TRANSCRIPT
Hi everyone. I am going to make this video in the spirit of a public service announcement. Last night, I got mugged. I got mugged out on the street at night. I got robbed by two guys. It was terrifying. It was horrible. And I want to talk about it in the spirit, maybe, of helping someone else who has gone through this. Because I know afterward, I came back and I was searching on the internet for stuff and looking, what do you do after you’ve been mugged? And how you’re supposed to feel after you’ve been mugged? And thinking about trauma.
I mean, for someone who hasn’t watched any of my videos before, I was a therapist for ten and a half years. My focus was on helping people, ironically, heal from trauma. My YouTube channel is about healing from trauma, healing specifically from childhood trauma. And I went through an experience last night that I guess one could describe as traumatizing. I don’t know if I was traumatized. It’s a question I have. It’s confusing.
But what I came here to talk about today is just what I went through, what was going through my mind last night, what led up to it, what the experience was, what happened afterward, my experience with the police, and also how I am today. It’s what, 14 hours later? I was mugged, robbed, 14 hours ago.
Also, I want to say, first of all, I didn’t sleep well last night. That’s definitely part of the consequence of what I went through. I usually sleep eight, nine, ten hours a night. I slept three hours, maybe that. I’m not at my best. I’m not thinking so clearly, in part because of what I went through, in part because of the sleep. And I think that’s normal. That’s to be expected after what I went through.
But anyways, I would like to try to be as rational and clear as I can to talk about it, to make use of this unpleasant, awful experience that I went through. Because that’s something that’s very important for me. I don’t—yes, I was a victim last night, but I don’t want to come out of this in the long run being more victimized. I want to feel more empowered. And so I’d like to share my experience and even some of the experience, strangely, and I’ll get into that, was there was a couple of empowering moments. It’s very bizarre.
So what happened last night? I had dinner. After dinner, I like to go take a walk. We’re in the middle of a lockdown in New York City and so much of the world. And there’s a place, a park, that I like to go and walk. And there’s people there often. There’s sometimes rather empty spots, but I’ve walked there, well, for years and years. In the last six months, I’ve walked there every night pretty much. And it was dark. It was only 7 p.m. There were lights out, you know, street lights and stuff, but it’s an isolated kind of park. A danger in a way, yes, obviously it was a danger. I got robbed there, but usually I feel safe.
Well, oh gosh, this isn’t going to come out in a linear way. I’m just, I’m a little discombobulated. I’m a little fragmented from the experience, and I think that’s normal. I was invaded and I was violated. So I took a walk. I’d walked from where I live already. I walked way down to a bridge called the Williamsburg Bridge that leads to Brooklyn. But I walk under it and then I walk back. I was, you know, only 10 minutes from where I live.
And I was actually sending someone a message on WhatsApp on my phone. I was dictating a message to somebody who had sent me a message. And I saw two guys, two young guys, and they were kind of standing in the shadows a little bit. And they didn’t look like they were up to much good. But I see people there. There’s people there that are not up to good a lot. I see that, so I just avoid them. But I got a weird feeling from them. I kept walking. I didn’t want to draw too much attention to the situation, but I did look back and I could see they were watching me, but they weren’t following me. So I was like, that’s good. I kept walking and kept walking and kept walking, and I felt that I’d outdistanced them.
I continued leaving the message. I actually told the person I was leaving the message that there were two creepy-looking guys, young guys. And, you know, and I even said it. I said, but I’m not really worried. If they do really start to seriously follow me, I will run. I’m in good shape. I’m a fast runner. You know, okay, I’m 49 years old, but I’m still really fast. I can run. I wasn’t scared, really.
Well, literally, right, I just was saying that. How do I describe it? All I know is that I got swung around. Someone had a hold of my hand. I think the other guy had a hold of my other arm. They’re yelling in my face, and they both had a hand free, and they’re both holding their hands back like they’re going to punch me in the face. I didn’t see any weapons aside from them, and it was overwhelming. And I had headphones on my phone, and one of them screaming, “Give me the phone!” And the look on their face was rage and hatred. I was terrified. And I was spun around, and I thought I was going to get hit. And I just said, “Don’t hit me! Don’t hit me! I said I’m not going to fight. Don’t worry.”
