Hello you all, My name's Gwen, I'm from France. I seek help for my girlfriend whose name is E, my question is how to help her recovering from a rape trauma syndrome while suffering from it myself ? You see, when I was twelve I got raped by a total stranger and since then I'm suffering of Rape Trauma syndrome, I still have a lot of panic attacks and I'm terrified by strangers, I also have an hard time feeling emotions... I see a psychologist and psychiatrist once a week and I pretty happy of it because I had a lot of shady times back when I was thirteen. But then I met E, we had a crush on each other and it went better for a time. Until a trip in Spain with my secondary school, she had a lot of hard times with the teachers and the headmaster and she finally own up to me that she has been raped by her father when she was younger. After that, she told me the whole story, that she was in foster family because of him and that she was also seeing a psychologist because she was raped multiple times. Now were in the same high-school and she's having a lot of panic attacks lately, she even manifest her issues by loosing her voice. But here is the point, she's at my place for the Christmas holidays and yesterday she had a huge panic attack, with flash backs and bad stuff of that kind, and since then she hasn't spoke a word to me and I don't know how to help her, I mean I'm her boyfriend and I feel powerless, seeing her like that is awful, I can't stand it and if someone could give me some advice other than "send her to her psychologist" or "talk to her" it would be great.
Thanks a lot in advance,
Gwen