After suffering sexual assault, these girls used self-defense training to get out of nightmares

In 1978, 18-year-old Celine Sabag traveled to Israel. There, she met a 25-year-old bus driver and spent three weeks with him on a trip to Jerusalem. "He is very nice and very polite," she recalls. When the man invited her to the apartment where his parents were empty, she did not refuse. In the beginning, things were still moving in a good direction. They sat together and happily spent about an hour. But the door is now open. Four young people stood at the door, they walked into the living room, and the fourth person locked the door.

Sabag returned to the hotel that evening and soon fled back to her home in France. She was full of guilt and shame, but she couldn't tell anyone that five men had raped her in the apartment that night. Shortly after returning to China, she desperately sought suicide many times, but she did not die. She then received treatment from a psychiatrist and a counselor, started taking psychotropic substances, and tried other therapies such as exercise therapy. Some of them were effective, but they could not completely eliminate her psychological shadow.

The scene of that night continued to wreak havoc in her brain, ruthlessly tormenting her, so that she would encounter extreme fear in the corridors and elevators in the elevators, and showed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Other symptoms.

18 years later, in 1996, Sab, a Jew, immigrated to Israel, hoping to reconcile his experience in some way. She volunteered on the hotline of victims of sexual assault. “I want the victim to have someone who is willing to listen,” she said. “Because I didn’t ask for help, no one ever listened to me.”

However, Sabag's condition has not improved, she still has suicidal tendencies, until 2006, a friend suggested that Sabaga participate in a special self-defense course. The course was established in 2003 by an Israeli organization called El HaLev, which specializes in serving some women who have suffered trauma after sexual assault and other vulnerable groups. At first, Sabagh expressed doubts about this.

"No, why am I going to fight?"

- Battle = Get Strength ·-
A growing body of research has shown that self-defense training allows women to gain a sense of control and self-control over their own safety, thus enabling them to cope with the threat of sexual violence. However, in this area, some studies have explored another unique and urgent question: whether self-defense training can be used as a treatment to become an effective tool for victims of sexual assault and help them overcome psychological symptoms such as post-traumatic stress disorder. ? Although research in this area is still in its infancy, some therapists and researchers believe that the answer is yes.

Gianine Rosenblum, a clinical psychologist from New Jersey, said: "Although conversation-based counseling can have some effect, we need more treatments." Researchers who invade self-defense It is pointed out that self-defense training has similarities with exposure therapy. Exposure therapy refers to exposing individuals to things they fear and want to escape in a safe environment.

However, in self-defense training, participants not only have to face simulated attacks, but also learn and practice active responses, including but not limited to various self-defense tricks. Jim Hopper, a psychologist and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, explains that over time, these repetitive simulations can transform old, attacked memories into new ones. Memory with Empowerment.

Although Sabage was not familiar with these theories, she eventually decided to participate in self-defense training. Perhaps, she thought, this would help her reduce her fear of others.

The initial training was not going well for her. When she confronted a "robber" who was pretending to be a staff member, she was lost and the whole person was completely dead. In her words, her mind left the body and the body refused to cooperate. She described it as if she had experienced a nightmare.

Rosenblum said that this "separation" is a response to stress that allows some people to react normally when faced with stress. However, she added, “If you want to be psychiatric or in a learning environment, then it’s best to promote a non-segregating response – the body and mind should be one.”

In a 2014 paper describing the courses they developed, Rosenblum and her co-author and clinical psychologist Lynn Taska emphasized that the implementation of such a course must be cautious. Make sure that students stay within what they call the “window of tolerance”: the degree of emotional arousal that must be within the reach of one person. They wrote: "If the external stimulus is too strong, or evokes a reaction that is too strong in the heart of the other person, then it will go beyond what they tolerate." In this case, the treatment effect will be lost and the patient may be traumatized again. .

In El HaLev’s self-defense course, a woman is training

The same is true. Sabag often has difficulty falling asleep at night after the training, but she insisted on taking the course and even participated in the second time. Although she still experienced memories and separation, the nausea and trembling disappeared in the second course of treatment, and she felt her body became more and more real. Sabag explained that these changes allowed her to concentrate and hone her movements.

She played a video of 2006 for us. In the video, she lay on the floor of the training room, and about a dozen women gathered around to encourage her. A tall man wearing a sponge protector and a helmet, dressed as a "gangster", strode forward to her and threw herself on her. The cheers of the women next to him did not stop, encouraging Sabagh to kick him; a female trainer came over and directed to Sabag. Sabager played a few times, but he was not heavy, but he was kicked in the "gangster." Then she swayed and got back to the training team next to her.

- Self-defense training gives them self-encouragement: I can do -

In the early 1990s, researchers began to study the psychological impact of empowerment and self-defense courses. A number of studies found that women who participated in the course were more confident in their ability to defend themselves in the event of an attack. This self-efficacy is in turn related to a series of positive outcomes.