And I got out of the group, and I said, “I’m not going to fight. Don’t worry.” And it was interesting what I did. I almost went into therapist mode. I just sort of talked to them calmly. They were both about 20, 21. I’m six foot four. One was probably six feet. One was about five foot ten. They were probably weight as much as I did. They were strong. They were stronger than I. They’re probably, I mean, they’re younger. They’re 25, 30 years younger than me.
I instantly just in my gut knew that they would kill me if I fought. They—and I thought they also wanted me to fight back. There was part of me felt like they really wanted to hurt me. I even afterward had an image that if I had fought back, they were going to get me on the ground and probably kick me and, you know, really hurt me badly. They were going to punish me if I didn’t comply. Like, they were—this is, I mean, at the moment, it was just an instantaneous feeling given. And I’ve also thought of this before because I’m sorry this isn’t coming out in a linear way, but after what I counted, I counted that I can remember eight different times in my life where people tried to rob me, starting when I was a child. It happened twice when I was a kid. It’s happened in several different continents, several different countries. I’ve seen people get robbed, but it’s happened to me eight times, and no one ever got my money before.
And I’ve thought about what happens if they do really get into my personal space, touch me physically, get aggressive on me. And these guys were aggressive. They were holding me. I mean, I had marks in my hand afterward. As I was falling asleep, my shoulders hurt probably from getting ripped around, but they didn’t hit me. Well, I always thought my attitude was if I feel like my life’s in danger, I will give them anything I have. Just give it. And I talked to them, and I said, “Yes, yes, don’t worry. You can have all my stuff.” And they calmed down, but they still had this look like hatred on their faces.
And what I thought afterward was this was more than just trying to get my money. They were expressing some deep level of rage and hatred. Just hatred. Traumatized people. People I’m sure who had been traumatized before in their life. And I’m not sitting here to pity them, so don’t get me wrong. I’m not taking their side in an objective way, but this was more than just how they—what they were doing to me. This was more than just doing a business job.
They also said, “Give me your wallet, give me your phone.” So I gave the phone, and then, as I was reaching for my wallet, they started touching me all over. They touched my body, you know, so it was a very dirty feeling, awful, violating feeling. But I pulled out my wallet; I gave it to them. And then, this is what—this is where it got weird. And this is—this is the only part that, I mean, I felt good that, after, when I thought about it, that I was so calm. I talked in a very calm voice. I also told them, I said, “You guys won. You got it. There’s no fight for me. Don’t worry, you don’t got to be violent. There’s no fight.” One of the guys did say to me, he said, “Just because you’re telling us, we will [ __ ] you up. We will.” And they were like—I could just feel they wanted to beat me. They really wanted to beat me down. But anyways, I just refused to participate in that. But what got strange is I realized it was like less than two weeks ago I received my brand new driver’s license in the mail. I paid all this money to get a new driver’s license. My old one expired. It took a lot of work going to the Department of Motor Vehicles. They finally sent it to me. It took months because of this pandemic thing to get an appointment to get the driver’s license. They sent it to me. Very hard to—what would I do to get it replaced, you know? So I just realized, I was like, they don’t need my driver’s license. So I told the guy who was holding my wallet, I said, “Listen, I’ve done everything you want. I said, can you just give me my driver’s license back? I just got a new license, and it’s going to be such a pain for me.” And the funny thing was, they were different. The two guys were different. The one who I said it to looked like he couldn’t care less. He just looked like he hated me. The other guy looked like he had compassion on his face for me. I think he felt bad for me. I think he felt empathy for—I don’t want to cry, but you know, it was weird. And so they looked at each other. There was this uncomfortable moment, and the guy was like—they just had a moment of some communication between the two of them. And he opened my wallet like he was getting—and he’s looking through, but my driver’s license was stuffed in a pocket. He couldn’t—and I don’t know what overcame me, but somehow at that moment, I