Experiencing or witnessing a crime may leave you dealing with a whole range of complicated emotions. Whether that’s new emotions arising, old emotions resurfacing, or an absence of emotions altogether, processing your experience and feelings can be difficult.
It’s important to remember that different people respond to experiencing a crime in different ways – there’s no “right” or “wrong” way to feel. Sometimes emotions can change and develop immediately following a crime, or you may feel changes weeks, months, or even years afterwards. Similarly, the emotional effects following a crime may last for some time, regardless of what the crime was.
Whilst new emotions, the absence of emotions, and new difficulties controlling emotions are common and completely typical, it can still be scary, upsetting, and difficult to handle. Sometimes our emotional response may lessen on it’s own over time, and other times speaking to a professional can help us process and come to terms with our experiences.
In this article we’re going to take a look at some of the most common emotional responses to experiencing or witnessing a crime, why they happen, and how we can start to figure out our emotions and seek support. Use the links dotted throughout this piece to find other more in depth pieces for the emotions discussed.
Kooth is full of useful resources, content and support services to help you navigate your emotions after a crime
Guilt and shame
Often throughout life, we may find that we blame ourselves for things that are out of our control. This is true also for victims of crime, often circling around feelings of guilt for being a victim (feeling like you could have prevented the experience) and feelings of shame for what has happened to you. These two emotions can sometimes feel difficult to tell apart. As an example, guilt may feel like “there is something wrong with what I did”, whilst shame may feel more like “there is something wrong with me”.
In day-to-day situations, guilt and shame can help us spot if we did something we would deem “wrong”, such as treating a friend badly. But following a crime, they may be misplaced. Often, we may ask ourselves questions we simply don’t have the answers to, such as “why me” or “why did this happen?”. A difficult aspect of crime to process can be the fact that something harmful was carried out. We may begin to blame ourselves rather than accept there isn’t a logical answer.
Although you might experience feelings of guilt and shame, it’s really important to remember that what happened was out of your control, and that you did the best you could in the given circumstances. The victim is absolutely never to blame, and the responsibility for the crime lies with the perpetrator (the person who carried out the crime).
Anger
Anger is a very natural response to feeling threatened, attacked, or mistreated, but it can also be a difficult emotion to handle, especially if you’re not used to feeling angry. You may experience bursts of anger or feel like your anger is constantly simmering in the background. However you experience anger, it can feel exhausting to manage. Often, when the main thing we’re angry about is unresolved, we may find these emotions come out around other little things a lot faster than they normally would.
If you find yourself feeling angry, you can try counting to ten – or back from ten – slowly to give yourself time to release some tension before you speak or act. And if that doesn’t work, you can remove yourself from the situation safely and explain why later when you’re feeling calmer. To take a more in depth look at anger, check out our article here.
Fear and insecurity
It can be difficult to feel safe and settled if our boundaries, wellbeing, or space has been violated in any way. So, it makes sense that feeling uneasy following a crime is a really common reaction. You may find that you develop a fear or feeling of unease towards situations that share aspects of your crime experience, such as time of day or location. Or you may find that you feel a consistent sense of unease and are always a little bit on edge, regardless of the situation. This can make our emotions and life following a crime even more difficult and tiring to navigate.
Trauma Responses and PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder is an anxiety disorder that usually follows stressful or frightening events, such as experiencing or witnessing a crime. PTSD can appear immediately following a traumatic event, or it can appear weeks, months, or even years later. Usually, PTSD includes involuntarily re-experiencing the traumatic event via flashbacks, nightmares, repetitive and distressing images, or physical sensations.
This can make it hard to concentrate and difficult to sleep, sometimes resulting in insomnia. You may feel jumpy or like you don’t feel safe and struggle to trust anyone. Or you may struggle with memories leaving you feeling like you have to keep busy, or you may feel withdrawn and uninterested in activities you used to enjoy. PTSD has many complex symptoms, feelings, and behaviours attached to it, and it’s important to remember that these symptoms may seem consistent, or they may vary. It’s possible for PTSD to be treated many years after the traumatic event has occurred, so it’s never too late to seek help. PTSD UK is an organisation which looks to provide information and support to anyone in the UK who is experiencing PTSD.
Emotional Numbing
As you can tell from this quick look into some of the complicated emotions following a crime, you can be left feeling lots of different ways, and that can be difficult and tiring to manage. As a response, we may try to deal with our feelings – either consciously or unconsciously – by trying to feel nothing at all. This is a common way to try to protect ourselves in the moment when we’re feeling overwhelmed, or from further harm. But whilst it can feel like this brings a temporary relief, learning to cope with emotions this way long term can have some negative consequences. This is largely because whilst it may block the unpleasant, it also blocks the pleasant and can leave you feeling flat, distant from others, and like you’re struggling to experience life in full – sometimes leading to an increase in risk taking and dangerous behaviours.
Sitting with our emotions can be difficult, but it can help us identify what we’re feeling, which in turn can help us figure out why we’re feeling that way. This is known as distress tolerance, and it can help us build our emotional resilience over time. It can be difficult to work out how we’re feeling with emotions seeming to be such abstract and complicated things.
Don’t bottle it up
Expressing how you’re feeling can be a really helpful, healthy way to process what’s going. You can do this in lots of ways, not just by talking to someone. You could:
- Make music
- Write – comedy, short stories, a diary entry, poetry
- Craft
- Draw/sketch
- Paint
- Create/build something
Sometimes, getting everything in your head down on paper can help you get your thoughts and feelings in order, whilst a creative outlet can help you feel lighter and relieved.
What to do if you’re struggling
If you are struggling following a crime, remember you can reach out for support if you feel able to. Support can look like many things from many people. You might feel comfortable speaking to your close loved ones about how you’re feeling, or you might find it easier to speak to a trusted adult like a teacher or a doctor instead.
You might feel more comfortable speaking to someone anonymously. Kooth practitioners are here to help you with whatever you’re feeling. They can give you support, advice, or just simply be there to listen. Chatting with a Kooth team member is confidential, too. Click the two speech bubbles at the top of the Kooth screen to send a message to the team. Or you might like to start your own discussion board, here, to reach out to the lovely Kooth community for support in how you’re feeling.
And if you are in Devon or Cornwall and experiencing any of these issues and want support then you can contact Young Devon at 08082810155 or *[email protected], or check out the Victims Care Unit website, here*.
Victim Support offers free and confidential support to victims of crime available to anyone in England or Wales. You can call their free 24/7 helpline on 0808 1689 111 or visit their website for more information and online support.
If you need general mental health and wellbeing support, we’re here for you at Kooth, too.