Violent crime: learning to recover
One night Claire and her husband Ralph woke to find an intruder in their bedroom. When Claire screamed, the stranger threw a knife at them. It whizzed past Claire's head, so close it almost touched her ear, and embedded in the wall behind her. The stranger fled and Claire, numb with shock, sat up in bed, staring at the quivering knife.
In the days following the attack, Claire felt her personality change. Normally a calm, reasonable person, she became restless and angry. She would shout at her husband if he was late home. Work became her focus: she brought bags of files home and stayed up late poring over them. She refused to stay in the flat alone and would constantly check if all the windows and doors were locked. Talking to people became difficult and she wouldn't discuss the incident at all. Even giving a statement to the police was hard.
The psychologist's view
According to Alex Hossack, a consultant clinical psychologist in Liverpool, Claire's behaviour, frightening to her and worrying to her husband and friends, was entirely typical of someone who has been a victim of a crime.
'Anger, fear, withdrawal - these are normal responses to an abnormal situation,' he says, 'But for most people, these experiences are so unusual and disorientating they can feel as if they're going mad.'
1. The initial phase
Initially, crime victims go into shock and denial. Alex Hossack explains, 'I often hear phrases like "This can't be happening to me" or "I don't believe it". They simply don't have a frame of reference for the fact that, for example, their daughter has been run over or their husband beaten up, so they deny it. They try to block out the pain with drink, drugs or hyperactivity. Alternatively, they become completely withdrawn.'
2. The intrusive phase
When the realisation that it really did happen sets in, victims can find themselves moving between a number of different and equally distressing states.
'There's the intrusive phase where the person experiences flashbacks, as many as 200 a day,' says Hossack. 'They replay the event like a movie in their head. Most people think flashbacks are visible but they can also be auditory and felt in the body. One of my clients was raped. When she has a flashback, she feels it happening and she hears the voices of the men as they abuse her.
'Trauma memory isn't like normal memory. The memory of your last day at school is probably fuzzy, not clear, without sound. Trauma memories are sharp, colourful, loud and completely overwhelming. In therapy, we aim to turn those vivid, bright, fearful trauma memories into something vaguer and less disturbing, a nasty memory but a normal one.
'Victims analyse the event over and over again, trying to make sense of it. They say things like "If only I hadn't walked home that way, I wouldn't have been attacked". It's all part of trying to understand why. The problem is they end up owning the crime, blaming themselves and feeling guilty.'
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