it’s usually towards other things.
I find it almost shocking and overwhelming when people get angry at him—and a lot of people do when they find out what he did. My friends get so angry. My mom got so angry. It's weird. But I’m not angry. I almost feel bad for him? Is that a sign of enlightenment or is that a sign of how numb I am?
I honestly wonder sometimes if I am not angry because I am aware of how unwell he must be if he did what he did. I almost have compassion for him because I know how disturbed he must be, how traumatized he must be. I see him as a little kid and I wonder back to his childhood and if he was exposed to violence or abuse. But I don’t know if that’s a normal response or a coping mechanism.
My therapist said that she thinks I see no cord between us because the trauma is so significant that I have completely shut down.
So that’s why I still haven’t shared any details of the assaults on Substack—because I am not sure if I really am healing and moving forward, or if I’m just regressing into a previous stage of Rape Trauma Syndrome (RTS).
Rape Trauma Syndrome (RTS)
Rape Trauma Syndrome (RTS) is a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that survivors of sexual assault often experience. It consists of three main stages:
1. Acute Stage (Immediate or Crisis Stage)
This stage occurs immediately after the assault and can last from a few days to several weeks.
Survivors may experience intense emotional reactions such as shock, disbelief, fear, anger, guilt, or numbness.
There are two common emotional responses:
Expressed reaction – showing strong emotions like crying, shaking, or panic.
Controlled reaction – appearing calm, detached, or in denial.
Physical symptoms like sleep disturbances, nausea, headaches, and body pain may also occur.
This is the phase that I just went through for the last two weeks. I was barely sleeping, or if I did sleep, it was for 2-4 hours. I would say the majority of the time, I was calm and detached, but there were a few moments, especially in the first 24 hours of the second assault (the first one I was conscious for), when I was shaking and in panic.
2. Outward Adjustment Stage (Denial & Coping Stage)
This stage can last from months to years.
Survivors try to resume normal life but may struggle with lingering emotional and psychological effects.
Common coping mechanisms include:
Minimization – downplaying the assault’s impact. I think I’m here right now. I had a normal conversation on the phone with my mom last night where we just talked about mostly legal things and no emotions.
Dramatic changes in lifestyle – moving, changing jobs, or altering routines to feel safer. This is like this past week when I was saying I was going to convert to Islam, lol.
Denial or suppression – avoiding discussing or processing the trauma. I am not avoiding it. I’m pretty open about it. But am I in denial because I’m so nonchalant? Or am I in a really elevated level of my yoga practice that I’m so detached?
Hypervigilance – feeling constantly on edge or unsafe. Every time someone hands me food or water, the thought literally crosses through my mind that it could be drugged, and I have to coach myself out of this thought, remembering that no one in a restaurant or cafe would drug me, that no one in a family home would drug me, that no one on an airplane would drug me. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to accept food or drink from a man alone again without the thought crossing my mind he could be drugging me.
Self-destructive behaviors – substance abuse, risky behaviors, or self-harm. We’re not here yet that I’ve identified but I think if I were still drinking alcohol, I would be.
3. Resolution Stage (Integration & Recovery Stage)
This stage occurs when the survivor begins to process the trauma in a healthier way.
They work through feelings of guilt, shame, and self-blame and regain a sense of control over their life.
Triggers and flashbacks may still occur, but they become less overwhelming.
Healing is not linear, and survivors may move back and forth between these stages. Support, therapy, and self-care play crucial roles in the recovery process.
It’s honestly been fascinating to have my writing to look back on over the past two weeks—to see all the different stages of awareness I was in and emotional states as I processed this. On the first day, I was writing about how I was going to prevent this trauma from becoming a samskara by meditating and going to a yoga class (as if sitting down and meditating the morning after a near-death experience will solve everything and you can just go back to normal, lmao).
Some people have asked why I didn’t do one thing or another in the last two weeks, and I honestly don’t have any answer for that except that I was in shock.
One of my friends today said, "I wish you had told me this!"
Honestly... I was in shock. That's why I didn't tell you. The only people I told are people I had direct contact with (e.g., Zoom calls or meetings, etc.). I didn't think of anyone outside of my daily interactions to tell.
I think what shocked me the most is not what happened to me, but just not understanding why someone would drug and rape a consenting adult who is choosing to be in the bed with him, and then pretend everything is normal for a week.
The only answer I can come to is that you need to be a special kind of psychopath.
The first woman I told the story to, on the first day (before I even knew I’d been drugged and raped), said to me, “Alexandra - what you’re describing to me is a psychopath. He is a psychopath. Do you understand that?”
I hate to call names, and I don’t name-call in any other circumstances. But when we are victims of abuse, using a label for the abuser can help us recognize and categorize the behaviour, and shift the blame off ourselves as victims - understanding that it is literally our attacker’s pathology that caused this - and nothing else. It is the same reason why I would identify that my ex was a narcissist. It’s not to name call. It is to recognize the abuse for what it was. It is not my fault for being drugged and raped and assaulted. It is something within his pathology causing this violence to occur. Not me. So identifying him as a psychopath helped me to come to terms with otherwise what was unthinkable and inexplicable abuse.
This morning I got on Zoom with one of my Yoga Sutra Study groups, and we were talking about the Yama and Niyama (Sutra 2.30 - 2.45). These commitments are ten commitments to live by as practitioners of yoga, including: nonviolence, telling the truth, non-stealing, moderation, letting go, cleanliness, contentment, discipline, self-reflection, and surrender to a higher power.
One of my students asked:
"When the Sutras were written, wasn’t it just assumed that everyone was striving to behave in this way? Isn’t it hard to do nowadays when we're encountering individuals that are not living in this way to be in these states?"
"It totally is," I said, "But it feels much better when you’re living these practices than not. For example, it feels much better to be living from a state of nonviolence towards others than a state of anger and resentment."
I thought back to him. I am meeting his violence with nonviolence. It’s so weird. It’s the most significant trauma of my life. And yet, I am not angry at him for causing me harm.
I can’t figure out if I’m in a really healthy place of sending him love and compassion, or if I simply am just still in shock.
Either way, I’m not angry, and I don’t wish him harm.
It’s a very strange place to be.
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