How to Care for Your Mental Health After an Attack

October 11, 2023

If you have been a victim of a robbery, assault, or other crime—you are not alone. Here is how to care for your mental health afterward.

Disclaimer: We try to make our content as useful as possible, however Personal Safety School bears no responsibility for any injury or loss incurred as a result of following advice published on our website.

Many years ago, I was a victim of a peeping Tom. Yes, some weirdo was looking in my windows at night. I will explain more about this later, but the aftermath of this situation left an indelible mark on me. Incidents like this are why it’s important for us to care for our mental health after a breach of our personal safety and boundaries. In this article, I will show you how to move on after a traumatic event…

The Story

It was 2007. I was 23 years old and living alone in the downtown core of my small picturesque city. I grew up here and a houseful of my guy friends lived down the street, so I felt very safe. I worked the overnight shift at UPS— I would work from 10 p.m. until 230 a.m., and then a friend would drop me off after my shift. When she dropped me off, she wouldn’t wait for me to get in my house, she would just drop and drive (it was late and she was elderly).

On this night, I walked in, put some food in the oven, patted my cat, and rolled a joint (I smoked at the time). My cat was super special, his name was Resin. He was a black and white generic-looking cat, but he was incredibly smart. He even used the toilet! No joke. Resin was acting weird that night, very focused on one area of our broken Venetian blinds. Trying to peek through them, shaking and meowing.

I thought it was odd, and he was trying to tell me something, so I looked through the blinds. I saw eyes looking back at me. I screeched and ducked down under my kitchen table beneath the window. Crawling military-style on the floor, I got to my landline phone and called my friend, Nick. Nick happened to be down the road, hanging out at our friend’s house. And luckily, he was one of my few friends with a cell phone at the time.

Now these guys were all awesome, including Nick. There were 6 of them who lived in this house, and they were punk/metal heads. Rough guys, and definitely wouldn’t hesitate to “throw down” even just for fun. Since most of them worked nights, some of the guys were still awake at 3 a.m. on a Monday. Three of them rushed to my aid and ran to my place, which was about 30 seconds down the road.

Graeme, Nick, and Tree (who had his nickname because of his almost 7FT height), snuck up on the perp and startled him. Nick said, “What the fuck are you doing, man?” He said, “I thought this was my house”. He tried to run, and Tree grabbed him- he fell to the ground with a loud snap. He got up holding his arm and ran away after the guys roughed him up a bit.

They came back to my house, and I let them in. They said he looked like a nerd, and that he was probably drunk. So we smoked a joint and they left, reassuring me that he wouldn’t be back. I didn’t call the police— at this point, I didn’t think it was necessary.

Then he came back. I heard rustling on my porch and looked through the peephole. He was looking back at me, chest heaving angrily. He was definitely going to kick down my door… Once again, I called my friends and then the cops. Tree, Graeme, and Nick ran back over, the perp yelled in confusion, “Where are you guys coming from?”. And he ran off for good this time. The cops never showed up.

The Aftermath

That night, and in the months following this incident, I never went to bed until the sun was up. My neighbor was a former university professor for a proclivity for early morning gardening, when I saw him, I went to sleep. I never slept at night again until I moved out of that apartment. Even after my father came over and replaced the blinds.

I slept fitfully every night, and I worried about the “return of the nerd”. I kept replaying the night in my head, particularly, when my coworker dropped me off. I wondered if he was watching me go into my house. My friends, who put their own safety at risk and potentially saved my life, felt guilty that they let the perp go. We all had haunting thoughts about what could’ve happened that night.

I wondered how long he had been watching me for, and what he was planning to do to me. If he was going to hurt me or my cat, and of course, if he would be back. I felt guilty that he wasn’t caught and worried he would hurt another woman. I also distrusted the police after this, they never showed up…why?

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was experiencing acute post-traumatic stress disorder. Even if I wasn’t injured, I had something traumatic happen to me. My personal safety was compromised and I didn’t have justice or closure. I didn’t know if I had a potential stalker, or if this man was a rapist or both. I loved my home, it was an old apartment in a Victorian-style house. But after this incident, it didn’t feel like home any longer.

It was the early 2000s and mental health wasn’t really a focus back then, so I carried on. I moved out of the apartment six months later and made a fresh start.

Mental Health and Safety Threats

When an attack on our personal safety happens, like a robbery, assault, stalking, or other crime, we lose control. We lose control of our autonomy and of our bodies in some cases. This can have devastating and long-lasting effects on our mental health.

We fear for the future, we relive the past trauma, and we wonder what we could’ve done differently. When, in most cases, we didn’t do anything to attract this terrible atrocity. Sometimes, bad things happen to good people. It’s as simple as that.

Acceptance is important after an attack like this. Accepting that bad things happen to good people sometimes, and that yes, you were a victim but you don’t have to stay a victim.

Tips to Preserve Your Mental Health After an Attack

Over the years, I have come up with some tips to help myself and others deal with the aftermath of a safety breach. Here are some of my best tips from experience:

Press charges: I try not to live in regret but I wish I had the opportunity to do this. Pressing legal charges against your attacker helps you get closure and justice. It will hopefully mean that they will not commit any more crimes against others.
Take control: Change your locks, reinforce your doors with longer screws (one of the most effective and easy ways to prevent break-ins), install a security system, get yourself a big-ass dog, and take a self-defense course. These types of actions help you take your power back in a useful way.
Be realistic: In most cases, there would be nothing different you could’ve done to prevent this horrible thing from happening. There are bad people in this world, and they like to prey on the good ones. You can’t change what happened to you, but you can change how you react to it.
Learn how to challenge your thoughts: This is such a helpful skill to have in your toolbox of life. When you start to think about the attack, challenge the thoughts you’re ruminating on. Counter negative thoughts with positive ones. For example, You think, “I should’ve taken a different route that night”. Counter with: “The other route was even darker and more isolated, and led to the same destination, you chose what seemed the safest way at the time”.
Practice self-care: Take long baths, use your good tea set and have a tea party for one, go out to eat with friends, binge-watch a favorite show. Romanticize your life and care for your body. You are worth it!
Get help: If you are having a tough time getting past what has happened to you, there is help available in the form of therapy. In fact, after any life change or trauma, it is important to process it with the help of a professional.

Take Care of Your Wellbeing After an Attack

Remember not to live in past regrets. Unfortunately, you have had a terrible thing happen to you, but this doesn’t mean you did something to “bring it on”. After a traumatic event, you may go through a grieving process. This may be grieving the loss of innocence or the loss of something else that was important to you. Allow yourself to feel these feelings, look after your mental health, and use the tips above to practice self-love and self-care. You will get through this—I did.