Recently, I encountered significant opposition after I posted about the sexual assault committed against me by a member of the US Coast Guard (USCG). The attack had clearly been set up, and it was obvious to me that it was the perpetrator’s pattern. But the USCG declined accountability, allowing the perpetrator to continue assaulting vulnerable civilians.
The backlash against my truth-telling was shocking. A few Facebook randos told me things like I should be sued for defamation, that wasn’t a sexual assault, I was exaggerating, among other awfully inappropriate comments..
But one of the worst was the denial from a shipmate. They offered a perfunctory drop of cognitive empathy and went on to invalidate my experience by accusing me of labeling all coast guardsmen as predators. This was a person with whom I had shared voyages, watches, meals, bunking quarters, and who had put me up in their guest room for a few nights during my 2-½ years as an itinerant sailor. Given that history, I tried to talk to them, but each reply only doubled down. They even brought up their own experience of sexualized violence in a different realm as a reason I shouldn’t talk about the systemic and structural elements that protect abusers. They said I was ungrateful for how the USCG protects my rights, even though the violation of my right to bodily integrity was the issue. When egged on by a Facebook rando, they tried to prove that I was faking the whole thing. I ended up deleting the nasty comments and blocking the nasty commenters, including the shipmate.
That level of disbelief and cognitive dissonance is a physiological self-protection response: the listener’s nervous system, facing overload from the trauma account, shifts into a defensive state to distance itself and protect the listener from discomfort, rather than accurately perceiving the survivor’s experience.
When we understand they’re not doing this by choice, but out of self-protection, it helps us take their stance less personally. The problem isn’t us or our story, or that we revealed it, but that they don’t have the inner and outer resources to recognize our truth. They simply cannot hold space for the idea that something so awful could happen to us, that the systems and structures we’ve been taught will protect us, do not.
Human beings interpret others’ experiences through their prior learning, social conditioning, and physiological tolerance for distress. When a person describes traumatic experiences, especially violations involving the body, power, or institutional betrayal, the listener must be able to remain present while exposed to information that signals threat, injustice, or loss of control. Many people lack the capacity to remain regulated in the presence of those signals. Their bodies shift toward defensive states that narrow perception and reduce the ability to stay curious, receptive, and empathic. Attention moves toward protecting the listener from discomfort rather than toward accurately perceiving the other person’s experience.
Social systems reinforce this narrowing. Most cultures teach people to maintain a sense that institutions such as medicine, the military, education, law enforcement, and courts are fundamentally trustworthy. When someone reports harm by those institutions, the listener faces a conflict between two competing realities: the cultural narrative of institutional safety and the lived account of institutional violence. Many resolve this conflict by preserving the existing narrative and questioning the person who reported the harm. This response stabilizes the listener’s sense of order and predictability. It reduces cognitive and physiological strain in the moment.
Belief is also shaped by familiarity. Experiences that fall outside common social scripts are harder for observers to process. Sexualized violence within medical care, non-consensual procedures, or violations carried out under professional authority disrupt widely held assumptions about safety and consent. When an event does not match the listener’s mental categories, the information is often minimized, reframed, or rejected. The nervous system favors coherence with prior expectations over rapid revision of deeply held assumptions.
Empathy depends on relational experience across the lifespan. People who have repeatedly encountered environments where distress was ignored, dismissed, or punished tend to develop protective habits of attention that limit their engagement with others’ suffering. Turning away, questioning the report, or shifting the topic becomes a learned social strategy that prevents the listener from entering states associated with vulnerability or helplessness. These habits are often reinforced by family systems, workplaces, and professional training environments that reward emotional distance and penalize open acknowledgment of harm.
Professional hierarchies intensify these dynamics. Fields such as medicine and psychiatry, law enforcement, education, and the military organize authority around status, credentials, and chain of command. Within these systems, the testimony of a patient, civilian, or lower-status member carries less weight than the reputation of the professional or institution. People learn to defer to authority signals such as titles, uniforms, and institutional affiliation. When accusations challenge those signals, many observers default to defending the authority structure rather than examining the reported harm.
Physiological overload also affects perception. Hearing detailed accounts of trauma can evoke sensations associated with danger or loss of control. When this occurs, the body moves toward self-protection. In that state, attention narrows, memory becomes less flexible, and complex perspective-taking declines. The listener may interrupt, redirect the conversation, offer premature explanations, or question the account’s accuracy or impact. These actions restore distance from the distressing material.
Group dynamics further shape belief. Within communities, people monitor each other’s reactions to determine what responses are socially acceptable. If influential members of the group dismiss or minimize a survivor’s account, others often follow suit to preserve belonging. Disbelief spreads through social reinforcement rather than through direct examination of the evidence.
Empathy requires the capacity to stay present with another person’s account while holding uncertainty, discomfort, and moral disruption. That depends on relational safety, cultural norms that value truth over hierarchy, and bodies that can remain regulated while encountering painful information. When those conditions are absent, disbelief and distancing become the dominant responses, often adding layers of harm to the original traumatic experience.
Knowing this reveals the listener’s disbelief as a failure of their own capacity, not a failure of the survivor’s truth. This relieves survivor self-blame and helps them understand the listener’s capacities and priorities.
It re-frames the listener’s negative response—disbelief and distancing—not as a judgment on the survivor’s truth or the impact of their account, but as the listener’s own physiological self-protection response to signals of threat, injustice, or loss of control.
The survivor gains clarity that the subsequent harm is due to the listener’s lack of capacity to remain regulated and empathic when they encounter distressing information. The disbelief is a defensive state in which the listener’s attention narrows to focus on protecting themselves from discomfort.
We can take it less personally when we recognize that the listener’s reaction is often an effort to preserve their own sense of order, predictability, and safety by maintaining cultural narratives (such as institutional trustworthiness) or preserving belonging within professional hierarchies.
When you encounter disbelief, remember this fundamental truth: the negative reaction you receive is never a reflection of the validity of your experience or your integrity. It is not your fault. The person who dismissed you simply lacked the necessary capacity. They were not equipped to offer the attunement, compassionate witnessing, empathy, and validation that your lived experience deserves. Instead of carrying the burden of their discomfort, let their disbelief re-frame the situation: you simply shared a profound truth with someone whose internal resources were too limited to hold it. You deserve better. Trust your clarity, protect your peace, and move on to find a person or communitywho has the capacity to hold space for your truth.
