Trauma is a Greek word for ‘wound’. A psychological trauma literally means a ‘wound on your soul’. That wound can occur when you have experienced a traumatising event. This could be a one-off event, a repetition or a lot of events, long or short. Sex against your will is always a distressing event that can lead to trauma.

Every situation in which sexual acts are carried out by force or coercion is called sexual violence. This can be forced by physical strength but also by emotional strength. Acts directed against a person's sexuality are also covered. The perpetrator could be a stranger or someone you know. Rape is a form of sex that is not voluntary and that perpetrators use to degrade people.

Sexual trauma can also cause ‘wounds in your body’. If you have physical symptoms caused by sexual violence, please contact your GP or a gynaecologist.

Everyone reacts differently to a traumatising event. It often turns your life upside down. You tend to have trouble sleeping, trouble concentrating, you may be irritable and have nightmares. In addition, you may suffer from depression and anxiety. And (working) relationships may deteriorate. This shows you how vulnerable you are and you may lose a sense of safety and control. The world no longer feels safe and predictable. After rape, women often feel unclean, it's as if they can't wash themselves enough. These are normal reactions to traumatising events. Usually, these stress reactions diminish after a few weeks. But if they don't, it's important to get help. You may have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Fight, flight and freeze are natural, automatic reactions to experiencing trauma. Your brain makes a very quick decision: flight, if possible, or fight, and if the other person is stronger there is only one other option, freeze. Freezing leads to paralysis of the muscles in some, and stiffness in others. Often people are unable to call for help when they freeze because their muscles - including the muscles around the vocal cords - are paralysed. When you experience sexual violence, you can feel alienated from your own body, as if you see yourself from the outside, as if the world around you is not real, as if in a dream, distant or distorted.

In the film below, Lindsay talks how she froze when she was raped. She talks about what that is like.

Dissociation is part of the paralysis reaction. You no longer feel anything, you don't even feel any pain. It also means that at that moment you feel you are no longer able to decide how to react. Dissociation

is also seen as the best way to survive, to stop feeling pain and fear. You ‘escape’ your consciousness, as it were. For example, you may no longer feel any physical pain. Thoughts, feelings, perceptions or memories can be detached from experience. Your experience is like having lost ‘time’, you no longer know exactly what happened or where you've been. As a result, you often can't remember everything properly, or you don't remember the sequence of events. The disconnected feelings and perceptions can come back later in the form of flashbacks. Dissociations are common in post-traumatic stress disorder.