A blog post by Pepetoe, Elena Overfield

Content note: This post discusses sexual assault, suspected spiking, trauma and violence against women. Please take care while reading if these topics are difficult for you.

Have you ever had a moment that completely changed the way you see the world? Not because something huge definitely happened, but because something happened that made you stop and think, “What if?” Over the last few days, I’ve found myself asking that question. I don’t know exactly what happened. I may never know. Whatever it was, it brought back a chapter of my life that I very rarely speak about, and it made me realise something that I think so many women quietly carry every single day. The world can be a frightening place. Yet somehow, many of us have become so accustomed to living alongside that fear that we’ve stopped noticing just how abnormal it really is.

This isn’t really a post about me. It’s about what happens after something traumatic. It’s about the way one experience can change your instincts forever. It’s about why so many women constantly assess risk without even realising they’re doing it. And it’s about why I desperately don’t want to believe the worst in people, but sometimes wonder whether we have to prepare for it anyway.

---

As someone who has spoken openly about how uncertainty can make me spiral in ways that I’m not sure everyone experiences, I’ve realised that sometimes the fear of not knowing can be even more frightening than knowing the truth. It’s the endless questions. Did something happen? Am I overthinking this? Am I making something out of nothing? Should I say something? Uncertainty has a way of filling in the blanks with the worst possible answers. Then, for many women, there’s another layer to those questions.

It’s not just wondering what happened. It’s wondering whether anyone would believe you if you spoke up. Would they tell you you’re being emotional? Too dramatic? Overreacting? Paranoid? Would they dismiss your instincts before you’ve even had the chance to explain them?

Whether it’s because of our own past experiences, stories we’ve heard from friends, or the way these conversations are often portrayed, so many women carry an underlying fear of not being taken seriously. Sometimes, that fear is enough to stop someone speaking at all.

And perhaps the cruellest question of all becomes: What if I’m wrong? Because alongside the fear of what may or may not have happened comes another fear entirely: the fear of being dismissed. The fear that someone will roll their eyes. That they’ll tell you you’re making a fuss over nothing. That you should “just move on.” That you should “grow up.”

Trust me, I’ve had those things said to me before. And when you’ve already experienced trauma, those words don’t just hurt in the moment, they stay with you. They teach you to question your own instincts. They make you wonder whether you’re allowed to trust what your body is trying to tell you. So, when something happens that reminds you, even slightly, of your past, it’s almost impossible not to spiral. Your brain isn’t just processing what’s happening now. It’s trying to protect you from what happened then.

That’s one of the hardest things about trauma. People often imagine it as a memory, something that lives neatly in the past, tucked away until you decide to think about it again. But trauma doesn’t work like that, and unfortunately, a lot of you reading this will agree with me on that. It lives in your nervous system. It remembers feelings before your mind remembers facts. A smell, a crowded room, a particular song, a passing comment. A split second where something feels… off.

Suddenly, your body reacts before your brain has had a chance to catch up. Your heart races. Your stomach drops. Every alarm bell starts ringing. Not because you know something terrible has happened, but because your body remembers what it felt like the last time it did.

Trauma has an extraordinary way of convincing you it’s gone, until one ordinary moment quietly invites it back into the room. It’s an unwelcome guest. One that doesn’t knock. One that sits down uninvited and starts replaying memories you thought you’d carefully packed away years ago.

That’s why people who have experienced trauma often seem “hypervigilant.” We notice exits before we notice decorations. We notice changes in people’s tone. We notice when something feels different, even if we can’t explain why. To somebody else, that might look like anxiety, overthinking or being dramatic. But, to a nervous system that has learnt the world isn’t always safe, it’s more like survival.

Maybe that’s the saddest part of all. Trauma doesn’t just take away your sense of safety in the moment it happens. It quietly changes the way you experience the world afterwards. Not because you choose to see danger everywhere, but because your brain has learnt that danger can appear where you least expect it. And it’s not always loud. Sometimes in tiny, almost invisible ways. It teaches you to question, to scan, to prepare, to wonder whether you’re being sensible or whether you’re simply scared. It leaves you trying to find the impossible balance between staying vigilant enough to protect yourself and staying open enough to still believe that most people are good. And honestly? I don’t know where that balance is yet.

The Statistics We Don’t Talk About Enough

This Isn’t Just My Story

As I sat reflecting on a lot over the past few days, I found myself wondering whether I was overthinking things, whether I was letting my past influence my present, and whether my brain was simply connecting dots that weren’t there. Then I started reading. Reading government reports, BBC investigations, research into spiking across the UK.

One thing became very clear. This isn’t just my story. It’s thousands of people’s stories.

According to the UK Government, police in England and Wales received 6,732 reports of suspected spiking between May 2022 and April 2023 alone. Of those, 957 were reports of suspected needle spiking. On average, that’s more than 560 reports every single month. And those are only the incidents that were reported.

The Government itself acknowledges that the true scale is likely to be much higher because many victims never report what happened. Some aren’t sure whether they were spiked. Others worry there isn’t enough evidence. Many fear they won’t be believed, or simply don’t want to relive an already traumatic experience.

