A year after I was raped at 18, I sank down on the sidewalk, unable to keep going. I closed my eyes and didn’t get up until a friend found me and helped me into bed, where I didn’t speak or open my eyes for hours. I felt like I was trapped in time, unable to access relief until after the day had passed.
A reaction like that, I would later learn, is common among survivors of sexual assault on their trauma anniversary—including those who no longer have an active PTSD diagnosis. Sara Schmidt, a clinical psychologist and expert in dialectical behavior therapy, says that on trauma anniversaries, her clients tend to “start isolating themselves more, and sometimes they don’t even realize they’re doing it.”
After 15 years of working through my own trauma, I wrote a book, Tell Me What You Like: An Honest Discussion of Sex and Intimacy After Sexual Assault, to help others do the same. Through personal healing and research into how to better cope with trauma’s fallout, I’ve learned a lot about how to navigate trauma anniversaries. Here, a little of what I’ve gathered:
What is a trauma anniversary?
Trauma anniversaries mark the day a person’s traumatic experience occurred. Not all people experience them the same way, but licensed professional counselor Kim Rippy explains that the powerful response a trauma anniversary can trigger comes from the brain’s mechanisms for survival. Our minds pick out “data points present in the initial trauma” and “encode them as red flags for future experiences,” Rippy says. Our brains and bodies tend to remember dates—as well as smells, sounds, and visual cues—linked to a traumatic event in an attempt to protect us from future harm.
For those whose trauma took the form of compounded, constant oppression, its aftermath will look a bit different. “In marginalized groups, sometimes the trauma that they experience is more related to chronic invalidation,” observes Vibh Forsythe Cox, PhD, director of the Marsha M. Linehan Dialectical Behavior Therapy Training clinic. Though these folks can also experience trauma anniversaries, other triggers (or even just other dates, such as Mother’s Day or Christmas) may affect them more deeply.
What to do on the day
Dr. Cox points out that no matter what time of year it is, you can start preparing for a trauma anniversary by connecting with a new therapist. If you already have a therapist, you can plan for additional sessions around the day.
Otherwise, seeing loved ones can help us manage trauma anniversaries; or, if you don’t have a strong social network nearby, Matthew Robinson, PhD, program director of the Trauma Continuum Program at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, suggests taking advantage of Zoom, FaceTime, or even texting. “It’s helpful to be able to talk about things openly and honestly with someone who’s going to get it,” he says, even if that person can’t be there in person.