just felt like I took the wallet out of his hand, and I took it back. And then he got, “Here, give me that! What? Give it to—touch it! Get your hands off! Blah blah blah.” And so I was like, “No, no! I just thought you’ll never find it. It’s deep inside.” But he took it back really fast. So then I put my hand in, and I pulled out the wallet, but he’s trying to like tell me, “Don’t do it!” But I could tell he didn’t want to hurt me anymore. I just felt at that moment that I wasn’t going to get hurt. And so I got the driver’s license out, and I took it. He said, “What else you got in there? You got a credit card?” And he did get my credit cards. I was like, “Take it! Take my credit cards! Take it!” So what ended up happening? Oh, and then he said, “Give me the password on your phone. Tell me the password on your phone.” So I told him. I just didn’t—it was just like I was in the mode of just like giving him stuff that I don’t need. I don’t know why, but I gave him the password on my phone, and then he let me have that. And then what he did is he took all the money out of my wallet. He took the credit card and my debit card, my bank card, and he gave me the wallet back. Oh, I think I said it to him. I said, “Well, you don’t need anything else. I said, give it back to me now, right? Come on! I was like, like we’re people here. I was like, you’re an adult, I’m an adult. You know I’m gonna need my wallet.” So he just gave it back to me. It was weird. It was like there was a part of him that was human. I felt I was dealing with two human beings. And then it was strange. I don’t know how it happened, but we—oh, he also handed me back the headphones on my phone. He pulled my headphones out, and he gave them back to me. It was like he wanted me to like him in some way. It was so bizarre. Why am I crying? And I cried a little bit afterward when the police came, but they showed no empathy. Maybe I could have empathy for myself in this moment, and I was too embarrassed to cry in front of my friend. Afterward, I talked with a friend last night. I just felt embarrassed. But what happened was somehow I walked with them. We walked for a while together. I think—and this is something that’s really important that I want to get into in terms of trauma—is that I wanted to make sure they knew what they did, how bad it was that they did this. And so, um, probably I’m crying also because I just didn’t sleep right, and I’m vulnerable. But so what happened is I talked to them. I think I walked for a while. That’s before they gave me—I wanted them to give me the wallet back. I had my, you know, my stuff to get back in the—my building where I live, there’s a key card and my library card. I’m just like, “Give it to me!” You know, the card that I, you know, use to like track what I buy at the grocery store—all that was in there. And so I walked to them, and I was just having almost a conversation like I was their therapist, like they were kids. And you know, it was funny. It was like, um, I’ll go on. There’s so many things to tell in this, and I hope it’s okay that I’m going on and on, but I want to just share the whole stuff. And it’s coming out in a fragmented way because it was fragmenting, traumatizing as it were, but also because I didn’t sleep well. So I ended up walking probably 20 feet with them. I felt like we talked for literally a couple of minutes, which is a long time. It wasn’t like a 10-second mugging in the robbery, and they got my stuff and ran. And they didn’t run either. It was like somehow they felt safe with me. I think one of them especially—I think he wanted to talk with me, and that’s when they handed me the wallet. That’s how my memory went. But then he made it clear. He handed me the wallet. It was like his pride was lost when he handed me the wallet. He made it clear again, “Just because you’re taller than me, we could have you up. We could do that. If we want, if you had fought back, you would have been so bad.” And I said, “I know, but I know you didn’t really want to do that, and I don’t want you to do that. There’s no fight here. The fight’s over.” And then I also said to them—and it’s like this, this is—I want to just be honest about everything because it’s embarrassing. Some of this is embarrassing. I said to him, “You know what? I said, you got my phone. I said, but I have insurance on my phone, so I’m really not losing that much.” As it turned out later, I did, you know, find out about the insurance. I have to pay a 200 deductible. Oh, and they got all my cash, and he’s about a hundred dollars. So it’s like I lost money. I lost—for me, which is a lot of work. I have to put in a lot of work to get that much money, and then I’m gonna have to pay for a new SIM card on my phone. It’s like, it’s a lot of times.
