A single smell
Part VIII of Less Than 2%: From Ep 3 — Beyond Trauma
These articles are based on the original podcast Less Than 2%, hosted by Jeevan Ravindran, Emma Guy, and Hera Hussain. Research, writing, and additional reporting by Aiman Javed. Edited by Sophie Brown.
You can listen to our podcast here. Read the rest of our series here.
Content warning: This article contains discussions of sexual assault, murder, and abuse. Overall, we have tried to avoid graphic and disturbing details.
It happens like this: You’re out shopping, in a mall maybe or at a train station. To kill time, you head into a store nearby. Fluorescent overhead lights and neat isles. And you remember you’re running out of your favourite perfume.
A salesperson comes up and says, “What can I help you with today?” You wave them off. You’d like to take your time and browse. Finally, you’re where most of the perfumes are. You think, “Maybe, I should look into some different brands. I’ve been using the same scent since uni.” You start testing, spraying each fragrance onto those little white strips. Waving it in the air before bringing it up to your nose.
Breathing in.
Breathing out.
And suddenly, there’s that one perfume with undertones of nutmeg and chamomile. You need to take yourself out of the store. Immediately. Later, you’ll talk about it in a weekly group you attend with other survivors of sexual abuse and assault. And they get it.
This one smell ruined your week.
Eyes wide shut
We’ve covered a lot of systemic issues in this series, but at the heart of survivors’ experiences lies their trauma. It’s important to understand this. Because every step of the way, it seems like the system does not. Like the system wilfully ignores how trauma works.
In Season 2 of the Netflix series, Sex Education, which focuses on the lives of high-school teenagers, there’s a subplot about survivors of abuse. Aimee, one of the characters, boards a public bus to go to school, and a man masturbates on her. In the next few episodes, she can’t get on the bus anymore. It’s too much. She starts walking all the way to school.
Later in Season 2, there’s a pivotal moment of reflection when several of the female characters are placed in detention, where they share their experiences of sexual harassment with Aimee. Stories of being groped on a train station, harassed for their clothing, flashed at in a swimming pool as a child, and followed home by a stranger. It impacts them in a myriad of ways: discomfort, fear, anger, and a desire to retaliate. There is no blueprint for the right reaction and the correct symptoms. Everyone experiences trauma differently and has their own triggers. But this doesn’t make any one kind of trauma or difficulties with healing less real than the other.
Chayn works a lot in this area so we see that many survivors experience ‘triggers’ in the form of sounds, sights, smells, or other events that remind them of their traumatic experience.
Jeevan Ravindran, a journalist and one of our podcast hosts, finds the smell of deodorant and changing rooms triggering. “I’d buried some of these memories and it was only during lockdown last year that they began to resurface and I was able to talk about them,” she said. For her, it goes beyond this to certain topics of discussion. “My memory will suddenly spiral and I’ll be taken back to what happened, and the way I was touched, where I was touched. And my skin will suddenly crawl and I’ll feel a shiver go down my spine.”
Our brain’s job is to keep us alive. So when we experience one or several traumatic incidents, our mind kicks into action to alert us to anything that looks like it might turn dangerous. Later, we feel many of the same responses that occurred during the original trauma. When these symptoms last a long time, it’s time to start thinking about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a term initially used by psychologists for the experiences of soldiers during war.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
PTSD is experienced by many survivors of sexual assault or violence. For some, it makes them feel like the past is the present, while for others it leaves huge impacts on cognitive processes like memory and attention. Another host of our podcast, Emma Guy, has completely disconnected from certain periods of her life. When her mum sent a picture on WhatsApp of a young girl, Guy asked her if she had meant to send it to her, because she didn’t recognise who it was. “I put my phone down, and 2 minutes later it pinged. The text said: ‘Em, that’s you’. She was right. It was.” Though her memories have been impacted, there are other things Guy does identify.
“I do know that I hate the texture of paper towels, the smell of oranges, and the colour pink,” she said.
