A Self-Defense Class I Wish I'd Not Taken

or, It's Not Helpful to Pretend to Be Raped

TW: child abuse, PTSD, rape

I started having nightmares when my C-PTSD/PTSD started to really kick off, which was in 2014.

The trigger for my PTSD is fairly simple: I took part in a self-defense program that had much to do with trauma and which had no resources or properly trained facilitators available to manage its students—all of whom were women and all of whom had histories of mental shock. The program prided itself on what was considered a novel tactic: we would not only learn the moves that it would take to defend ourselves, but we would also actually enact the moves with full force on a human being.

The human being in question was a man who wore an enormous, padded outfit that protected him from our jabs and kicks. The headgear alone was like a giant Styrofoam balloon, except solid—so big that it seemed bizarre that he had the strength to hold up his head.

We students were a ragtag group of women from different walks of life. We were of assorted ethnicities, different ages, different backgrounds. We were all there because we had been violated in some way and thought that learning to kick some ass would help our terrified nervous systems. I am sorry to say that, at least for me, my terrified nervous system shorted out and sparked as a result. I am still dealing with the consequences.

What I find particularly strange about what this group was doing: a significant part required us to reenact either a trauma that we had actually experienced or a trauma that we were afraid would happen to us. We were to write down the trauma on a sheet of paper and appear the next day, armed with our self-defense moves, ready to face a bulky, padded man who would act out the part of the aggressor. One of the women chose to reenact an experience in which she was molested by a relative in her sleep. Another woman reenacted a violent mugging she’d experienced not long before coming to the program.

I chose to reenact the rape I’d experienced when I was seventeen. I’d been choked from behind outdoors, in the dark, and then sexually assaulted.

The day before the reenactments, I already felt something very wrong happening. The sounds were too loud. The lights were too bright. I felt like I would collapse, not from weakness but from sheer terror. One of the facilitators came to me and asked if I was okay. I was allowed to sit in the corner for a while, watching—but of course, I rejoined the group. Because why wouldn’t I rejoin the group? Wasn’t I supposed to be strengthening myself? Wasn’t I going to leave this experience with valuable muscle memory that would protect me in the instance of an actual assault?

And when it came time for me to reenact my trauma—I had watched almost all of the other women reenact theirs and come back to the waiting group triumphant—I stood in the middle of the room. I waited as the man in the protective suit came up behind me and wrapped his hands around my neck.

I don’t remember what happened after that. Apparently, I fought back well enough to earn myself what the program called a victory. The truth was that I’d blacked out as soon as his hands touched the soft skin of my throat.

There was more to the program, but I don’t know if it’s particularly important to recount. For example, we practiced at least five ways of protecting ourselves should we find an attacker on top of us in our sleep. We learned what to do if an attacker came up behind us and grabbed our ponytail if we had a ponytail. We kicked and kicked and kicked. We screamed No! so many times that the negation burned its way into our throats.

It doesn’t matter. What matters is that my family came to the graduation, where we showed off some of the moves we’d learned, and when I finally left, my body was wrecked. I’m not talking about how sore my arms and legs were or any injuries I’d sustained from all the fighting. I walked away from the program with my body trembling from adrenaline and fear.

I was diagnosed with C-PTSD/PTSD not long after that, and I haven’t been able to shake it in the nine years since. When I’m triggered, which can be the result of anything from a moment in a film to a smell that reminds me of something terrible, I have nightmares that leave me waking up screaming multiple times a night. Sometimes I wake up screaming every hour, on the hour, until it’s three or four in the morning, and I’ve decided I’ve had enough of sleep. I’ve jabbed C in the eye during one of those nightmares. I’ve punched him in my sleep.

I sleep in a different room because it’s safer this way. I’m triggered less if I have a bed to myself, although it doesn’t stop me from bouts of nightmares. My nightmares are elaborate and torturous; I’m set on fire a lot. I consider it a victory if I’ve made it a full night nightmare-free.

In hindsight, the program that I paid several hundred dollars for was well-meaning but irresponsible. There were no trauma-informed facilitators; there were no therapists. We were told to reenact the worst thing that had happened to us, and then we were loosed into the world, our nervous systems wrecked and ready to fight, flee, freeze, or fawn.

In actuality, I think of that program very little. The C-PTSD/PTSD diagnoses that I carry dominate my life; the program that I believe instigated them was a long time ago.

They gave us videos of our graduation fights on USB drives mailed to our homes. I lost mine—not on purpose, but just because I lose things.

I lose things.

I have nightmares.

I lost something.

(I lost something.)