A lot of energy, it’s a lot of money. But then they left, and they walked away, and I walked in the other direction. And I was like, and then as soon as they were just—I just ran. And then I saw a guy jogging, and I stopped him, and I called. I made him give me his telephone. I told him I’d been robbed, and I called the police, and I called 9-1-1. And the woman was kind of rude in 9-1-1, and she just couldn’t understand what I was saying, even though I was very clear. I’d like to hear a copy of the call, actually. She couldn’t understand where I was. It was complicated. And I said, “Well, are the police coming?” I said, “Will you stay on the phone with me?” But it wasn’t even my phone, and I could tell the guy who was there, he just wanted to go on walking or jogging. He wasn’t really that interested in helping me, which was kind of sad because I saw somebody get beaten up and robbed just like I did. The guy actually got hurt; he got punched in the face a few times. This happened to me in Norway, and I stayed with that guy for an hour, and I waited until the police came. This guy just wanted to leave, and I think a lot of people are like that. They just want to be done; they don’t want to help. But he did let me at least use his phone. Some people might not have even trusted me enough.
Well, another part, I have a beard clipper. I clipped my beard so I look a little bit more cleaned up, but I hadn’t trimmed my beard in like five, six days. I looked a little scruffy last night. Also, I was wearing a Tibetan hat that has two tassels on it that come off the top, two pieces. Well, eventually found the police. They came, I saw the car, I went to them, I brought them back, and they asked me a lot of questions. But they weren’t nice to me at first. They were nice—I mean, it was a mixed experience. I ended up spending three hours with the police in total, detectives, police. I probably met eight different police officers. They came, but they were like—they started questioning me like I was bad. “What were you doing here? Why were you here? How long were you? Did you know these guys? How long have you known these?” No, they didn’t say hello. They said, “Have you met these guys before?” And I felt they were holding me responsible in some way, like for something that I didn’t do. There was some part of the way that they were talking to me that was making it seem like I had done something criminal. Maybe I knew these guys. Like, maybe after what I thought, I wonder if they thought there was a drug deal going on. As it happened, I was taking a walk after dinner. No drugs, no alcohol, nothing illegal at all. And that set me up feeling a little weird when they asked me those questions. But I think they believed me. They did believe me after a while. They realized I’m like, I’m taking a walk. I walk here every night, and you know, blah blah blah. I’ve lived in this neighborhood for over 20 years.
And then they wanted to see if they could find a track my phone, but I couldn’t remember my password. I tried, I couldn’t get in. And I was like, “Just take me home. I’ll get to my computer. I have all my passwords. I can close out all my bank accounts. I can close down everything.” “No, this is a crime scene. You can’t leave. We have to take you back.” And I was like, “Please let me go back. They’re going to steal. They’re going to get in my phone. They’re going to—they have access to all my apps. They’re going to steal everything. They have my personal information.” It’s like, ugh, this is horrible. They have my name. I was like, “Let me close my…” They wouldn’t let me go. Then all these police showed up, but then they were like not taking it that seriously. They were going slow. They were schmoozing. You know, “So how long have you been—I’ve been on the force? Yeah, well, you know, blah blah blah. Nice to see you. Oh, this is my sergeant. Oh yeah, yeah, I know you. Oh yeah, I remember back then.” And they were like, you know, half-heartedly going around this investigation.
And I was—the other thing was I felt like I wanted to cry. I was also shaking afterward. I noticed it. I was in shock. I think I was coming—at first, when this whole horrible thing happened with these guys, I went into a sort of state of shock. Afterward, I started shaking. I noticed my hands were shaking a little bit, and I wanted to cry, and I wanted someone to connect with. But I felt like I don’t want to cry in front of these policemen. I feel like they didn’t really care about me, not in their soul. And in a way, it’s like I don’t want to be too empathic here, but I’m like, I feel like maybe to do that job, you have to be a little bit more closed down. If you’re open, maybe you can’t handle the job. It’s kind of like part of why I left being a therapist. When I think all that trauma started getting to me, and I thought if I keep doing this, I will start burning out. I will start emotionally shutting down to protect myself, and I don’t want to do that. I never want to be someone who emotionally shuts down. And I think that’s probably part of why I felt and feel more vulnerable now. It’s like I’m still very open. I’m in a way not traumatized. My spirit is open. My sense of empathy is open. My feelings are very open. I’m very in touch with my feelings. But I did get shut down by that experience.
