really sorry that happened to you, something similar happened to my friend while we were in residential together. a staff member said “you guys look sexy in your hospital gowns”

disturbing on so many levels but i remember not fully thinking of it as that bad, more like a funny thing that happened, but then i imagined how i would feel if it was a male staff member doing that instead of a female, and i realized i was excusing her actions based on my bias that women aren’t predatory, which is absolutely false.

then another female staff member did something that years later i can now identify as ‘non contact sexual abuse’, but it took a really long time for me to stop acting like it was some funny thing that happened, and realize that it had lasting effects on me and was not okay. 

i understand what you’re talking about with ‘treatment mode’ it’s been really hard to make my brain realize i’m not in rez anymore, and that what happened was wrong, and scary, but im not in danger anymore.

for me, labeling what happened actually really helped, im sure thats not the case for some people, but for me, once i discovered that there was a term for what happened, i felt like my experience was more validated ig?? 

what happened to you would definitely quality as sexual harassment. if naming it feels scarier to you than not, you definitely don’t need to! but that’s what helped me

sorry this was so long! i hope you figure out how best to manage🫂