Sifting Through Myself

Before the global emergence of COVID, I had begun sifting through parts of myself that I felt no longer served me.

Engagement in therapy had been a consistent part of my life—perhaps the only identified safe place for as long as I could remember. In 2017, I had returned to school in the hopes of eventually becoming a clinician, to provide that same sense of safety to others.

I had been seeing a therapist who, when I asked if my experiences qualified for a diagnosis of PTSD, told me that, “nothing that you experienced is serious enough for that diagnosis, you are just depressed.” When said social worker went on vacation, I immediately took to finding someone who specialized in trauma and mood disorders. My new therapist very quickly explained that the chronic depression and anxiety I experienced were all a result of—drumroll—PTSD. 

We began to delve into my past, looking at the way I had closed myself off from the world—the way I found it difficult to engage with people in certain ways, and how I avoided places that reminded me of painful moments. We also discussed my difficulties sleeping, because I would wake up, over and over again, with nightmares of things that had occurred long ago.

Even with my opening up, I continued to struggle to explore the things that made me who I am. I had already recognized that I was strong, but I could not accept the many things that had brought me to the present moment without constantly minimizing what I had been through.

The stay-at-home order and the fact that several of my loved ones were already encouraging me to heal my past woke me up to the fact that this was an opportunity to face myself since I would be alone for an undetermined period of time. At 37 years old, I’ve had a lifetime of traumas that began at age six and ended on the night of my 36th birthday — that is, until I was diagnosed with cancer a month before my 37th birthday. As my life began to shift to telehealth, I recognized the importance of utilizing the time at home — where I lived alone — as an opportunity to truly face the scariest thing: myself. 

There were many moments I fell back to the time when certain events happened. Like being raped in college, and how the two friends I had gone to immediately after it happened told me that it was my fault — that I had got what I deserved. As I sat, nearly three months later, miscarrying — the result of that night — I started crying, realizing what was happening. Pre-COVID me barely ever spoke about this incident. I minimized, attempted to forget. I blamed myself, the way that I was taught in that moment to do, the same way I dealt with nearly every incident that fundamentally changed me for the worse.

Though there were years of therapeutic treatment, there was still a large part of me that was being dishonest with myself and what I had experienced. How could I ever open up to someone, let alone trust them enough to tell them the truth? I found that safety with my current therapist — a man, as I knew I needed to be challenged when it came to being honest and open with someone who was the same gender as those who had caused a majority of my traumas. Little by little, I began delving into the past both with and without his guidance.

As I sat alone day after day, working with my own clients as a therapist, I heard those around me telling me to stop running from my past, and to stop running from myself. But I did not know how to do anything but that. Though I felt resentful, I knew that those pushing me to work through my past only had my best interest in mind—but why did I not have my own best interests in mind? 

The first few weeks of being confined to my own little space, I had nothing but time to think and begin to process why it was so difficult to accept that these situations had actually happened to me. There were many stages to my processing, similar to the stages of grief.

First, I grew angry. I resented the people who wanted me to confront the things that I had kept hidden away. Those things were safe where they were, even if they did impact my behaviors. I did not want to remember the years in which I was sexually, physically, and emotionally abused. I did not want to connect the ways that these experiences had impacted my actions as an adult.

I was angry that even though I was strong, I had been weak enough to allow these things to happen to me. During some of the situations I had experienced, such as the night in which I was raped, I was told that these things were my fault, and the way in which this was said to me allowed me to believe it — and to never think otherwise. 

I struggled with denial. If others could minimize these experiences for me, then why was I not allowed to do the same? Perhaps I was making it all up — the nightmares and flashbacks that occurred during the middle of a perfectly calm moment were all figments of my imagination, they did not happen.

I often wonder what my life would have been like if I had accepted that what had happened to me was not my fault.

While I know that there was little I could do to prevent the person I was dating from taking his life, I feel to this day that there is more that I could have done—that there was more that I should have done, honestly—like spending the last night of his life with him as he requested. But I did not know what was going on with him… I did the best I could. I asked the questions, I had the scary conversations, I was there — but no amount of love or intervention would have swayed his decision to make him stay.

While I wish I had left the abusive situation sooner, all of the traumatic experiences now allow me to be a more empathetic listener and overall, a more compassionate person, which translates well into my current therapy work. The only regret I have is not acknowledging the domestic violence for what it was sooner, as it set me up for a future of unhealthy relationships — something that I am working to stop repeating, now that there has been acknowledgment and peace made for all of all the situations I was unable to escape.

If there is anything that I can impart on anyone through my experiences, it is that even if it is not talked about openly, we are never alone.

There will always be someone in some corner of the world who can empathize and provide the support that we need through these periods that we think we will not survive. Our brain likes to lie, telling us that we are not easy to love, that we deserve what is happening to us, or that leaving this world is our only option. We need to remember we are always stronger than our minds lead us to believe. No matter how insignificant we may feel at times in this world, no one needs us to stay more than ourselves. We are worth it.