Excerpt from Chapter 2: Battling Self Doubt 

"A College Story

    Growing up in Hawaii I had never experienced snow, nor had I ever heard the term Wind Chill Factor.  Walking back to my dorm across the Northwestern University campus, I was acutely aware of both.  I should have been focused on the recent rapes and the fact that I was foolishly walking alone at night.  There is a false sense of security on a university campus and like most teenagers, I was too wrapped up in the details of my own life.
    When I arrived at the plaza stairs a block from my dormitory a young man was approaching from the top and since he chose the left side of the railing, I chose the right.  Neither of us acknowledged the other but there was something about him that I did not like.  My intuition was yelling at me and  I had to turn around.  It was fortunate that I did because he had reached the bottom and was just beginning his charge up my side of the stairs, taking two and three at a time.  I was stunned.  I still remember all the different thoughts that flashed through my mind beginning with, “I was right!” and ending with, “This can’t be happening!”  I had seen another student in the distance and I remember thinking that I would scream just loudly enough for him to hear me.  I knew that screaming would be a good thing to do.  Yet even in the urgency of that moment I was still conscious of making a mistake or worse, making an enormous fool of myself.  Well fortunately, my vocal cords over rode my confused adolescent brain and I screamed -- loudly.  So loudly in fact, that the man tripped and fell at my feet, stammering apologies and asking if he had scared me.  Then he continued running across the plaza.
    Well, now I had a whole new set of thoughts flooding my mind beginning with, “Of course you scared me you idiot!” and ending with images of a piece of my mind plastered across his face!  I was now convinced, because he had apologized, that he was just an insensitive idiot who deserved to be severely reprimanded.  So I chased him across the plaza and watched him jump in the passenger side of a car, conveniently parked at the foot of the steps.  There was no rumbling of an engine turning over and not the slightest pause for pleasant conversation before the car screeched away.  That car had been idling, and that’s when I stopped running.  In fact, I froze in my tracks, hit by the realization of what had just nearly happened.  The person in that car had been an accomplice, waiting for some poor unconscious girl to be thrown into the back seat.
    Well, I was pretty shaken up.  I just could not believe it.    By the time I got back to the dorm I was no longer certain whether this had been an attack or just a melodramatic mistake.  Worst of all, I never reported it.

    Perhaps something like this has happened to you.  I am referring to the constant reversal of certainty and eventual conquest of self doubt more than I am the actual scenario.  Perhaps your story has a tragic end.  The reason that I share mine is to illustrate just how convoluted the mind can become in a matter of seconds.
    I will never forget the extreme fluctuation between certainty and doubt.  I am still astounded that in the face of intuition, visual evidence, and a campus rape watch, that my self doubt prevailed to such a degree that I never even reported the incident to the police.  Why?  I didn’t report it because he apologized.  He tripped at my feet, stammered with authentic surprise and apologized.  That apology caused me to doubt myself."

Excerpt from Empowered Living: A Guide to Physical and Emotional Protection

by Tori M. Eldridge

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