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My experience.

A drastic situation.

Before you start reading this, I want to emphasize something important. During and after the incident I am writing about, all workers received intensive counseling. If you notice that it has an(y) emotional or psychological impact on you, do not hesitate to call in expert help. A general practitioner is usually the first person to reach out to.
During my work at the Ruyterstee in Smilde, I experienced a very drastic situation. Together with my colleague I was working in the group when we were informed of a situation that had arisen in a closed ward. At first we received a message through the mail, but five minutes later our supervisor showed up at the group. In a seclusion room of the closed ward a girl had committed suicide.
It turned out that several clients knew that the girl was planning to do this. All the staff who were actually off had to come to work because we had to give the clients extra attention. In addition, there was the risk that when someone is having suicidal thoughts, it could be the last push to go on with it when they see that someone else also succeeds. It was indicated there was a chance of a snowball effect. After some time, the calm returned and, to my knowledge, nothing of the sort happened after this tragic event.
Some clients knew about it since the girl had written a farewell letter. In that letter, she indicated that she had been sexually abused by her father. Several times things had happened to her body that she absolutely did not want but which she could not stop. She became disgusted with her own body and it had to be destroyed. She actually didn’t want to die herself: she wanted to continue living, but only her body had to be destroyed. This, to me, was a bizarre reality.
In addition to this, there were other things going on for me that had something to do with this. It was not the first time I had to deal with sexual abuse through one of my clients. In that same period, I did a HBO (university of applied sciences) education where I chose to take an elective subject in which sexual abuse was a topic. It was in this class that I learned an important lesson.
When incest occurs (or has occurred) in a family, where for example the father is the perpetrator, there is a chance that the victim shows a lot of aggression and anger towards the mother of the family. I had never really understood this, but it turns out that in many cases the mother knows about the abuse and for whatever reason does not intervene. As a result, the victim feels tremendously abandoned and powerless.
Another situation was one that I had seen a documentary about the war in former Yugoslavia. In this documentary, a woman told me that she had been structurally humiliated and raped by soldiers. She could not, and will not, continue to live with those memories. So much pain, so many memories and images controlled her. She could not bear this and indicated that she was going to end her life.
This also touched me deeply and taught me not to judge too quickly. I find it difficult not to judge at all, for various reasons. Respecting another, whilst leaving them in their true value, is incredibly important.

A drastic situation.docx

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