Healing and Hurt

I think it’s important to talk about my part in the dynamic with my first therapist. I’m not sure I fully have the words to describe everything, but I’m going to try my best. I had never in my life been cared for the way she cared for me. I’d never felt nurtured before. Seen. Heard. Understood in the way she managed to understand me. I had never trusted anyone enough to share my story either. Honestly, I didn’t think my story mattered enough to tell. My body had absolutely no

It’s strange how two experiences can both hurt you and still feel nothing alike in your body. I’ve been thinking about that, the difference between a wound and a trauma. The difference between someone who harms you and owns it, and someone who harms you and then lies about it to protect themselves. My first therapist made mistakes. I’m not going to sugarcoat that. Things happened that left me with pain I still carry, and probably more trauma than either of us knew how to hold

Vulnerability has always been hard for me. I’ve always been able to push myself to be vulnerable because I know that’s what it takes in therapy to get anywhere. But it’s always been hard. And now, it’s amplified. After opening up, I have to move through all the defenses that immediately pop up afterward. I’m exhausted. I’m angry. And with everything in me, I hope the board makes my second therapist take courses on ethical care so she has to hold herself accountable to better

I’m kind of just out of it today. And I’m frustrated. I have therapy, and, as usual, I’m blank. No thoughts. No brain cells. Just this quiet heaviness that makes me want to curl up and cry. I envy the people who can walk into therapy and just… talk. The ones who can lay everything out, or at least recap their week without freezing. And maybe envy isn’t the right word, because there’s no bitterness in it. It’s more of a longing. A small ache. Something in me wishing I could do

There are days when the only thing I feel is this quiet panic that maybe nothing in me is ever going to change. That maybe this is all my life ever becomes, me trying to convince myself I’m a decent human being, trying to gather enough evidence to believe I’m not a lost cause. I hate how dramatic that sounds, but it still feels true in my body. Because what if I never get better? What if I never feel a pull toward anything? What if I always want more but never move? There’s t

I’ve been in my head about the termination I went through this year (the one that happened by email), and every time I try to write about it, I end up drowning in shame and deleting everything. Not just shame, honestly. It’s also this feeling that my thoughts start spilling out in ways that feel unaligned with who I am. Even when everything I type is true, it feels mean, and it feels like I’m shit-talking, and that’s just not something I like to do. I keep telling myself I’ll

I sometimes feel like different people feeling different grief. Idk how to explain it. Like one second I’m saying “my feelings move” and the next I’m drowning in grief again. Sometimes it’s so painful I really can’t take a breath in. When termination first happened, I blocked the practice on Instagram because I knew seeing her would be too difficult. But about five months ago I unblocked them and thought I would probably be okay, and I guess I’m not as okay as I thought I cou

I’m not doing good today. I keep having panic attacks thinking my therapist is going to terminate with me. And the frustrating part is… she hasn’t done anything that would make me think that. Nothing actually points to that being real. She cancelled because she was sick. She emailed. She rescheduled. She was normal. I know that. But my brain doesn’t care about the logic. I noticed the calendar changes, I noticed the cancellation, and my brain just went straight to “you’re goi

Therapy doesn’t feel like a place of relief for me anymore. It’s not my therapist’s fault and she’s doing everything right… I just feel dread around it now. I don’t want to feel this way. I want it to be a place that feels like relief again. A place where even when I’m working through the hard stuff, I can feel like I’m not alone. Right now I can’t connect, which means I can’t feel that way. It’s just dread and anxiety and, if I’m being honest, grief and sadness and anger. No

You know… for once I actually know what I should talk about in therapy. But it’s also the last thing I want to touch. Losing my aunt. Losing my cat. Having a therapist I was in the middle of trauma work with choose to dip out by email. The fact that I’m still grieving the first therapist I ever worked with. Nope. Don’t want to go there. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not right now. There’s this other part of me that keeps whispering that maybe I’m not cut out for EMDR. That maybe i

