I tried to draw something. It sucked. It was one of the most hideous things I’ve ever drawn. “My soul is dead,” I thought to myself, and I half-laughed. Do you see the drawing above? Enough said.
“If you had 5% more energy, what would you do to help yourself?” my therapist, Hillary, asked me.
“Well, I’ll lay there thinking of things to do, like going outside for a walk, but that just makes me angry and I just don’t know why.”
“Hmm. How about if we get curious about the anger. Do you have any ideas about why you might be feeling angry?”
“Well, ideas will come to me, but I can’t decide if they make any sense.”
“I’d love to hear them!”
I slowly mentioned about 4 different reasons, one of which was, “I’m just tired and it’s too much work." She said she liked the sound of that one.
“I just don’t understand how people just live. They just live their lives and do normal things and keep a routine and…and…yeah. They just live their lives and I don’t get it!”
Hillary acknowledged my feelings and asked, “Can you remember anything we’ve talked about before that might be a good reason for why it feels like things are harder for you? Can you think of what I might say to that?”
I replied, “The only things that keep going through my head right now are people thinking that I’ve been given a good life and upbringing, and that I've had it better than most, and that I just constantly think of the negative, and I just need to think positively and that’s my problem...”
“Do you mind if I share some thoughts?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“When you bathe a child in stress hormones, it is toxic for their brain.”
I can’t remember all of her words exactly, but that’s one line that I can remember exactly as it was said. She continued to remind me that I had grown up in a certain environment, and that unfortunately, that meant that my brain had wired itself in a certain way, and this is what made normal things feel so hard for me. She reminded me that all the things that we had talked about me experiencing in therapy and that I was currently complaining of—Depression, Anxiety, ADHD, memory problems, immune system problems, etc—were all issues that many children who have experienced relational trauma have grown up to deal with as adults.
She reminded me that there can be healing, but that it is a lot of work, and that it is okay to have moments of mourning about how much work it is just to function normally and how it isn’t fair. She reminded me that it wasn’t very long ago that I had mentioned things that I wanted to experience in life, even if I didn’t have specific plans. And she reminded me that it might not be very far away from getting back to feeling that way again.
I’m not sure why I was a little surprised at her response to me. I don’t know why the things she said to me sounded as if I had never known them. We hadn’t talked about my Complex PTSD specifically in a long time, but I met her almost five years ago. With an exception of an 8 month break that I took a few years ago, she has consistently been there for me for all these years. And what she says to me feels right, but when I’m not talking to her, the messages I am and have been bombarded with everywhere else take over in my brain. The messages that say, “You’re just a pessimist, you’re a downer, you’re crazy, you’re an ingrate, you need to be more positive, you need to let go of the past, it’s your fault, you’re just weak, you’re lazy, you act entitled, you need Jesus,” etc and on and on, harass me daily.
(Despite the fact that she is a professional in psychiatry and much of her training has been in helping those who have experienced trauma, I used to doubt her. I've met more than one idiotic psychiatrist and counselor. One who yelled at me over some sort of philosophical problem. One who told me after 45 minutes of talking with me that I probably had a mood disorder instead of ADHD because people with ADHD would never pick up trash on the side of the road like I did and so he said, "Congratulations, you've stumped a psychiatrist." My current therapist knows what she is talking about, but I remember asking her once, "How do you know that I'm not crazy and making all of this crap up?" In response she said, "I have talked with many people in therapy, and in addition to listening to what you say to me, I notice how you react to me during our interactions. The way that you respond to me lines up very much with how a person who has had the kind of background that you say you have had might act. In that moment, she proved to me that she was not a nincompoop.)
My video connection with her hadn’t worked out so we could only hear each other’s voices at this point, and she couldn’t see the tears on my face. I heard her say, “I can hear in your voice that there is maybe some feeling there that is different than before. Can you tell me a bit about what is going on for you?”
I answered, “I am crying…” It sounded and felt weird coming so confidently from my own voice, like I wasn’t ashamed of my tears. I have been getting better and better at this over time. Since I have been continuously abused for my tears in the past, and treated as if my tears were a personal offense against others, it has been difficult to get to a place where it’s comfortable staying calm with my tears as I share them. I continued, “I think maybe I feel a little sad. And I don’t know why, but I feel like I can go for a walk now. Like I can fight.”
She asked if I knew what caused the sudden change. I said that I thought it was because I felt validated. She told me that she is always willing to remind me of things, but that I am also capable of reminding myself.
I don’t feel capable of reminding myself. I am trying. My goal is to feel the same confidence that she helped instill in me in a few weeks from now when I talk to her again.
It’s odd that all she did was remind me of what I have been through. And as she did so, I felt a fighter rise up within me once again. I felt the power of having a story that was mine.
I didn’t need her to tell me to think positively. I didn’t need her to preach to me the power of positivity. I didn’t need her to tell me that other people have used the abuse they've endured to empower themselves, because that's utter bullshit. Abuse is never empowering. I recently came across something that I wrote a long time ago:
I think sometimes people look at the rough things that happen in your life as fuel that you should just burn to make you stronger and keep going. But you can't burn dirt. Dirt puts out a fire. Sometimes you have to find the right shovel to remove it and reclaim the buried treasure underneath. And once it's found, share it with the world.
Hillary helps me find my shovel when I've lost it, so I can keep digging. I needed her to show me that she sees me, that she doesn't doubt what I have been through, and that there is hope. Apparently, that's all that I needed.
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