Trauma on an aeroplane and the ‘Lie, Hide, Repress and Deny’ that followed - a recent and true story

Ingrid Lotze
Jun 22, 2023
4 min read

Trauma on an aeroplane and the ‘Lie, Hide, Repress and Deny’ that followed - a recent and true story

He didn’t hurt me, he just caressed my arm. This stranger sitting next to me on the plane. He waited for me to fall asleep with my face mask, eye mask, and headphones on before he ran his fingers up and down, feeling my skin, as you would a lover’s.

The trauma therapist tells me that as a person who lived through violent domestic abuse, my initial response of silence and turning away as far as I could was normal. But in a row of three seats on a plane, there is no escaping a predator when you’re in the middle seat.

He continued his solo foreplay until I properly woke from a Circadin-assisted slumber, ripped off my headphones and masks, and wanted to confront him, but he quickly slipped into the dark cabin towards the toilets and stayed there a disturbingly long time. Why “disturbingly long?” Having just been violated I imagined his solo mile-high club with horror.

There were so many things I could have done but didn’t:

Swapping seats with Gavin would have been the easiest and least confrontational action
Asking a stewardess to move him
Telling Gavin what just happened and watching the fallout unfold

Yet I fell into my old familiar pattern of silence, retracting into myself, withdrawing, keeping the peace, not making a scene, and justifying this behaviour by thinking “It’s not that bad, he didn’t hurt me. What is a stroke or ten on the forearm? I mean really get a grip, Ingrid.” And this is precisely what I talk about in my keynote called “Lie, Hide, Repress and Deny” These are far easier reactions than confrontation.

By the time we had gone through immigration, retrieved our bags, and found our transport to the next destination I wanted to vomit. I had been fully re-traumatised. Every cell in my body had woken up and tapped into past violations and abuse. Every fiber of my being was on high alert and my cognitive functions were impaired. I tilted into emotional and psychological distress, Whilst the abuser had a flight on Air India that was slightly more enjoyable than usual and his life continued, I had a flight on Air India that left me unable to think, speak, or operate properly. Gavin had a flight that left him with a wife he didn’t recognise ~ snippy, oversensitive, startled responses to his touch, very emotional and unable to partner in the following steps of setting up the next nomad home.

In the next week following the “tiny thing” (as I have heard people label other similar sexual harassment incidents), my retraumatisation reopened emotional wounds, brought back memories I didn’t wish to recall, and totally upturned what I thought I had healed and worked through. I missed deadlines, ghosted friends, started emotionally eating again, and couldn’t make a decision about anything. Even deciding which of the 7 t-shirts to wear became a daily mountain to climb. Good thing I know the drill and immediately found a specialised trauma therapist as well as TRE facilitator and am back to doing bodywork to calm the trauma symptoms.

In the work I do with the NPO called Women For Afrika, many women say that they don’t know a single woman who has never been sexually harassed. Many brush off unwelcome or unwanted sexual advances as a compliment or a joke with no harm done. Many others - especially those who have lived through domestic violence, inappropriate touching, rape, and abuse - find unwelcome comments, jokes, or sexual remarks intimidating, offensive, dangerous, or re-traumatising. For me, this re-traumatising was a shock as I thought I had worked through it all and was ‘fully healed’. Sexual harassment is not a small thing. It is not “just a joke” or “nothing serious”. It is not just a report that gets completed and added to an HR file and it doesn’t go away when the person leaves the department or company. It has far-reaching consequences including mental health issues, loss of productivity, loss of human connection and collaboration. All of which impact business profits. The first step in addressing this ubiquitous and global problem is to listen to those who have the courage to speak up. It is easier for everyone to pretend that nothing bad happened, and, if the right steps are not taken to firstly avoid the occurrence and secondly address the damage done, the problem multiplies, and the fallout grows, possibly exponentially and disproportionately. We developed and ran our first successful program to specifically address the challenges of sexual harassment in the workplace in 2018. It was doing well, till Covid hit and the problem fell to the bottom of the priority pile for corporates. It is time to pick up where we left off before the pandemic. Sexual harassment hasn’t gone away and it won’t go away on its own. Our approach with the program was based on empowering and enabling people to speak up, teaching skills that allow for boundary setting and how to address tough situations whilst minimising fallout. It is not focused on finding the villains and helping the victims. The focus is on mitigating the future potential of harassment and empowering those who have already been harassed. If you want to know more about the program email awesome@hersandhis.co.za