PTSD feels different to different people. Psychologists divide trauma symptoms into three big categories: hypervigilance, avoidance, and re-living symptoms. We recognise the symptoms of hypervigilance more as a society, such as the war veteran who jumps at fireworks. But actually, trauma can also manifest as symptoms on the other end of the spectrum. Because on a physical level, PTSD can push the regulation of the body’s nervous system out of balance. The extreme pressure of constantly scanning for threats that comes with hypervigilance is exhausting for our systems. For some, the coping mechanism for this might look more like avoidance and dissociation.
A state of heightened distress doesn’t always manifest in the classic markers of stress, such as crying or speaking quickly or loudly. It can also lead to a ‘freeze’ response — a survivor could become very quiet, speak only in short utterances, or perhaps become very confused and disorientated. But silence isn’t solace, and someone who isn’t showing outward signs of distress might still be experiencing an intense post-traumatic reaction.
Hypervigilance: The feeling of constantly being on red alert
Symptoms:
- Being irritable and easily upset
- Feeling jumpy and easily startled
- Having problems concentrating
- Having problems staying and falling asleep
Avoidance: Withdrawing from regular activities and losing interest in life and people
Symptoms:
- Avoiding anything that reminds you of the trauma
- Physical numbness or feeling detached from your body
- Emotional numbness
- Excessive busy-ness, alcohol, or drugs to avoid difficult emotions and memories.
Re-living: Thinking about, acting, and feeling like the event is happening again and again
Symptoms:
- Intense distress at any reminders of the trauma
- Vivid flashbacks or intrusive thoughts and memories or nightmares.
- Physical sensations such as pain, sweating, nausea, or trembling
With PTSD, our physical, emotional, and behavioural systems go out of balance. Besides physical symptoms, there’s elements of emotional dysregulation in moods and feelings. For one survivor we spoke to, because the assault happened while she was asleep, her sleep was affected and she had “vivid nightmares.” Six years on, she still sleeps “badly.”
The emotional difficulties many survivors experience after trauma can also have an impact on our relationships, for example through the dysregulation of our boundary setting. We’ve already seen that PTSD can alter people’s perception of you as a credible witness to your own story. Many survivors build up walls to protect themselves from harm that may or may not be there. Two survivors told us that they find it difficult to trust people. For one, it’s specifically the men in her life, and she sometimes has to explain to them that it’s a trauma response. The other finds it difficult to make friends. In contrast, some find that their boundaries become less rigid — and they people-please or fawn at the risk of becoming codependent. Both are protective responses to stress, but they can be really difficult for a survivor trying to rebuild a sense of control in their life.
In the book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape, Sohaila Abdulali describes the manifestations of trauma for her. She writes:
“They don’t tell you that you might freeze in a job interview because the man asking you questions is wearing a tie just like the one your rapist wore. They don’t tell you that you may dread becoming pregnant because having a child is going to mean you have to pay some serious attention to your vagina, which is historically not a peaceful place,” she writes.
We caught up with Abdulali and from what she’s observed, manifestations of trauma can also work in completely different ways to what society expects.
“We hear a lot about people repeating the pattern,” she said. “But often people don’t repeat the pattern. And what happens is that they use their background as a way to figure out how not to behave.”
Complex-PTSD
Trauma can go beyond this to complex-PTSD as well, including in situations where trauma does not present itself as an isolated, one-time-only incident, such as in domestic abuse, child abuse, human trafficking, neglect, or prolonged sexual abuse. This often involves authoritarian control over a prolonged period of time, as in months or years. Crucially, these are situations that are difficult or impossible to escape. So C-PTSD can develop as a reaction to this kind of ongoing, inescapable trauma from a person or people. Survivors of abuse under this umbrella can develop changes in their personality and sense of identity, have difficulties forming new relationships and trusting others, as well as deep emotional difficulties like shame, guilt, and low self-esteem. Those with C-PTSD often report feeling worthless, and as though the trauma happened to them because there is something fundamentally wrong with them.
While triggers are incredibly important in our understanding of trauma, it’s not always as simple as one sight, smell, or sound being linked to the trauma in a straightforward way. Not every survivor has a neat list of triggers that link back to a single instance of trauma. In a lot of ways, this is especially true for those with C-PTSD.
