Is Your Trauma Response a Cop Out — or Is He Avoiding Accountability?

If you’ve been triggered…there’s a reason

We were in a hotel room. He was just a friend, not a lover. We had a very open relationship in which we spoke honestly about our sexual experiences, identity, and expression. That was an important part of our friendship, though it was not sexual.

I was not attracted to him. I was not in love with him.

Things began to get physical in that hotel room. I’d thought we’d had an understanding. I was surprised.

I immediately went into my usual trauma response: freeze. I clamped my lips together, tightly. I didn’t want what was happening. I did not want it.

I could barely move or bring myself to object. My body was tight, clenched, implacable. I wanted to yell “NO!” I wanted to put as much space between our bodies as possible. I wanted to run from that room.

But I could not move.

Days later, after he had returned home, I finally found my voice. I asked if we could talk about it. I didn’t understand what had happened.

He consented to a conversation, but admitted that he was shocked that I hadn’t wanted him to touch me that way. He was shocked that I hadn’t had an “honest conversation” with him about it at the time.

I reminded him that I have a lot of sexual trauma in my history and that when those memories are triggered, specifically by an incident that closely resembles the traumatic experiences, I freeze. I am incapable of moving myself to a safer location. I’m incapable of saying the simplest monosyllabic word.

According to my therapist, this is a very common trauma response, especially for female victims of sexual assault. Fawning is another one — after all, we learned that our physical safety would be threatened if we didn’t try to placate our attackers.

“How was I supposed to know you didn’t want that?” my so-called friend asked me, a tone of defensiveness in his voice.

I asked if he’d noticed how stiff my body had gone. I asked if he’d noticed that I hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d leaned in to kiss me. I asked if he’d noticed that I did not kiss him back and that my lips were clamped tightly together.

I also wanted to ask why a married man in a monogamous relationship had kissed me in the first place. But I didn’t.

“I feel like that’s a cop out,” he said. “You got triggered and had some so-called trauma response that led me to believe that you wanted it, and now you’re telling me you didn’t because you supposedly couldn’t speak up for yourself at the time?”

Again, I wanted to remind him that my body had made my feelings clear. Even people completely lacking any sense of awareness know when the person they are kissing is not returning the kiss. You don’t have to be even the slightest bit observant to notice a person’s lips clamping together to prevent your tongue from entering their mouth. This is not at all an ambiguous set of circumstances.

Nevertheless, I found myself feeling a wave of shame wash over me, just as I suspected he’d intended. I couldn’t stop questioning myself, wondering if I’d done something wrong.

I wish I could say this is the only time something like this has happened to me. Sadly, I’ve experienced situations like this more often than I can count. Uninvited sexual attention and unwanted physical contact has been the norm for me in my encounters with men. There’s a reason I have sexual trauma.

What’s worse, perhaps, is that most of my attempts to sort out these situations has ended in the same way: with the man in question calling me out for having a trauma response.

And worse, with me buying into their narrative.

But here’s something I’ve discovered after years of therapy: When someone is triggered into a trauma response, it’s usually because someone is doing something triggering.

Yes, please, by all means, read that again, especially if you are a woman who has had this same experience and need a little validation.

When someone we trust is coercing us into doing something we’ve already discussed not wanting to do or something that feels far outside previously established boundaries, then you’re goddamn right we end up triggered and having a trauma response.

This is not a manipulation, a manufactured, retroactive objection to make sure we preserve our “ladylike” reputations, nor a symptom of mental illness. This is a logical response to danger — a danger that we have already experienced at least once, and therefore, we goddamn well know what it looks like, tastes like, and smells like.

This isn’t “emotional baggage” that we refuse to let go of because of “hardships in our past.” No, this is the effect of having been preyed upon and having a working nervous system that is now trying to save us from a similar circumstance.

Today, when I think of that conversation, it makes me as sick as I felt when my so-called friend was trying to push his tongue between my impervious lips. I wasn’t copping out of anything. I wasn’t being dishonest or manipulative.

I was being gaslit by someone who knew that if he took responsibility for what he’d done, he’d likely see his marriage disintegrate. So he chose the cop out, by reframing my trauma response as evidence of dishonesty, cowardice, and manipulation.

Sadly, this is a tactic employed in many different types of situations — not just when a man charges right past consent and decides to grab (literally) for what he wants no matter the cost.

And it’s important to note that men aren’t the only ones using this tactic, either. Don’t forget, men experience trauma responses, too.

Friends, family members, and even coworkers might pull this on you when you circle back to discuss a violation of your boundaries.

But here’s something to remember: Being triggered doesn’t mean you aren’t doing your inner work, aren’t learning to regulate your own nervous system, or are so craftily trying to manipulate someone that you didn’t even notice your own treachery.

We feel triggered into trauma responses when we are faced with a familiar danger — a danger that has threatened us in the past. Our nervous systems are smart. The trauma response (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn) is designed to protect us.

If we are feeling triggered, there is a reason. Don’t ever let anyone talk you out of that.

The fact of the matter is, we all have trauma in our history, which means we all get triggered and we all experience trauma responses. Anyone who talks at you and tries to invalidate your emotional and physical response to their words or actions is likely someone who doesn’t want to take responsibility for violating a boundary.

Don’t bother trying to argue them into recognizing the legitimacy of your feelings. It’s a losing battle. I feel quite certain that people who are trying to force their tongue into the mouth of someone who has clamped her lips together — or whatever else they did that triggered a trauma response — know damn well what is going on and have no intention of being accountable.

Dare to trust in yourself again. A trauma response is always real and valid. It might not be necessary in your current set of circumstances, but it was born from the intelligence of your highly developed nervous system.

Believe in that wisdom above any of the shame someone might try to hand you. Clearly, they have their own problems to deal with.

And in the meantime, we’ll continue heeding the information we get from our trauma responses, and perhaps one day, we’ll learn to spot people like this and walk in the other direction long before we end up alone in a room with them discovering we couldn’t trust them, after all…

© Yael Wolfe 2023

Yael Wolfe is a writer, photographer, and creator of Howl. You can find more of her work at yaelwolfe.com.

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