If you read my blog regularly, you know I took a deep dive into trauma work. I wrote the details of what happened to face the pain head-on, and my therapist read most of it out loud–the rest silently. Since then, we have revisited the narrative. She has read the same couple of pages several times while I have attempted to tune into my emotional and physical experiences.

“What are you noticing?” What emotions are you experiencing?”

It hasn’t been easy. In fact, it has been a much more emotionally turbulent experience than I was anticipating, and I was expecting something off the charts. I’ve learned I am much stronger than I thought, though. Each time I sit, listen, feel, and experience the effects of my narrative, I become more in tune to the impact it has had on me. And by it, I mean what happened, the protection and help I didn’t have but desperately wanted and needed, the beliefs I have, the body sensations and emotions that I have ignored, and the devastation and grief I now feel.

I have faced a lot of embarrassment, shame, and personal judgment each time my narrative is read. It has been one of the most healing things I have done though. Each reading allows me to process a different aspect of the sensations, feelings, emotions, and experiences.

In the most recent session with the narrative, my therapist inquired about something I have NEVER processed. I have talked about it cognitively, sure, but I haven’t faced the shame, pain, confusion, embarrassment, dissonance, and other complex emotions. I didn’t realize how buried it was until the flood of those emotions and sudden realization that I was never able to talk about “it” honestly and openly.

It’s been a week since any part of my narrative has been read out loud by my therapist. Instead of holding the blue notebook pages in her hands, she has challenged me to take a look at how I have mistreated myself. I have adopted the very approach with myself that I have loathed from others. And in my last session, she asked me a question she has asked many times before: “If not now, when?”

When will I drop the hatred? When will I stop punishing myself? When will I stop running away? When will I choose to believe that I am not the exception? When will I give myself the same empathy, compassion, and care I give to others? When will I be the supportive person I needed rather than the people who perpetuated the abuse and hurt?

When? Now. Fighting is harder than healing. And healing is an extreme sport.