Sharing Your Happiness
Whether the victim comes out as a survivor or a repeated victim, through physical ailments caused by PTSD, their recovery depends upon whether they can individually come to understand that the violence is not their fault. Every person in their support group is therefore also giving a gift to the victim by not making them feel so alone in their problems.
Each victim has to recover in their own time, until they feel that they have indeed conquered the victimization. Still, they will have to adjust to living life with this trauma and in doing so, live in reality instead of denial. PTSD is a treatable condition for those properly diagnosed.
When doctors are trained to work with hypochondria, they may not spot a rape for what it is initially, partially because the victim does not tell the physician about any stress related activity in their life, as they want to keep their victimization a secret. Oftentimes, avoiding telling the patient that there is 'nothing wrong with her' can be the best thing for a physician to do when confronted with an ailment that they can't define. We are not saying a physician should tell the patient things that are untrue or that they should continue to run unnecessary tests. We are just saying that validating the victim's pain is a gift that a doctor can share with a patient. In so doing, s/he too is adding to the goodwill of the patient.
Often it only takes for a person to have been actually told that nothing is wrong with him, while they are in pain for her/him to truly relate to the issue of being considered a hypochondriac.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is also a physical disorder based on traumatic events that have been - for one reason or another - ignored by doctors. Many patients have been told by a physician, "nothing is wrong;" or "although you may still feel ill, there are no physical signs of any ailment."
These words are so contradictory to the fact that physical pain does exist. Indeed the doctor may without meaning to be causing the assaulted victim to feel even more alone in their illness and recovery. Taking it a step farther, the doctor could be indirectly calling the patient a liar when s/he says makes claim to the patient that nothing is wrong. These types of oversights
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