And then the police, I kept trying to talk to different policemen. “What’s your name?” I was doing all the things that I would have done as the therapist to try to build a rapport, really, so that they would talk to me and listen to me and hear my story. And I told them I feel embarrassed. Why did I feel embarrassed? Because, well, I was out walking. I wasn’t paying enough attention. I was stupid. I wasn’t paying enough attention to my surroundings. When I’m in other countries, especially poorer countries, sometimes poorer countries are safer. I’ve been in some very poor countries where I feel a thousand percent safe, far more safe than in my own neighborhood in New York. But I’ve been in some places that are far more dangerous. I look at the crime rates, and everybody’s like, “Be careful.” I’ve had people follow me on this, you know, on the street in midday. I stand out. I’m too tall. I’m a tourist, whatever. They can tell. But I let my guard down too much, and I felt like that was kind of dumb of me. And I feel like maybe it was a bit arrogant even. There was a part of me that just got a feeling that I’m invincible. I’m not going to get hurt. I can run. I’m fast. I had on sneakers. I had everything ready for this situation. But the guys snuck. They probably ran up. They were probably hiding, and they just went through the trees because there were some trees there. And then they came out and ran at me and just hit me. I mean, I wish I could see a video camera, and we looked. There was no cameras there because it was a park where there were no cameras at all.
Well, I stayed with the police a long time. I asked like five times. Oh, I asked—I finally, one of them let me use their phone so I could call my friends and tell them, my roommate, that I’m not coming home. I told him, he was like, “Oh my God! Oh my God! Are you okay?” And I was like, “Yeah, I’m not hurt. I’m not physically hurt. I’m—I said I’m in shock, but I’m safe. They got my money. They got, you know, whatever they got—bank card, credit card, phone.” But I kept telling the police, “I want to—I want to go back and close down my stuff.” They wouldn’t listen. They could say, “Don’t…”
Worry, you’re covered. You’re covered. I’m like, easy to say afterwards. They weren’t so sure. It’s interesting, one of them always, he’s asking, he is covered, right? If you know they steal his PayPal and stuff like that. And well, I don’t know about PayPal, and I’m like, oh, thanks a lot.
So when I was desperate to go and close my account down and close all my cards down and everything, they didn’t really care. You know, telling me it’s okay, it’s okay, but it wasn’t. So, but I don’t want to be too mad at the police. I thought ultimately they were on my side in this situation, sort of, at least in terms of the law, but emotionally, not really.
Well, uh, I think I can sum up a lot. I ended up going home, getting my computer, getting some of my stuff, getting ready to track my phone. I tracked my iPhone, and they tracked it to a building. This is the irony. It was in a building that was like half a block away from a place in a rough neighborhood, a rough part of my neighborhood. You know, 15-minute walk away from where I live. I used to teach after school pre-kindergarten. I taught four and five-year-olds there.
And I remember 21 years ago, 21 and a half years ago, when I taught there in this place, it was a lot rougher. I’d go there, I stood out, as we say in English. I stood out like a sore thumb, and people would look at me. I always thought I’d bring my guitar in every day to class when I’d go into this place, and I felt like I’m invincible because I’m a pre-kindergarten teacher. I’m teaching four and five-year-olds, and it’s like here, these people were younger than the students that I taught.
I actually still know some of my students. Some of them turned out to be pretty rough, some criminals. One of them’s actually dead. He got shot. We’re actually just a couple blocks away from where they tracked my phone to, but it was in a big building, and they couldn’t find out where, so they just sort of gave up on it, the police did. But I remembered the address. I know where these guys, or one of them, lives or where they went afterwards. It’s weird. It’s like I know the place. Do they know my address?
