One day I was talking with a client who should have been doing so much better. She was six months sober, had a safe place to live, had found a new church home, and was generally upbeat about where life was going.
Yet that day she was drowning in the depths of loneliness, feeling abandoned and worthless.
I tried the usual: Listened with love to the details of her feelings, made a gratitude list with her, acknowledged that she was still OK even if she felt terrible. We talked about how far she’d come. We talked about positive next steps to take in the coming days.
Her feelings of abandonment and loneliness blocked all the simple, positive work we were doing together.
So I asked her a question.
“When was the FIRST time you felt like this?”
Whew! Her answer was long. She worked back from today to six months ago to the end of her most recent marriage to the sexual assault when she was a young woman. She went back in time through arguments with family, unhealthy romantic relationships, grief and loss. She told the story again of how she was assaulted at the age of 12 and her family blamed her.
She’d told these stories to so many counselors and advocates and law enforcement and herself that it took only half an hour to hit the many sad highlights.
Then she stopped talking and started to cry.
She remembered being three years old when her mother’s boyfriend-of-the-week locked her in her room. In the dark. She remembered being hungry and going to the kitchen for food and this big, smelly, scary stranger got mad and locked her in her room. She cried and nobody came to feed her. All she wanted was something to eat.
She’d never told anyone that story before. Yet she told me. She had always remembered the story, and just had never talked about it.
This trauma, the FIRST time she had felt abandoned and lonely, was buried in her childhood memories from a time before she had language, words to describe it. The memory was all feelings.
I had created a safe space of trust with her, and acknowledged and honored all her emotions. I gently sat with her while she processed those long-ago feelings and slowly found her words again.
The memory began to heal. In healing, it cast a new light on all the other memories of abandonment and worthlessness.
Exploring these deep memories is a tricky process and I don’t recommend doing the work by yourself. I can lead you through the process. If this sounds interesting, ask to join the Beyond Brave Community. You can message me privately if you want one-to-one coaching, or participate in the community to get support from all members.