In a YouGov survey commissioned by the Government, 1 in 10 women and 1 in 20 men said they believe they have been spiked at some point in their lives. The average reported victim is just 26 years old, and almost three-quarters of reported victims are women.

Perhaps the statistic that struck me most wasn’t actually a number. It was the location. Around 80% of reported spiking incidents happen in public places: bars, pubs, clubs, festivals and other venues where people go to celebrate, socialise and enjoy themselves. Nearly half of all reported incidents occur in bars.

Think about that for a moment. The very places where we’re supposed to make memories with our friends have become places where so many people quietly calculate risk. We cover our drinks with our hands. We text someone before we leave. We promise to “let you know when I’m home.” We phone our mum to make sure she can meet us at the door when we Uber home alone as we leave far from our friends. And, a night that’s meant to be carefree comes with an invisible checklist that so many of us carry without even thinking.

Don’t just look at the numbers. Behind every statistic is a person. Someone whose evening didn’t end the way they imagined. Someone whose trust was broken. Someone who left with questions instead of memories. While it’s encouraging that conversations around spiking have become more visible in recent years, the numbers also remind us that awareness alone isn’t enough.

Because this isn’t simply about statistics. It’s about what those statistics represent. It’s about the invisible mental load so many people, particularly women, carry every time they leave the house. It’s about the reality that, for many, a night out isn’t just about choosing what to wear or where to go. It’s about calculating risk. Perhaps the saddest part of all is that we’ve become so used to doing it, we barely notice we’re doing it anymore.

The Invisible Rules We Grow Up Learning

Long before we’re old enough to understand why, many of us are quietly taught a set of rules. Not by a teacher, not from a textbook, but by parents, friends, older siblings, news headlines, and the stories we hear from other women. Don’t leave your drink unattended. Text me when you get home. Share your location. Stay together. Watch your friend’s drink while she goes to the toilet. Don’t walk home alone. Cross the road if someone makes you uncomfortable. Check the taxi registration. Hold your keys in your hand. Trust your gut.

The strange thing is that we’ve become so accustomed to these rules that we rarely stop to question them. They’re just… normal. They’re passed down almost like a rite of passage. When you turn eighteen, no one sits you down and says, “The world is dangerous.” Instead, they teach you little survival habits. Individually, they seem insignificant, but together, they paint quite a sobering picture.

If you really stop and think about it, it’s heartbreaking that so many of us leave the house with an invisible checklist running through our minds before we’ve even ordered our first drink. We plan escape routes before we’ve planned what cocktail we want. We know exactly who we’d call if something felt wrong. We know which friend we’d trust to believe us without question. We have code words with our friends. We pretend to be on the phone walking home. We memorise emergency contacts. We tell each other to “message me when you’re back.” Not because we’re pessimists, but because somewhere along the way, we’ve learnt that feeling prepared is often the closest thing we have to feeling safe.

Something else has been playing on my mind while writing this. Whenever we talk about staying safe, the conversation almost always centres around the person trying not to become a victim. Don’t leave your drink. Don’t walk home alone. Don’t wear both headphones. Don’t get into an unlicensed taxi. Don’t trust strangers. Don’t accept a drink from someone you don’t know. Don’t… don’t… don’t.

Whilst so much of that advice is practical and, unfortunately, necessary, I’ve realised it quietly places an enormous amount of responsibility on the people trying not to get hurt. We spend our lives learning how to avoid becoming victims, when the responsibility has never belonged to us in the first place. It has always belonged to the person choosing to cause harm. That’s a sentence I think we all need reminding of. Because if something awful happens, our minds have a habit of retracing every decision we made that day. Should I have left earlier? Should I have been more careful? Should I have said no? Should I have spotted the warning signs?

I think here we’re asking the wrong questions. Maybe the question was never what the victim should have done differently. Maybe the question should always be why somebody else made the decision to exploit another person’s trust, vulnerability or kindness. We should absolutely continue looking after ourselves and each other. We should keep sharing our locations, walking each other home, checking in, and trusting our instincts, but we should never confuse precaution with responsibility. Protecting ourselves is an act of self-care, causing harm is a choice, and those two things should never be mistaken for one another.

I Don’t Want To Think The Worst In People

This is the part I’ve wrestled with the most over years in therapy. Despite everything I’ve experienced, I still genuinely want to believe that most people are good. I want to believe that the stranger standing next to me at a concert is simply there to enjoy the music. I want to believe that if someone saw another person in distress, their instinct would be to help. I want to believe that kindness is still the default. And honestly? I think, for the most part, it is.

The vast majority of people would never dream of harming someone else. The tragedy is that it only takes one person who would. One person can change the way you experience the world forever. That’s the difficult balance trauma creates. You don’t want to become cynical. You don’t want to live your life expecting the worst from everyone you meet. But you also don’t want to ignore the reality that bad things do happen. It’s a constant tug-of-war between hope and self-preservation. Between believing in people and protecting yourself from them.

