Beyond Trauma, Towards Peace
When I think about my many years of mental health treatment – the various therapists, medications, and approaches – the one thing I have always hoped for is peace.
I had never truly felt at peace. I’m the eldest in a big family and my mother, my siblings, and I are victim-survivors of domestic violence. As a child, I yearned for so many years for all of us to be saved and to start a new life. My imagination would always run wild, and I found comfort in books, shows, and movies – they were a way to escape.
Once my parents separated, I endured a new wave of challenges. Countless years of grief, shame, guilt, and anger trying to come to terms with the trauma of the first 20+ years of my life. I watch it eat away at my mum and siblings, each with their own mental health difficulties and challenges.
I received a Depression and Generalised Anxiety Disorder diagnosis and sought treatment in my mid-20s. I began antidepressants and started seeing a therapist. I liked my psychologist at the time, but I had a constant sense that she didn’t ‘get’ me. I knew she meant well but I hated to disappoint anyone, so I stuck with her for years, fully immersed in a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) approach. I had good days, but most days felt close to breaking point and frustrated that treatment wasn’t working for me. I didn’t know any different. I found CBT a rational approach, and I understood it, but it simply didn’t do anything for my symptoms. Anxiety was my constant bedfellow, and I felt it in every inch of me – living with constant physical symptoms, tension and pain.
Life moved on and since that time, I moved and cycled through two more psychologists. It was the same story. More talking therapy (predominately CBT and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) and little to show for it. I was putting in the work but regularly felt I was taking one step forward and two steps back. My anxiety was chronic, paired with regular depressive episodes. I went off my medication for a few years, thinking it wasn’t working, but after some stressful life events and a major depressive episode, I went back on antidepressants and have never looked back.
It wasn’t until two years ago that I found the right therapist for me – more than 10 years after I started seeking treatment for my mental health and trauma.
Amid the pandemic, psychologists were harder to come by than ever, so I started seeing someone via telehealth. She has absolutely been the right fit for me. From the first session, she asked what I wanted, and how I wanted our sessions to go. She genuinely listened. We began with Schema Therapy, which felt far more helpful to me than CBT. It ultimately helped me be kinder to myself – to understand the survival tactics I have used for decades – and to begin to find peace. My therapist made a concerted effort to speak “my” language and meet me halfway. Her sessions were truly strengths-based and trauma-informed. I finally felt understood by a therapist.
The past is in the past, but I do wish I had “shopped around” for the right therapist sooner.
It gave me the headspace to try new things, like meditation, for my anxiety. (I’m not “good” at it, but I finally realised and accepted that was totally okay.) The rigid expectations I had for myself were starting to soften. Five to ten minutes of meditation a day really does make a difference (the science backs it!), even if my mind sometimes wanders. This, paired with talking therapy, physical activity, and acupuncture, meant I started to find that peace I so desperately desired.
Ready to face some of my childhood experiences and feeling that my progress had plateaued, a few months ago, my therapist suggested we supplement talking therapy with Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR). I was initially apprehensive, it sounded risky. However, it didn’t take much searching to realise it may be worth a shot – there is some solid evidence, and many people find success working through trauma this way.
I’m pleased to say that, while it has been emotional and difficult work, my first EMDR session went well, and I responded as hoped.
I’m starting to chip away at some of my traumatic memories and it has further reduced some of my complex trauma symptoms.
Another turning point for me has been finding out that children from violent homes have in recent years started to be recognised as victim-survivors in their own right. While I have felt frustrated that it took so long, I ultimately felt relieved and seen. Where previously I solely felt a sense of weakness and vulnerability, I started to recognise my strength in working through my experiences.
I feel like a very different person now than I was 10 years ago when I started my treatment journey.
I understand now (with the help of my current therapist) that recovery is not linear. There will be ups and downs. But I have found my peace.
It rests within me and, while it might fade sometimes, it never leaves me. I surround myself with people who respect it and nourish it, and I do the same for them in return. I set boundaries now and I remove myself from situations and relationships that threaten that sense of peace. I know I still have work ahead of me, and that there will be some difficult days, but now I appreciate that everything is meant to be fleeting, and it helps me enjoy the ‘good’ days even more. I still find myself escaping into books, shows, and movies like I did when I was a child, but the difference now is I’m happy to come back to my reality – the one that I have worked for, and will keep working to maintain.
Written by Julia.