One of the reasons I love my role as trauma therapist, is witnessing and partaking in the growth and healing of my clients. I tell them I am a co-partner on their healing journey, I do not see myself as wiser than, or an expert, rather a trusted guide.
I mentioned in my first blog, what is trauma therapy, how bearing witness to this phenomenon of healing is beautiful. My definition of beautiful may be different from most since it includes pain and suffering in addition to emotional ease, it does not shy away from raw, unbiased sorrow and grief. In a culture such as ours in the United States, which labels pain as “negative” and overmedicates our natural, healthy and even necessary emotions, it is my job as a trauma therapist to encourage my clients to move closer to their pain and suffering with acceptance of what they discover. True mental and emotional health does not decipher what feelings are “good” or “bad,” it allows all emotions to be seen, felt and expressed without judgment.
Learning to trust that your emotions are nothing to fear is an essential part of reaching emotional health. This can be a difficult task, especially if one’s emotions are creating unbearable symptoms after a trauma. Often, symptoms such as panic, anxiety, or depression are increased by one’s fear of them, not the raw emotions themselves. If you believe your feelings are ugly and scary, then you’re really telling yourself that you are ugly and scary.
By learning to accept your feelings in the instant you notice them, you can then be intentional with what you need, creating compassion for your emotions and overall self. For example, if I notice I am feeling sadness, I could allow it to be there without naming it “bad” and allow myself to cry. If I were to label my sadness as something negative and push it away, I will not allow myself to cry and thus stop the natural unfolding or release to occur. This can manifest later in anxiety or panic since my sadness became stuck and stagnant with no movement of release.
In therapy, my clients discover which emotions they hold judgments for and which become stuck and increase their trauma symptoms. Slowly and with patience, clients learn to accept all of their feelings and thus, themselves, which create emotional freedom and decreased symptoms. Like anything challenging in life, this process takes practice and compassion, but it is worth it. You are worth it.
“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”? Pema Chödrön