For example, a survivor who experienced continual sexual abuse from their step-father was forcibly kept in a situation of abuse by someone in control of that environment. As a result, it’s not hard to see how their post-traumatic reaction could be having difficulties trusting people, and feeling extreme discomfort or distress in any situation where someone has power over them. With C-PTSD, relationships themselves can be difficult to navigate, if a relationship was the site of the original ongoing trauma.
Missing puzzle pieces
Survivors’ needs can vary drastically. This increases the importance of having an entire network of organisations, professionals, and individuals helping out. From that best friend they vent to, to a therapist who uses the right language to frame their experiences, to emergency services that make sure they’re doing okay during a panic attack. Or even a survivors’ group where they talk about their everyday life. Each of those pieces in the puzzle has a role to play. What happens when even one is missing?
Well, it depends on the person.
Individual experiences are further shaped by our identity because rape culture and the resulting trauma impacts us all in very different ways. We all come from different places in life, so the support systems in place also need to be multifaceted and receptive to change. At Chayn, we often come across situations where actually this is not the case.
Chayn’s founder Hera Hussain shared a case with us from a few years ago. A Chayn volunteer contacted her on Facebook. She was in the hospital and there was a girl in the bed next to her who was crying. They started talking. The girl, let’s call her Rabia, was born to South Asian parents and had suffered anxiety for a long time. The anxiety became particularly difficult after her younger brother was diagnosed with life-threatening cancer. She was also bullied at school and, like any brown 16-year-old in the UK, was extremely conscious of her race. Rabia would sometimes suffer blackouts from stress. One day that week, someone bullied her using racist and sexist language, and she blacked out. But this time it was more intense than it had ever been. She fell down and hurt herself. When she regained consciousness, the head teacher was calling the police because she felt the repeated blackouts could point to problems at home. She pleaded with them not to do that.
The police came and questioned Rabia about her relationship with her parents. She had been arguing with them. They were conservative, and she was at the cusp of gaining independence and exploring her sexuality. There were the usual arguments about what clothes and makeup she could wear, and not to hang out with boys or stay out late. Rabia told them that the police kept asking about this, and also asking if her father had ever hit her. That week, he had slapped her. She told them it wasn’t a big deal, and in her culture, it’s common to discipline kids like that, even though she didn’t agree with it. But her disclosure triggered a series of events which devastated her life. The police questioned and arrested her father. He was thrown in jail for a few days. The sole earner for the family, he lost his job so they could not afford care for her brother. Rabia learned this while she was in the hospital. She was extremely distraught, crying for hours and hours. A caseworker from social services visited her and told her she would be placed in an accommodation for young children at-risk because her home wasn’t safe.
She pleaded to be sent home, but the caseworker told her, “I have specialised in South Asian cultures. I know honour-based crime. I am an expert, and you are not safe.”
On her first night at the hostel for at-risk youth, Rabia was drugged and sexually assaulted. This badly impacted her mental health. She felt suicidal and self-harmed. She couldn’t tell her family about this because they blamed her for bringing all this pain on them. “I met her on a shopping trip for a duvet and pillows when she was being placed in her next accommodation,” said Hera. “We talked about how different all of this would be had the social worker, a white woman, listened to her. A few weeks later, her number disconnected. She never contacted me again, and I haven’t been able to locate her.”
Acknowledgment and acceptance
Over the course of their journeys, survivors meet many who don’t understand them, who use rape myths to discredit them, who discriminate against them and victimise them. But survivors also tell us about the kind and supportive people in their lives — often this is where the charity sector comes up. For some, it can take years to reach out to the sector for support. Many don’t understand that they are experiencing coercive control or sexual assault.
It’s one of the reasons why Hera started Chayn in 2013. She’d been helping two friends close to her get out of abusive marriages, and both of them could not recognise the sexual abuse they faced in their marriage because people rarely talk about marital rape, especially in Pakistan. Most of Hera’s early work at Chayn was to help people identify the signs of abuse. And that included rape and the changes they felt in their minds and bodies due to the trauma.
The path to finding the language to express that what happened doesn’t feel right, and knowing there are people who can help you, isn’t always that obvious. Sometimes it’s a friend, colleague, police officer, social worker, or an internet search that can lead you to one organisation, that can lead you to others.
