Trauma therapy is no joke

"This is hard work, it is tiring work, but it is courageous work."

TW: Whilst I do not share details of personal traumatic events in this letter, I do talk about trauma therapy more generally.

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Dear fellow human,

Last week I arrived at my therapist’s office with a pressing question: “please reassure me that it’s ‘normal’ that I’m feeling worse before I start to feel better?”. With a knowing look on her face, my therapist nodded slowly and said that yes, that certainly can be the case.

The relief I felt...

As someone who has health anxiety alongside a generalised anxiety disorder, I become easily concerned about how I’m feeling. In a bid to understand why I’m feeling the way I’m feeling I have been keeping a health journal for a number of months now. Whilst on balance it is hugely helpful, it did throw up a few concerns the other week when I realised that despite doing everything I know I should be (therapy, sleep, medication, food, exercise, connection) to give me the best chances of feeling ‘okay’, I was categorically not and had not been for a while.

It’s an unsettled feeling that I, perhaps naively, thought would dissipate after my diagnoses and a few rounds of therapy. This deep pit of emotion wells up inside me at nearly all times of the day. Even in my sleep my dreams haunt me and I wake up with thoughts that leave me angry and scared. There’s no ‘putting my finger’ on what it is. It’s an intangible mass that swells inside of me, occasionally bursting out of me as rage, tears, and sorrow.

On a basic level, it feels as though these are the years of emotions, needs, and feelings that I have suppressed bubbling up under the surface and finally escaping. It’s surely no coincidence that I am feeling these things for the first time since I have been in trauma therapy. The closest I got to feeling them before was the sharp pain in the back of my throat from gulping down my words and tears over and over again. Even though I attended cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) before, it didn’t help - in fact, I’m pretty sure that CBT only made my mental health worse whilst simultaneously persuading me that I had ‘nothing to worry about other than a little anxiety’.

In some ways it is cathartic to know that I am processing it all now. I am by nature optimistic and anticipate a time when I will be at peace with the chaos. And yet going through the process of acquainting myself with the chaos is so tiring, confronting, and scary. I feel completely unequipped to deal with the onslaught of lost feelings and emotions that are finding me again. In fact, it is only when I am sitting with my therapist that I can put words to my feelings and experiences. Each week I wait for that fifty minute window to dig a little deeper and understand a little more about myself.

But the time in between therapy sessions is not a walk in the park. My subconscious is always processing what I’ve uncovered which requires so much grounding and regulating work to ensure I don’t spiral away. It’s a full-time job, and one I am privileged to be able to work through. But even though I know it is a privilege to be supported on my healing journey like this, there are moments where I truly think ‘it might just be easier to rewind’. That is, in and of itself, self-sabotage - but it reflects the depths of pain and discomfort that healing trauma is.

I think what I am wanting to say is that I owe myself softness, care, and compassion in these unchartered waters. I am opening myself up and examining myself from the inside out. I am diving into my vulnerabilities and insecurities. I am facing the truth head on. I am learning to give myself the emotional care I always needed.

I am continually reminding myself to take more rest than I think I need. My new weighted blanket has become my greatest ally, the grounding techniques I’ve learned are my best friends, and self-compassion is my balm.

This is hard work, it is tiring work, but it is courageous work.

Sending you so much love,

Charlie ♡