CLINICAL psychologist Sapphire Longmore has cautioned victims of traumatic events against sharing their stories publicly without being fully healed, warning that divulging such sensitive information to be scrutinised by the public can be re-traumatising.
Drawing on years of experience working with trauma survivors, Dr Longmore, who is also a Government senator, stressed that sharing such experiences prematurely, particularly in the public domain or on talk shows, can have detrimental effects on the healing process.
“What happens is that if the video sometimes goes public with this type of information, [the survivors]] end up being more vulnerable because they are not in an environment that is suited for that kind of disclosure [and] they [will] now have to deal with the consequence,” Dr Longmore told the news.
“I underscore that some people deal with things in different ways, but whereas it might have been better to cope with it privately, once you go public you cannot get it back,” she said.
Citing instances from her practice, Dr Longmore said she has seen cases in which clients had repressed trauma related to rape, only to confront it while discussing other traumatic events.
Repressed memory occurs when trauma is too severe to be kept in conscious memory, and is removed by repression or dissociation, or both.
The concept of repressed trauma originated with Sigmund Freud who posited that repression is a defence mechanism in the face of traumatic experiences.
“In treating persons, sometimes you have them in a state where they’re manifesting effects of the rape, not even remembering that they were raped, and it’s when you’re trying to deal with another problem — it could be substance abuse or somebody who is an alcoholic — and it’s when you’re treating that problem and going into exploring and deeply immersing them in therapy around that, that this comes up,” she explained.