“From an early age, the thing that made me feel most alive was being outside.” The first of nine pages of my trauma narrative starts with that sentence. It’s a bit different than how the original (first version) of my trauma narrative read. You see, slightly interspersed with the traumatic incidents are recognitions about myself. A sign of healing. The words aren’t the only difference, though. As Dr. C. read the first nine pages, I realized that the level of compassion, empathy, and healing has changed how I physically and emotionally feel while listening.

“I moved back to PA after a year in MI.” That is page ten, and it gets progressively worse through page twenty-three. When Dr. C. first started reading those pages, she would stop frequently to process with me. “What are you noticing?” “What are you feeling?” “How do you feel about the twenty-five-year-old right now?” The questions were brief breaks, assessments, meant to keep me engaged and aware, and to help me integrate the past with the present in a completely non-traumatized way.

One day, the session began as usual. Brief small talk that acts more as a check-in on what things are going on in my life, and then the important question that determines whether we will proceed with the narrative: “How do you feel about your twenty-five-year-old self?” I’ve noticed a stronger sensation of compassion and empathy as well as deep, deep sadness, and that was my answer that day. With anger and blame not being part of my vocabulary, Dr. C. asked for the narrative. She read every word on pages ten through twenty-three, and without her questions, I sat listening and paying attention to my sensations, emotions, breathing, and thoughts about the twenty-five-year-old. I felt waves of nausea that indicated disgust, shame, and embarrassment. I noticed intense sadness, no, grief. But I also saw compassion and a strong desire to make that twenty-five-year-old no longer feel afraid, alone, and trapped. I was balanced. I was present and engaged with the room, the words, the sensations, and the emotions. It was terrible, and it was very different from the previous experiences. It was MUCH less terrible than it had been in the past. I didn’t feel frozen. I didn’t feel like I was fighting dissociation. I didn’t feel the need to escape. I felt emotions shifting and changing rather than overwhelming me. It just felt different.

Something was missing. I sat on it for a week while Dr. C. was on vacation. My conclusion was that I needed the IFS model to create enough distance to make the trauma bearable to process, but I needed to close the gap a little. I realized I was seeing the trauma as something that happened to the 25-year-old me, but not ME. The distance had been incredibly helpful in getting to this point, but there is a difference between showing compassion to a 25-year-old and allowing that same compassion for myself as I am today. So, when Dr. C. returned, I did my best to articulate that. She spoke intentionally, using strong language to ensure I heard that what the 25-year-old went through was what I, the 43-year-old, had gone through. She said, “It happened to you.” And then she told me to say out loud that it happened to me. I sat in silence for several minutes. I was feeling, thinking, sensing, and working to deliberately say it while simultaneously believing it and not distancing myself from it. “It felt different. “It happened to me…and it sucked.” I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have to swallow the lump in my throat and blink to avoid tears. It just felt different.