There are some things I can’t write about. Some things I can’t let myself sit with long enough to find words for, even privately. I wish I could explain the complex nature of trauma. Or maybe I just wish I could explain mine. Some days I see things clearly. Other days I feel like the biggest pile of shit for even allowing myself to see them that way. It’s wanting desperately, deeply to be loved. To feel loved. And knowing that cup might always stay empty. I don’t know if I’ll

Today was my aunt’s funeral. The room was adorned with beautiful flowers and filled with so many people who hold love for her. I spent time with my cousin (her daughter) and listened to stories about my aunt’s life that I had never heard before. My favorite was hearing how my uncle met her. Picturing their love just beginning brought a smile to my face, even in the heaviness of the day. She was the baker of the family. She made every family member’s wedding cake, including my

I feel apathetic but also dirty like everything around me needs to be scrubbed raw but I can’t even get up my body feels heavy like i’m made of dust and old air I keep thinking if i could just clean something maybe i’d feel more like myself but i don’t even know who that is right now there’s no thread to hold onto no center just this dull static in my head each state i’m in carries its own kind of pain numbness burns different than sadness but it still burns numbness feels li

I want to walk out into the middle of the woods and scream until no sound can escape from my mouth. I want to punch a tree until the bark becomes my skin. I want to fall apart and never get back up again. I want to lay in the dirt and decompose, so I never have to feel the pain of not being enough..or being too much…ever again. I feel like I’ve only gotten worse since therapy. Maybe it’s that I’m realizing how much of me isn’t made for this world. Maybe it’s that I can’t exis

I’m tired. Emotionally and physically. I don’t have much room in me to be vulnerable about what’s going on for me internally right now. A lot of it brings intense shame and it makes me feel selfish, so I’d rather keep it as a private process. It’s probably something I should process in therapy, but I don’t know if I can even let myself speak aloud about it. Anyway, I still wanted to show up to my blog today, but I think this is as much as I can give for now. That I’m in a pla

I had a very emotional afternoon. I ended up opening up about everything with my therapist. I didn’t plan to—but I’m also not very good at bullshitting, so when direct questions are asked, it’s just easier for me to be honest. I’m glad I did. I needed to talk about it all. Now I just feel… depleted. All the crying, all the remembering, all the trying to make sense of things that don’t make sense. I miss the connection I felt with my first therapist. It’s not that I don’t like

Today feels heavy in a way that words can’t seem to carry. A family member died suddenly yesterday, and today I have to bring my late grandmother’s cat to the vet to help him pass. He’s suffering, and I know deep down that keeping him here would be selfish. But knowing that doesn’t make it easier. I keep trying to find words to make sense of it all, but every time I reach for them, it’s like my mind turns to a blank canvas…quiet, colorless, and empty. I think it’s because it’

There are moments where everything I’ve ever done wrong replays through my mind like a film that won’t stop rolling. Every mistake, every word I let slip out of anger or fear or pain. Every time I reacted instead of responded. And when it happens, I can’t seem to catch a full breath. It’s like shame sits heavy on my chest, pressing down until it hurts to even look in the mirror. I know logically that who I am isn’t defined by those moments, that I am more than my reactions, m

I’m writing this just to give you a picture into how it can feel like whiplash inside of me a lot of the time. As intense as my feelings were just a few minutes ago, I now feel calm and like everything is going to be okay. It can definitely get exhausting getting pulled in and out of the intensity of things. When I read some of my writings back, like the one before this one, it’s hard to even recognize myself in the writing. It doesn’t feel like me. And honestly I can get a b

This last therapy experience has left me feeling ashamed of my attachment style. I don’t want to be, because I know it’s not something we get to choose, and I know I’m really trying my best to unravel all of the protective behaviors I have. But I can’t help but feel kind of grossed out by myself. I’m struggling to feel like a good person right now. And I don’t know how to believe anyone could ever really care, or be able to stick around long enough for me to learn how to unra