Jayne Butler, the CEO of Rape Crisis England and Wales, who we heard from earlier in our series, had some observations on how survivors come to the realisation they’ve experienced sexual assault. Discussions with others could help the survivor identify their rape, because many survivors think, “Well, he’s my boyfriend, and I didn’t shout and scream, I didn’t hit him.” When, of course, there are many different reactions a person might have.
“Recognising and helping survivors to understand what that consent really means, and that they don’t have to apologise or blame themselves for things that happened, that all of that responsibility lies with the perpetrator and not on their behaviours is really important,” she said.
In 2021, writer and survivor advocate Rachel Thompson, the author of Rough: How violence has found its way into the bedroom and what we can do about it, wrote about “unacknowledged rape” for The Guardian. When Thompson was 19 and at university, she was assaulted. She describes the morning after in the Guardian piece:
“I said a cheery: “Good morning,” to my university roommate, as if nothing was wrong. “How was last night?” she asked. “So fun,” I lied. The truth was that the night before I had feared for my life.
I didn’t articulate it, but deep down I knew that what had happened had felt violating, degrading and not what I signed up for. Yet it took me a whole decade to realise what had really happened: I had been sexually assaulted.”
Afterwards, she put that night away in a box and decided never to think about it. But during the #MeToo conversations, Thompson felt fascinated by the subject of “grey areas”.
“I recognised my own experiences in that sort of murkiness,” she said. This could look like someone saying, “I wasn’t raped but …” or “I’m not sure what happened” or “It was a bad sexual experience” or “a grey area” or “a weird night.”
Thompson used to think “Well, I haven’t experienced anything that bad” or “serious.” She explained it away as “pretty terrible sex”, “horrendous boundary violations”, and men reacting poorly to rejection. Through therapy, Thompson began to identify the sexual violence.
“I realised that grey areas aren’t actually so grey,” she said. “My 20's could have been a lot nicer,” she said, “Do I really need to go through trauma to actually figure out how I deserve to be treated?”
She feels she was done a “disservice” by an education system that fails to explain consent. “I actually wanted to see this guy again,” she said. “And I don’t want to blame myself. And I won’t blame myself. But I would love to just travel back in time, just hover above myself, as I lay in my little single bed in the halls of residence. And just be like, ‘No! No!’”
While researching for her book, Thompson realised two things: many survivors either don’t recognise the assault for what it is or come to terms with it years later, and many rely on the legal definitions of different kinds of sexual violence. “They think that the law maybe is the only barometer of what is right,” she said. Of course, that couldn’t be further from the truth considering legislation is simply not comprehensive enough when it comes to gender-based violence. But those experiences of violation are still very real, valid, and serious.
We see this doubt regularly at Chayn, and Butler also mentioned it. Some feelings survivors first experience after rape might be of “betrayal,” Butler said. “It’s a difficult experience, isn’t it, to be let down by anyone? But to be treated in that way, to be sexually assaulted by somebody that you know, is incredibly difficult.”
Slowly, there is a realisation along with the trauma and pain. And that’s when people around the survivor should “be really, really understanding and supportive about the decisions that they make, that are in their best interest and put that at the heart of it always, what they want to do, what matters to them,” she said.
Often it’s someone outside of their immediate circles who helps people get to a place of understanding and begin the process of healing. It’s where voluntary organisations can step in. And there are different kinds of support available: housing, legal aid, immigration, mental health, and so much more. This ongoing work of care and support can take place over several years.
Because guess what? Healing is a non-linear, life-long and often painful process. And getting the right help, isn’t always easy. Or even possible.
In Part IX, we’ll explore how charities are helping survivors … and how they are not. You can listen to our podcast here.
The Less than 2% project is based on facts and real events. However, some names have been changed for legal reasons, including privacy. These articles are accompanying pieces to our podcast. Much of the original wording remains, with additional reporting and research included. We’ve given each story more room to breathe, as well as options for our listeners to interact with the material in different ways.
Our research is based on interviews with survivors, Chayn’s experience supporting survivors since 2013, news sources as well as reports from government institutions and other organisations, which have been clearly linked to and cited in our pieces for transparency.
