Have you ever been moving along at a comfortable pace with no doubt about where you are headed and how to get there, only to fall into a raging river that carries you way off course? Me either. At least not literally. Figuratively, though, that’s another story.

What makes trauma worse? Silence. Throughout my life, the message was always clear. Don’t talk about this. No one told me not to, but I was punished, not believed, or had the other person’s behavior excused away. And that wasn’t just one incident. It was time and time again, for years. The final straw was being told by a professor and Licensed Therapist that I was not to tell anyone about something that happened to me. We know what secrets do to a person. They make people very sick. I was already sick, but the longer I held onto my little secret, the sicker I became.

Let’s fast forward to sound therapy and a great therapist. It took me years to finally decide I needed to tell the story of what happened. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know I have been working through the narrative of what has happened to me with my therapist for quite a while now. It has not been easy. In fact, there are times that it is downright seemingly impossible to stay present, have compassion for the younger parts of me, or see logical reasoning behind why I did what I did in those situations. I am a judgy b*tch when it comes to myself. (Don’t worry. Everyone else is safe. Even if you were to do the exact same thing as me, I would have nothing but compassion for you).

Though every step has been difficult, I have never doubted that going through my narrative is what I need to do. I need to give my brain and body the ability to talk about it. Right now, my therapist reads, and I process. I hope to someday be able to use my own voice to speak matter-of-factly about what happened. For now, I continue to experience massive amounts of shame. Shame has kept me silent, though, so I am trying to be comfortable sitting with the shame and pushing myself to use my voice in those moments, even if it is a squeak of a statement or comment. Though the path has been difficult, it has been the one that made the most sense to me. That is until about a week ago.

I was sitting on my therapist’s couch when she started speaking. “I care about what is in your narrative. And I don’t. I think we need to do things differently.” My head started spinning. I know I am hearing that my narrative is important, but it’s not important because of the content. But it’s important to me because I need to be able to work through the shame to be able to speak it. The more words my therapist spoke, the more I felt as though she was silencing me. “We are going to step away from the narrative. It’s not important that you tell what happened.” She didn’t actually say that, but that is what I started hearing. She didn’t understand what I needed. I felt triggered. I felt immediately silenced. I felt the “Don’t Speak” part stepping in and ensuring I kept my thoughts quiet. I was feeling angry and afraid. I was feeling shame. I was feeling sad. So sad. I was feeling alone. So alone. I went from walking along the path to suddenly struggling for my life and flailing in river rapids.

Now, here’s growth. Before I left that office, and despite the intense emotions and felt need to stay silent, I did my best to communicate my experience. It was probably primitive (almost unintelligible) and non-linear, but I chose to let my therapist into my very emotionally driven internal world at that moment.

I don’t know what we are doing. I hate that lost feeling. But I know I have at least used my voice. And isn’t that what some of this is all about?

* For the record, my therapist was communicating her thoughts on my inner dialogue, shame, and long-held belief that I am a POS. She wasn’t saying there is no value in sharing my narrative. She was sharing her desire to address some areas where I am stuck.