I think it’s also weird. Should I be talking about this publicly? They know my name. They can Google me. They can find it. I think, you know what, screw this. I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t think these guys have anything to hold against me. In fact, I think if the circumstances were a little bit different, and it may yet happen someday, I could sit down with these guys and have a real conversation, at least the one who had his more open heart. I feel he would feel really terrible about what he did.
Because I also said this to them. I said this to them. I said, you know, you really scared me. You shouldn’t do this. And the one who was embarrassed, who had more open, he kind of looked down. I felt he was ashamed. The other one didn’t seem, didn’t seem to go in. But I just said, that’s not right. You know, you scared me. That was not nice. I told that to the police afterwards. The police said, you know, that’s the kind of thing maybe they won’t do it again. I hope it’s true.
The other thing is, it’s like, am I angry at them? Maybe, yeah, kind of anger. I don’t know. I mean, do I want to beat them and get even? I honestly, I don’t. I don’t feel that. I also feel like, you know, yes, they hurt me. Yes, they harmed me. Yes, they violated me. This was a violent crime. I asked the police, what is this? How? They said it’s a robbery. It’s a felony. It’s considered a violent crime. I was violated. They touched me.
I felt one of the questions they asked is, do you feel threatened with your life? I’m like, hell yeah, I felt like I was gonna die for a couple of seconds there when they were shaking me around. I thought they were gonna punch me in the face. I thought it was horrible. So it was a violent crime, even though I don’t have any damage. I had some red marks in my hand, okay, my shoulder. But where am I going? My head’s all over the place.
But this is what was interesting afterward. This is really key. I felt kind of sorry for them. I felt like they got to have really bad karma from doing this. Like, in a way, in the long run, they’re going to have a worse experience because of what they did to me than I am. I’m going to come out of this. I’m going to probably sleep well tonight because I’m exhausted today. It’s going to be an experience. I’m going to make something good out of it already.
I’m talking. I’m probably going to try. I’m going to try to put this up today if I can edit it. Maybe it’s too long. Maybe I’ll be too embarrassed, but I think I want to put it up now while it’s fresh. And you know, usually I wait a while. I think about my videos. Some of the videos most recently I put up, I made them a few months ago, two, three months ago. But this is fresh. This is now.
But I thought, you know, I’m feeling bad for them. And also the way I talked to them calmly and the way I talked to them, like, had compassion for them and, you know, said that what they did was not right. And also, you know, having an exchange with them and not freaking out and not crying. And you know, not even being the weird thing is after like three, three or four seconds, especially once they let go, I wasn’t even scared.
I was terrified for a few seconds there when they were grabbing me and shaking me. I thought I was gonna die. But then as soon as I realized I wasn’t, they weren’t gonna kill me or even beat me up, I was like, that’s when I took the wallet out of the guy’s hand. I did laugh afterwards. I literally grabbed my wallet out of a robber’s hand, and he, you know, I was gonna give it back to him, and I think he knew that, which is why he didn’t beat me up. But it was like I laughed about the audacity, and it kind of made me feel empowered when I realized that I did that, and I think they respected me for it, and I respected myself. It was weird.
But, and I laughed about it afterward, even in my sort of embarrassment, but also feeling embarrassed and stupid that I got that I let myself. Okay, I’m probably looping. I’ve said all this. Well, here’s the key. When I felt empathy for them, when I was connecting with them, when I was trying to reach them, reason with them, also there was part of me that didn’t want the cops to catch them. I was like, they already got my stuff. I’m going to close down all my accounts. I’m probably going to get paid back for everything. Okay, I lost money.
But catch them, they go to jail, they lose their freedom, they go to this awful place where they’re young people. It’s like the best scenarios, they learn from this, they never do it again, and they have to deal with the karma of what they’ve done, and they can grow from it. But I didn’t want them to get caught. And then I thought, and this is what I thought about last night, and I woke up today thinking about it. It’s like, in some ways, I felt more empathy for them than I felt for myself.