In 1990, Stanford University researchers Elizabeth M. Ozer and Albert Bandura published a research paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which described the paper. A training program based on “simulative murder” involving 43 female volunteers. Among them, 27% of the participants were raped. Before the project started, these individuals were weaker in responding to interpersonal threats (such as coercive behavior at work), and they felt that they were easily targeted. But often take a tough attitude. In addition, they almost lost the ability to distinguish between safe and dangerous situations, and reported that their thoughts of sexual assault in their minds were very strong and lingering.

During self-defense training, participants learned how to increase confidence, how to respond decisively to personal injury and how to scare off attackers. The author of the paper wrote: “Even if these efforts don’t work, these participants are trained to “arm themselves to protect their bodies.”” In the training course, participants will learn how to respond to the attackers’ unarmed ambushes. , disabled them. The author writes that because women are thrown to the ground in most attacks, “a lot of energy is concentrated, so that the trainees have a safe fall and how to attack the attackers after falling to the ground. Many methods are on the ground. Carried on."

A woman is fighting against a pretending "robber"

The paper was surveyed separately for each participant before, during and after the implementation of the plan. To determine the non-therapeutic effect, approximately half of the participants participated in the “control phase”, in which they waited for five weeks, but did not train, but did the same. Subsequently, they conducted the last survey before the start of the training program. The researchers did not find any significant changes in the participants during the “control phase”.

For trainees, after training, they have improved in many aspects including self-defense and controlling interpersonal threats. Most notably, in the months following the training, there was no longer a difference between raped women and women who were not raped, that is, raped women regained confidence after training.

In 2006, a study was conducted by researchers from the University of Washington in Washington and the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System, which provides medical services to veterans and their families throughout the Pacific Northwest. The study was conducted by a group of female veterans with PTSD due to military trauma. Since all participants have been trained in physical and military fighting techniques, the study can test the view that specialized self-defense courses are more effective than military or martial arts training.

Participants participated in a 12-week pilot program that included education on the psychological impact of sexual assault, self-defense training, and regular reporting. By the end of the study, participants reported improvements in many measures, including the ability to identify dangerous situations and set interpersonal boundaries. They have also experienced depression and PTSD symptoms.

However, due to the small scale of the study and the lack of a control group, the authors pointed out that further confirmation of the relevant results requires investigation in a wider population. This is in line with the views of many advocates of self-defense training. They also believe that the field is infinite, but more research is needed. Hopper explained that the recovery of these participants may be largely due to a process called “elimination of learning”. Because, in the self-defense course, when the robbers stimulate the memory of the participants, “elimination of learning” occurs – the old memories are replaced by non-invasive reactions in the new environment.

- Can self-defense courses be used as a cure? -

However, regardless of the potential value of self-defense training, it is far from universally accepted as a treatment, and not all mental health service providers support it. Rosenblum said: "My therapist colleagues are wary of self-defense. "They often worry that the course will hurt the client again. A few years ago, she tried to run a self-defense course specifically for psychotherapists, but the class was not able to make it because of the insufficient number. Therefore, Rosenblum believes it is necessary to emphasize that specially designed courses do not push students beyond what they can tolerate, and actually encourage students to set boundaries.

But the lack of standardization is indeed problematic. “Self-defense was a grassroots movement at the beginning, although it is becoming an industry,” said Melissa Soalt, a former therapist and pioneer of the women’s self-defense movement. She said: "Today, I heard that some teacher training courses only take a week, and they have no clinical experience or relevant knowledge." Therefore, Rosenblum and others are currently standardizing self-defense training and drafting a series of common ones. protocol.

A woman is fighting against a pretending "robber"

"In addition, self-defense is not easy, and it is not always effective. People who don't think so are bragging." Soot said, "And safety is first."

In fact, the now-defunct National Coalition Against Sexual Assault (NCASA) had previously developed guidelines for choosing a self-defense course. These guidelines emphasize that “...people do not ask or invite themselves to be attacked and should not be attacked.” Therefore, self-defense classes should not judge survivors. In addition, during the attack, the victim will react in a series, and many people even experience an unconscious paralysis state. According to the guidelines, these reactions should not be used to blame the victims. On the contrary, “the decision of one to survive in the best way must be respected.”

The guidelines state that, ideally, in addition to physical technology, the curriculum should include self-confidence, communication, and critical thinking. While some women may benefit from female teachers, “the most important thing is that both men and women, teachers must provide training based on their individual strengths and abilities.”

- Self-defense training saved her, she will save more people -

Although there are many problems, there is no doubt that the self-defense training program saved Sabagh. Sabag is currently 60 years old. She is now an elderly fitness instructor and also helps immigrants to Israel. In addition, she is a devout yoga practitioner and has a strong interest in Eastern philosophy.

She said that as time went on, she gradually re-established contact with her body and let her body and mind reach a settlement. She also walked out of the shadow of that nightmare and chose to be a beacon to illuminate the victims who had struggled with the shadows like her. According to Sabager, she trained more than 100 women and girls to defend themselves. She said: "In the future, or in my dreams, I want to go back and teach girls how to set boundaries and show confidence. I believe this is the beginning of everything."