Content Notice: This story contains references to Suicide, Rape, and Miscarriage.
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.