And that brought me right back to being a teenager with my dad. My dad physically assaulted me. He shook me. He grabbed me. He grabbed me by the arms. He shook me, slapped my face. He did almost more physically, more to me than these guys did. I mean, I didn’t think I was going to die with my dad, or did I? I remember that look of rage and hatred on my father’s face when I did something that provoked him. Nothing big. A 13-year-old little skinny 13-year-old kid who wasn’t even 5 feet tall with this gigantic man grabbing me. It was like an animal grabbing me, dragging me out of the house.
And yelling at me, my father was acting out his rage at his traumas from his childhood, his abandonments from his childhood, his humiliations that he’d suffered from his parents. He was putting it on me. And when I saw those guys, that especially the one, the look, maybe both, the look if they wanted to kill me, they despised me. It was like, it was like my dad.
So when I’ve said it many times in my channel, okay, I’ve done a huge amount of healing. Eighty percent of my traumas, ninety percent of my traumas are healed, but it’s not all healed. You know, I have clues. Well, this was a clue. Going through this awful experience was a clue in this moment of distress, violation, and horror of how much I have healed and how much I haven’t.
And it’s like, I think there was part of me that went into a survival mode that I learned to go into as a teenager. I learned in my relationship with my father the best way to deal with my father when he hates me, despises me, is screaming at me, is grabbing me and shaking me and throwing me around and dragging me around, physically assaulting me, is to empathize with him, to talk with him, to reason with him. And I would always do that. I learned it was the best way. If I had screamed at him or cried or fought back, it was like, I don’t know what he would have done. He might have broken my arm. He might have punched me. I really don’t know because I never did it. All I knew is just comply with this insane strong person, and that’s what I did with those guys.
And you know, here I am. I didn’t get my teeth knocked out. I didn’t get any bones broken. I didn’t get punched. I didn’t get kicked. I didn’t get knocked on the ground. But I’m left feeling like, is this who I want to be? Was it good that I did that? Yes, it could because I survived. And it’s like, what would I have done if my father hadn’t traumatized me? I might have behaved differently.
I think also I went through a lot of crazy stuff as a therapist, threatened by clients. I mean, I worked with a lot of people who are full of rage and horrible, horrible trauma and awful diagnoses known as psychosis and this and that, and people in really intense altered states, people projecting stuff onto me. This is not unfamiliar. Never got assaulted as a therapist. I got threatened. Never had anyone even put their hands on me. This was what I went through last night was worse than anything. And threatened to be killed, things like that. It happened to me as a therapist, sad to say, sometimes with people I really, really cared about. Sometimes people afterward felt really bad about some of the things they said to me.
This is part of, I guess, being a therapist, being so open to people who are in such torment is to be close to them. It’s like stuff comes out. And this is what’s weird also with those guys. There was an intimacy that happened, some strange trauma bond that I felt.
But I asked the policemen afterwards, as we were walking back to his car, they drove me to the home police station, drove me back home, and I appreciated that. But I said, do you think I’m going to be traumatized from this? I asked this policeman, just trying to, you know, get something out of it, think about this because I really was wondering, and I still wonder what’s going to be the effect. He said to me, people respond to stuff like this in all sorts of different ways. I said, well, what do you think about me? You’ve seen, if you’ve seen a lot of people, you’ve seen crazy stuff. He said, well, you didn’t get hurt, so that’s good. He says, but you know, you’re talking about, I don’t think you will be. I appreciated that because I don’t think I will be either.
I asked my friend afterward. I was talking to, I was like, do you think I’m gonna be traumatized? Because I don’t think so. Also, my friend has been robbed, mugged the same way three different times with weapons and people, stuff. And it was very helpful to talk to someone who also went through similar stuff. It made me feel less ashamed.
Also, this is something I felt afterward too, is why did they pick on me? Okay, yes, I was not paying attention. I had a phone. But also, I had this hat on. I brought my hat. I’ll show you. This is the hat I was wearing, these two funny little tassels. And I thought maybe I looked weak wearing it. Maybe I looked like a [ __ ] or something wearing this hat. And I mean, part of me was ashamed. Why did I wear that? And I look stupid. And part of me is like, I love that hat. It’s been a special hat for many years. It’s like, it looks a little different. This is New York. You can wear whatever you want. But maybe these guys targeted me. Maybe I’m dumb. Maybe I should look tougher when I’m out there, walk like this. But it’s like, I’m in my own neighborhood. I want to be me where I live.
