As you expressed, the most difficult is often after, the reactions of others. It doesn’t help…

A few years ago, I had a very interesting training as I sometimes had to make some conferences in front of traumatized people. The trainer explained that when someone has a problem, our tendancy is to minimize what happened or have a different attitude (especially if it concerns death).

As a manager, this training helped me a lot in my daily work, as I often saw my own boss totally lost with some people who had lost a child. I often had to discuss with him, explaining he had to call and not to leave the person alone, convincing him it was normal to be afraid to be clumsy, and to think first to the suffering person. Really, I have seen so much cases where the Direction didn’t call the person who was the victim of an agression.

Did it also helped me when I have been personnally assaulted at work? I don’t really think. Though my colleagues of the close offices heard everything, they didn’t move. When the two persons left, they even didn’t come in my office to see if I was fine. My hierarchy never blamed these two persons for what they had done although my Director had expressly said to my boss to react. I had to continue to work in such an atmosphere before the work medecine told me I had to stop. I was suffering from burn-out. I hadn’t fill a police complaint as I stupidly though my company would support me.

The only way I found to bear the kind of reactions you are dealing with, is to run away from these persons. Even if I understand it’s in the human nature to think it’s better to minimize things, I’m still not able to deal with it…