A Therapist’s Journey: How My Own Healing Shapes My Work

In counselling training, there’s a concept we have called “the wound healer”; it refers to the idea that many counsellors and helpers come in to the field because they have experienced their own wounds and went to support people. Our job as counsellors is to learn from our own wounds so that we can show up better for our clients, while also making sure our history not guiding the work we do with people. It can be a tricky balance at times, but I can say that there is so much learning from my own past that shapes the work I do today. 

One thing I want to address before we jump in: I don’t believe we ever get “there” when it comes to healing. I think healing is a continuous process where we can always grow, learn and heal more deeply. Why do I share this? In some places in this blog, I fear that I give off the impression that I am “healed” as though that is a static state. I am forever learning and deepening my healing, while also not being in the thick of my healing at this current point in time.

1. Many people don’t recognize trauma because it was their normal.

I didn’t realize that a lot of what I went through in my childhood was traumatic until years into my own healing. Yes, I knew it wasn’t what others experienced, but I couldn’t see the impact that had on me (likely as a coping mechanism!). When you’ve only ever known one version of life, it’s hard to really see the full impact. Because it was also my experience, I can deeply understand a client who thinks their childhood was “fine” or even “good” and also names traumatic experiences. I recognize that the person only knows one reality so they both believe it was “fine” and also that it was traumatic. They aren’t lying or hiding something; it was fine, by there standard, and also it was traumatic.

2. We need both the emotional and the educational to heal.

When I was in my masters degree, specifically in my trauma course, I went through a traumatic event. One of those most helpful things was learning about trauma theory WHILE moving through it. As I was experiencing dissociation, I was reading about it, and understanding what was happening in my nervous system. As I battled my negative thoughts, I learnt why they were there and how they actually were helping me cope through the event. While I blamed myself for what happened, I was reading about this being a normal response after trauma and how to support people through that very experience. The learning I was doing at school gave me a scaffold through which to logically make sense of what happened, while also allowing enough intellectual safety to touch in to the experience I was having. 

3. Trauma isn’t stored in the logical brain—so thinking your way out doesn’t work.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that cognitive approaches are limited when it comes to trauma. We can think and reframe all we want, but trauma lives in the body and in the survival parts of the brain. I can recall during my healing journey knowing how I was “supposed” to think about something, and then how I actually felt about it. And then feeling a sense of shame that I wasn’t doing a good enough job thinking about it differently. When I used to take more cognitive approaches to counselling, I saw this pattern repeat over and over in the counselling room. People would feel so much shame that they couldn’t think “properly” about an event and that would become one more distressing thing they had to deal with. 

While changing our thinking can be helpful lat certain stages of therapy, it’s often creates more shame for people who are already trying their hardest. As such, it’s generally safer to take different approaches to trauma therapy that understand how trauma is stored in the brain and body.  

4. What looks like resistance is usually protection.

I don’t believe in resistance. From what I’ve experienced personally and seen in my work, what we label as resistance is usually someone’s way of protecting themselves. There were times in my own healing when I just wasn’t ready to go to certain places—and that wasn’t avoidance, it was a lack of safety and a way of protecting myself. We know that at the core of trauma is a belief that we can not handle what happened. If we could handle it, it wouldn’t be traumatic. So what others might view as resistance is really just a way of saying “I’m not sure I can handle that quite yet” which is just an indicator that we need to build safety and capability before we proceed. 

5. It Does Get Better

When you’re in the middle of the processing and healing, it can feel endless; like nothing will get better and that you’ll be feeling this way forever. At least, that’s how I felt at times. Like this was just my life and not much could be done to ever feel better. Now that I am through the thickest part of the processing, I can hold a lot of hope for my clients, even when they cant hold it for themselves. I know it gets better and I can believe that for you until you are ready to believe it for yourself. 

If you’re looking for a counsellor in Kamloops to support with trauma, PTSD, CPTSD, grief, anxiety or stress, reach out today!