Author: Rameen Saeed
Sexual
harassment, also known as unwelcomed or unsolicited touch, which could be
physical, verbal, nonverbal and visual. Sexually harassed people firstly
experience the bitter reality. The unexpected things make them shocked, hurt and they exposed with the cruelty of a perpetrator. Sexual harassment refers to
sexual conduct that is unsolicited coercive, unwelcome or unwanted, or
threatening sexual attention, often in a non-reciprocal relationship.
The Victim of harassment becomes anxious when they see the resembling face,
which has hurt their soul. They manifest fear for being in a relationship. They
avoid people in severe cases because their thinking pattern disturbed and exploited.
This case study will expose how sexual harassment affects person well-being and
how it damages individual perception.
Case
Study
A
girl 18-20 years of age was sexually harassed by her relative. She experienced
the bitter truth by identifying the ugly face of his uncle. She was shocked and
disappointed after that incident. Her uncle blackmailed her for not telling the
truth to anyone, especially her parents. She was in great fear, and developed
the feeling of mistrust. Her psychological and mental wellbeing was fully
disturbed by that incident. She developed a negative thinking pattern about the
opposite gender. Her mental health was disturbed, as she reported low
self-esteem, low confidence, poor self-image, emotional and psychological
distress and mistrust. She experienced the depressive phase for a long period.
She became restless and lost interest in every pleasurable activity.
Her life was disturbed; sexual harassment
affects her social, educational and personal life. The girl developed the fear
of harassment; she avoids social contacts and social gatherings. Her avoidant
behaviour leads her to loneliness and depression. Educational life was also
disturbed. She pays less attention to her studies. Her grades and her class
performance deteriorate to a great extent. She stopped making friends anymore.
Her personal life was exploited; she discontinued to trusts anyone and
developed avoidance and escaping attitude for any relationship. Her perception
of a relationship is exploited by the sexual harassment incident. She becomes
hesitated to take a step or engage in the relationship. Her life was disturbed
by this incident. She consulted a counsellor for taking sessions to overcome
her stress and fear.
Victims
often experience anxiety, and they feel burdened because they never share their
feelings with anyone, especially girls. Sharing or catharsis allows the person
to reduce anxiety, and a person becomes less burdened, while victims never
share their feelings with anyone, and they become exhausted. After taking
enough sessions, the girl took the initiative to share her negative feelings
for being harassed, which found to help reduce stress and anxiety. Furthermore,
she developed insight to resolve her automatic negative thoughts.
The
psychological well-being of the victim gets disturbed — their perception of
seeing the world become distorted. Their fantasy becomes a nightmare for them,
which led them to mistrust. Victims never easily open up to anyone because they
think people will blame them. Self-reported psychological outcomes include
anger, fear, anxiety, irritability, decreased self-esteem, a dread of work, and
feelings of humiliation and vulnerability (Gruber & Bjorn, 1986; Gutek,
1985). These thoughts make them depress; they never easily trust anyone. They
even mistrust their loved one or close blood relations. Victims never feel
comfortable to talk to the opposite gender.
Less social contacts become the reason for
their low self-esteem. If they see the person who harassed them, their physical
condition becomes change, low blood pressure, trembling in legs and arms,
heartbeat increases, difficulty in breathing these physical changes are
experienced.
In
most cases, it leads to avoiding social contacts because of their feelings of
mistrust. Victims have a fear of being confronted in a similar situation. They
develop different fears that damage their personality. They never grow up and
stuck in one state, that damages their mental processing. It has some time
long-lasting effects. A person becomes anti-social when they experience
harassment and never take action about it. The victim girl reported herself
socially isolated and felt loneliness most of the time.
In
some cases, sexual harassment victims experience PTSD. They experience negative
after-effects of harassment (Dansky and Kilpatrick 1997). The girl in the
current case study avoids similar places in which she has been harassed and
avoid meeting people, which indicated the symptoms of PTSD.
Sexually
harassed individuals, especially girls, restrict themselves to gain opportunity
in their lives.
Sexually
harassed individuals become introverted; they never talk about their feelings
and share their thoughts with anyone. If they are harassed by their people,
they become frustrated. They never talk about it with their parents because
they think parents will never believe in them or trust them. They even get
blackmailed by the individual who harassed them. They demand victims to get
engage in sexual behaviours; all these behaviours lead them to anger and
aggressive behaviours. The girl found to the introvert, but she only reported
the signs of internal aggression instead of external aggression,
Sexual
assault in adulthood can have an immediate and direct negative impact, such as
injury, physical trauma or death. Some individuals have low mental stamina;
they never take negative incidents easily. Victims who have low mental strength
overthink about the incident. Overthinking affect their power of decision
making; they never take a good decision. Sometimes they try to get rid of the
negative impact of harassment by suicide (WHO),2010.
Sexual
harassment negatively impacts the relationship with the partner. Victims never
become comfortable with their partner because they experience negative or
unwelcomed touch. Victims have a fear of intimacy that destroys their
relationships. They never trust easily and take a further step in their
relationships. They got stuck and confused about their relationship.
Individuals
face sexual harassment in every place it never happens in a specific
environment. Harassment has many forms it may be verbal or non-verbal,
physical, psychological, sexual, and many others, harassment damages the
personality of individual and have short or long-time impacts. Most victims
never take any action and take the stand to protect their wellbeing. There is a
law about harassment, but many people never trust on them for the sake of their
worth or respect in society. In our society, most people blame victims for
their condition; that’s why they develop mistrust. They never engage in social
activities cut off from all outgoing sources and abandoned themselves in the
four walls of the house. Individuals lose creativity and productivity. Many
harassments take place in our society every day; it damages one part of
individuals globally. Victims never get back to their normal lives until we
allow them or support them. Society plays a huge and important role in the
well-being of individuals.
The
victim girl is still striving to restore her self-esteem identity and trust to
live a healthy social, occupational and personal life. The girl needed to come
out of the phase with the help of the counsellor, that would help her in
achieving the ‘’old me’’personality.