And it’s like, well, afterward also I went and read websites about mugging. And one thing I really appreciated is one website said, don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault. If you know, sometimes people, they say blame themselves, don’t do it. Don’t go there. It’s not your fault those people did that to you. You know, and that really helped. Then I read other ones that went all into detail about don’t go walking alone at night. If you are, be sure, be aware of your surroundings. Don’t be on the phone. Don’t lose your distraction. And I’m just like, don’t be in, you know, alone places where there’s no people around, where it’s isolated and bad neighborhood. I did it all wrong. And there part of me, I felt guilty and stupid. I did feel ashamed. I did feel embarrassed, and I can’t take that away.
And I guess what I want to learn from this, that’s the real key. I want to make the most of this experience. So I think I’m going to wrap this up. I think I’m going to conclude this sort of wild, fragmented public service announcement. But I also think the main thing I want to say is I feel for anyone who went through this, who is going through this, especially if anyone who’s watching this who has recently gone through an experience like this. I hope you can derive something from my experience.
The other thing is trauma. Trauma, adult trauma, if you call that a trauma, this violation, it’s experienced through the lens of unresolved earlier life trauma. So I experienced this not just through the earlier traumas I experienced, but also through my healing. Because I think of this, what if I hadn’t done all this healing? What if I had been the boy that was so shut down as a result of my father abusing me? I was beaten up at other points. And what if I, what if I’d never done all this healing that I’ve done in the last 20, 30 years? Because I’ve done so much healing. I’ve done so much releasing and becoming the real me and grieving. I think it would have affected me a lot worse. I think it might seriously have traumatized me.
I think I may do a follow-up on this to see if I’m right that I’m not going to be traumatized in a few days, a week. Yeah, I’m probably gonna be more careful walking out at night, and I probably won’t like people being behind me, and I’ll look over my shoulder, which feels vulnerable, and I don’t like it. I probably will do that. Is that a post-traumatic reaction or is that just being smart? I don’t know. But I think the real key is, in terms of this channel, in terms of experiencing trauma, is we experience trauma through the lens of the unresolved traumas in our life. And so I really am very, very grateful for all the healing that I’ve done because I felt it made me better able to process what I’m going through, better able to be connected with my feelings, to have a self to come back to.
I know when I was a child, I went through horrible, violating things that were worse than this, being beaten up in school, beaten up in my neighborhood, awful humiliating torments.
Having my pants pulled down. Terrible, awful things that kids did to me. And back then, the saddest thing is I had nobody to talk about it with. I always did blame myself at some level. There must be something wrong with me. I’m too small and too ugly. I have no friends. I couldn’t talk to my parents. I couldn’t talk to my dad; they humiliated me more. My mom was like terrible; she violated me in a million different ways, and they weren’t safe. I talked about nothing that I went through with anybody. I couldn’t talk about my friends. I didn’t want to lose my sort of masculine edge because my masculinity was so shaky, because I was so wounded and so socially alienated and awkward.
So now it’s like what I’m grateful for is all this healing I’ve done, the friends I’ve gotten, the ability to be open. I wrote about it in my journal. I also had to sit in this darn police station and detectives’ rooms with the one-way mirror, and they questioned me. And you know, that wasn’t so bad, but I had a lot of time to just wait, and there was no internet. So I just sat and wrote in my journal. It really helped. This was key for me, getting out my feelings. I wrote three journal entries. I wrote in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. I chatted with a friend who is a therapist in a different country. Had a long chat with her about what I went through. She was very empathic. It really helped to have someone to be kind. Multiple people be kind, talking about it here.
Even I, I, I don’t want to use this as a sort of therapeutic tool, but I think in this case it probably is to be able to talk about it. Anyways, I am sure I have talked for a long, long time. Anyways, so I’m going to wrap it up here, and I just want to say I hope this helped you, and thank you for listening to this.