I’ve often asked myself whether trauma makes us suspicious. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it simply makes us aware of possibilities that other people haven’t had to think about yet. Maybe it simply teaches us that safety is something we can no longer take for granted.

I don’t think the answer is to trust nobody, and I don’t think it’s to trust everybody either. I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle. To stay kind without becoming naive. To stay open without abandoning caution. To believe in the goodness of people while still listening when something inside you quietly whispers that something isn’t right.

Trauma Doesn’t Stay In The Past

One of the biggest misconceptions about trauma is that it has an expiry date, that, after enough time has passed, you’ll simply “get over it.” I wish it worked like that. The reality is much quieter.

Trauma doesn’t always announce itself. It doesn’t always arrive in panic attacks or flashbacks.

Sometimes it shows up in the smallest moments. In the way you instinctively scan a room before sitting down. In the way you automatically check where the exits are. In the split second of hesitation before accepting a drink from someone. In the way your shoulders tense when somebody stands too close behind you. Or, in the flood of panic that arrives after something seemingly insignificant reminds your body of a feeling it hoped it would never experience again.

People often talk about trauma as though it’s a memory, but I don’t think it is. I think it’s a feeling. Your body remembers long before your brain has worked out why. Your nervous system doesn’t wait for evidence. It responds to familiarity, to patterns, to sensations, to instinct. Sometimes that’s incredibly frustrating. You find yourself questioning everything. Am I overreacting? Is this anxiety talking? Is this my past speaking? Or is my body trying to protect me? Trauma doesn’t just change what you’re afraid of. It changes what you believe you’re responsible for.

The truth is, I don’t always know, and I think that’s one of the hardest parts – trying to distinguish between fear born from experience, and intuition born from wisdom. I’ve learnt something else recently. I’d rather gently question my instincts than completely silence them. Because the goal isn’t to live in fear; the goal is to feel safe enough to enjoy life while trusting yourself when something genuinely doesn’t feel right.

Trauma may change the way we experience the world, but it doesn’t have to define the way we live in it.

Believe People When They Say Something Doesn’t Feel Right

If there’s one thing I hope people take away from this post, it’s not to become more fearful. It’s to become more compassionate. The reality is, we often don’t know what someone has experienced before they walk into a room. We don’t know what memories they’re carrying. We don’t know what invisible battles they’re fighting. Sometimes, all we see is someone who seems anxious, overly cautious, or perhaps a little “dramatic.”

But what if they’re not? What if they’re simply responding to a world that has taught them, through experience, to stay alert? When someone tells you that something doesn’t feel right, listen. Not because they’re definitely correct, but because they’re telling you that they don’t feel safe. And that deserves to be taken seriously.

If a friend suddenly says they think something is wrong, don’t laugh it off. Don’t tell them they’re overthinking. Don’t tell them to calm down. Stay with them. Help them get home. Offer to go with them if they want medical advice. Ask if they’d like you to stay. Because maybe nothing happened. Maybe they’ll wake up the next morning and everything will be fine. But, if something did happen, they’ll never forget the person who believed them before they even had the answers. Compassion doesn’t require certainty. It only requires kindness. Believing someone doesn’t mean deciding they’re right before all the facts are known. It means recognising that, in that moment, they’re frightened, and that deserves compassion.

I Still Want To Believe In The Goodness Of People

After writing this, I’ve realised something. This isn’t a post about fear. It’s about hope. Hope that one day the”Text me when you get home” message becomes a loving gesture instead of a safety precaution. Hope that one day looking after each other becomes something we do out of love rather than necessity. Hope that one day stories like mine, and countless others, become rarer and rarer.

Because, despite everything, I still don’t want to live in a world where I assume the worst in everyone I meet. I still believe that most people are good. I still believe that kindness outweighs cruelty. I still believe that the vast majority of strangers would step in if they saw someone in trouble. I have to believe that.

If I let the actions of a small number of people convince me that everyone is dangerous, then they take something else from me. Not just my sense of safety, but my faith in humanity. I refuse to give that away anymore than I already have. I don’t want fear to be the loudest voice in my life anymore.

Maybe the answer isn’t to become suspicious of everyone. Maybe it’s to become better at looking after one another. To check in on our friends. To believe people when they tell us something feels wrong. To ask twice if they’re okay. To walk them home. To challenge the culture that makes people question whether they’re “making a fuss.” To create spaces where people feel safe enough to speak before they’re certain.

Sometimes certainty never comes. Sometimes there are no definitive answers. Sometimes all that’s left is a feeling that something wasn’t right. And perhaps that’s enough. Enough to deserve compassion. Enough to deserve support. Enough to deserve being taken seriously.

If this post has one message, it’s this: we don’t have to choose between kindness and caution. We can believe that most people are good while still recognising that some people cause harm. We can trust our instincts without allowing fear to dictate every decision we make. We can acknowledge the reality of trauma without allowing it to become the whole story of our lives. And most importantly… we can look after one another a little better. Because none of us should have to carry the weight of uncertainty alone, and none of us should ever have to convince the world that our fear deserves to be taken seriously.