It is true that you can’t change the past. What you can change is how the past impacts who you are and the choices you make as you move forward with your life. As you heal from your painful past, you can untangle from negative patterns and beliefs that resulted from your trauma. Therapy can help you to enhance the adult perspective you now have and to improve your coping skills. This empowers you with options that you didn’t and couldn’t have had when the trauma was occurring. Therapy enables you to make new meaning in the narrative of your past as you move forward with healing and connection.

It’s scary to believe there’s a lot boiling up inside of you and if you let yourself feel it, you may not be able to stop it. It’s a common fear that is voiced in therapy. The truth is that our bodies cannot express that intensity of emotion for very long. It will dissipate. Your counselor can help you learn to express your emotions and connect with your feelings while also helping you develop coping skills to manage your feelings and your body’s emotional pain signals. You will learn grounding techniques to calm yourself down when you feel escalated and you’ll learn the early signs that your body gives you that you are having an intense feeling so you can better manage your feelings. These skills are accessible to you. You can be in the driver’s seat of managing your emotions rather than being at their mercy.

One of the most common things therapists hear from trauma survivors is, “It could have been worse.” And it’s true – there’s always a more heartbreaking story. However, what is also true is that trauma is trauma – no matter whether it was childhood sexual abuse, childhood physical abuse, emotional abuse, spiritual abuse, emotional or physical neglect, or any other way in which your needs were not met or your boundaries were violated, your pain is real and your emotions are valid. Survivors of various types of trauma often share similar experiences of shame, loneliness, and fear. Regardless of the types of trauma your survived, you have the opportunity to untangle from the negative impacts of your trauma and to reclaim your life – or perhaps claim it for the very first time.