You may wonder why I have included an article on prostitiution here. I come by my PTSD through other forms of sexual violence - rape and video voyeurism. This article alludes to prostitution as paid rape, a quote from a prostitute.
Anyway, while I was going through therapy for PTSD, my therapist told me that with the amount of trauma I had experienced in my life, I should be dead, working as a prostitute, or hopelessly addicted to narcotics or alcohol. I thought she was overstating the case, but in doing some group grief work, I presented a trauma timeline using only those events in my life that would qualify as precipitating events for PTSD. There are 14 of them, by the way, and when I finished, everyone sat there silently in shock. Then one of the people in the circle said to me, "You are a walking miracle. You should be dead of suicide by now." This guy had done years of work on a suidide hotline, so he knew of what he spoke.
So, I feel a kinship with prostitutes because I know that there but for the grace of God go I. It is in this spirit that I include this article. Please click the link and read the entire article. I'm adding another note following the article excerpt.
Link: Prostitution Is Sexual Violence.
Excerpt: "Exposure to paid or unpaid sexual violence may result in symptoms of PTSD. Most prostitution includes the traumatic stressors that are categorized as DSM-IV criterion A1 of the diagnosis of PTSD (American Psychiatric Association, 1994):
"Direct personal experience of an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury, or other threat to one's personal integrity; or witnessing an event that involves death, injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of another person.
"In response to these events, the person with PTSD experiences fear and powerlessness, oscillating between emotional numbing and emotional/physiologic hyperarousal. Posttraumatic stress disorder is known to be especially severe when the stressor is planned and implemented (as in war, rape, incest, battering, torture or prostitution)."
In my case, I had some of the symptoms of PTSD before the incident that precipitated the full-blown state. That incident involved video voyeurism, planned by my husband over a period of at least a month. I told him over and over again that it was far worse than the rape and stalking because it was done by someone I trusted. He never understood that. He kept saying, "If I were you, I'd be over it by now" even though he uploaded the videos on to the Net so they are "out there" forever. It shouldn't come as a surprise that he is now my EX husband, on probation for a felony conviction, and paying me restitution.
PTSD is known to be worse when it's caused by a planned act of a human being as compared to an "act of God" like a hurricane. How much worse it was for me when it was carried out by someone I trusted. How much worse even than that when you are the person who willingly turns yourself over to the perpetrator.
