Schmerzensgewalt | 'You mean there's actually a word for it?'

Schmerzensgewalt    ["A storm of pain."]

(my translation)
Jahre nach einer Vergewaltigung: Schmerzen in Leib und Seele      Von Felicitas Witte

...Rape: Years later the experience can cause pain all over the body

After being raped, even years later, pain can occur - often in areas of the body that had nothing to do with the violence. The connection with the crime often goes undetected, and in the worst case scenario, can lead to senseless operations.

Soft tissue rheumatism, they told her. You must learn to live with the pain. From the family doctor she got opioids. She needed more of it, but the strong medication helped little. The bank teller lost her job because she was constantly sick.

"The woman was totally at the end of her rope," said Ulrich Egle, medical director of the Psychosomatic Clinic in Gengenbach recalls of the 46-year-old woman who presented two months ago. She was fortunate for the doctor was able to explain the complaints as a reaction to the trauma over years of rape by her stepfather .

The relationships are often unrecognized

In the nineties, researchers observed that rape victims often complained of muscular pain, headache and bone pain, which could be accounted for directly by former traumas. Recently scientists at the University of North Carolina confirmed the psychosomatic relationship to earlier traumas as Ulrich Egle had suspected for a long time: Rape often triggers pain in areas of the body not directly tied to those where victims experienced the initial violence .

About 60 percent of the 74 study participants suffered three months after the rape under new-onset pain in at least one region of the body, most commonly on the head, neck, back or abdomen. "We know that such pain may occur even years after that," says Egle. He has researched and published for 20 years ago about it, but hardly anyone seemed interested.

"The importance of the problem is considered too little," says Georgios Kokinogenis, senior physician in psychosomatic medicine at the University Hospital in Bern. Many doctors are still consider pain arises only through a personal injury or a non-functioning organ and you can eliminate a repair like a broken car. "But the humiliation in a rape with concomitant feelings of helplessness set in motion processes that can trigger chronic pain without any tissue damage," says Kokinogenis.

Constant stress sensitizes the body

One explanation is that the body after the rape is still under stress and secretes stress hormones and neurotransmitters which display in other regions.

However, the symptoms could also be a sign that the woman has repressed situations not handled properly from the past in which she felt powerless or helpless. For example, recently a woman in Kokinogenis had burning pain on her cheeks a few months after a rape.

The doctors found out also that in her childhood her father had given her almost daily slaps. "After the rape the feeling of helplessness and humiliation came up again, and the woman experienced the same pain in the face," explains Kokinogenis. When he made it clear to her the relationship with earlier trauma, the pain disappeared.

Therapy instead of surgery

The third explanation for ‘displaced’ pain came ten years ago from California scientists.  They noted that an area of ​​the brain, called the cingulate gyrus, is activated when people feel marginalized.  The nerve cells in the area also respond to noxious stimuli. "The brain cannot distinguish whether it is the exclusion or pain," explains Ulrich Egle. "They perceive physical pain although they actually feel excluded."

The doctor observed this phenomenon frequently in people with chronic pain, such as in the back. "They run from doctor to doctor and eventually end up having an operation on a disc, but the pain does not get better," says Egle. He recommends a psychosomatic pain therapy that combines several modules such as group and individual interviews, sport and relaxation techniques with each other.

Rape...

The woman with the full body pain had learned from her mother's rejection of the occurrence of the trauma by the stepfather.  Nobody listens to me, the whole world is evil, and I cannot get too close." - became the worldview of the 46-year-old woman. In treatment with Dr. Egle she learns to gently open up to others and learns when it’s healthy to say "no. " Her pain is increasingly better.

"Her previous doctors have repeated the same message as her mother and have not listened to her," says Egle. "With the opioids they only made ​​it worse." He wishes every physician who treated a woman after a rape, would observe not only their bodies but also their souls. "This could allow many women to avoid years of pain and unnecessary therapies. "   -Felicitas Witte, Years after a rape: pain in body and soul, Spiegel Online, 11/11/13