Different Wounds

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 at the time. But she did something that changes the shape of everything:

She held herself accountable.

She didn’t twist things.

She didn’t hide behind ethics.

She didn’t rewrite the narrative to protect herself.

She didn’t pretend she was perfect or blameless or above the messiness of being human.

She owned her part… fully.

And because she owned her part, I don’t feel the need to speak about her with anger.

Not because the hurt didn’t happen, but because the truth was acknowledged.

Because someone took responsibility instead of leaving me to carry it alone.

When someone takes responsibility for the harm they caused, the wound doesn’t rot.

It stays painful, yes, but it doesn’t turn into this confusing, destabilizing trauma you have to fight your way out of. It doesn’t become a story you’re forced to shout into the void just to feel sane again.

What happened with my second therapist is the opposite.

There’s no accountability there.

No honesty.

No repair.

Just carefully worded emails full of half-truths and outright lies meant to protect her own sense of self.

Just self-preservation dressed up as professionalism.

And it’s wild how much that difference matters.

Pain with accountability is a wound.

Pain without accountability becomes trauma.

My first therapist hurt me, but she never denied the truth.

She didn’t abandon me with a rewritten story that made me question my own reality.

She didn’t make me doubt my perception or my memory.

She didn’t protect her ego at the cost of my stability.

And because of that, even with all the grief I still hold, I don’t write about her with rage.

I write about her with love, and longing, and loss.

Because she treated me like a human being, not a threat.

Someone who takes responsibility for their part doesn’t need to be talked about in anger.

They already did the one thing that allows a person to start healing:

They told the truth.