Lovely to Meet You, True Self: A Story of Post-Traumatic Growth

Warnings, Links & Disclaimer

Before I begin, let me be clear, this post WILL disclose details related to difficult and traumatic experiences. Being a trauma-informed counsellor, I recognize how sharing can produce unpleasant emotions and sensations within. That said, it is also essential for all of us to understand that we are not alone in our suffering. I am being mindful of the level of detail shared to be protective, but also cannot predict how everyone will respond.

Secondly, many of the links within the post are Amazon Affiliate Links to books that I have used during my professional learning and personal healing. No pressure to purchase, but if you DO use the link, please know that I gain a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Lastly, although I am a mental health professional, this post is for educational and/or insightful purposes only. If you have an urge to shift or change your wellness plan, please consult with YOUR wellness supports and understand that this is MY story without any advisement of others to heal in similar ways. We are complex beings with individual needs, so please be aware that one size does not fit all and it is crucial that you connect with people who know you best. In continuing to read, you are acknowledging that you assume responsibility for all risks and responses that surface.

Introduction

This is a story of Post-Traumatic Growth after nearly a lifetime of staying silent when experiencing suffering. I am a human and clinical counsellor with a history of being a comedian and psychiatric nurse.

To everyone who chooses to read, I invite you to practice using curiosity rather than automatically responding with confusion or criticism.

Among all of the pains I share in the post, I have also met some incredible humans and had beautiful experiences that helped get me through each and every season of my life. Very few things in life are ALL BAD or ALL GOOD, so consider the grey zones of everything that follows.

I am happy, healthy, and thriving BUT also recognize my humanness and the need to be diligent in my recovery. Progress over perfection, every time.

Who Am I?

When I was younger, I struggled to recognize a lot of social cues and had issues with impulsivity. I now know it is associated with how my brain works (Thanks, ADHD), but at the time, I just had a sense that I was different.

Because of this, I mimicked and molded my personality to try and be accepted by other people. There were many times I was praised for a variety of my developed characteristics but was also rejected because of them. Sometimes my energy was celebrated and other times told it was inappropriate.

Over time, my internalized identity became an uplifting, easy-going, and loving human, although beautiful, stifled anything surfacing that made me feel icky. An unconscious protective thought of, “If they don’t accept me even when I try to be like them, they will never like the real me.” Any time I loosened the control on my true self and was scolded, it deepened this belief.

It was a really weird moment when I realized the role I had created in an attempt to fit into society was hurting me and my unacknowledged resentment was seeping into my relationships with others.

Here was my continual pattern:

Waves of discomfort would hit me.
I’d try to do “the right thing.”
My unpleasant experiences wouldn’t feel different.
Self-sabotage would occur to match how I felt or to prove my internalized worthlessness.
I would pick up the pieces of my broken reputation through people-pleasing.
The cycle would eventually start again.

Bottom line, I was living within the expectations and rules dictated by others and had no idea who I truly was. I was desperately trying to feel a sense of belonging, but without the ability to feel safe in being myself, that would never happen.

What Am I Even Feeling?

Additionally, I did not know how to communicate my emotional turmoil and deep-seated shame. We all receive varying levels of support and permission to experience feelings, so we each develop fluctuating amounts of comfort and acquire different skills for expression or suppression.

When remembering childhood, my parents were my biggest cheerleaders in a variety of ways, but there were periods of time my self-sabotage patterns or desperation to be liked interfered with our relationships. There were 3 people trying to figure me out and none of us knew what we were doing because these were the years prior to accessible mental health information.

As minors, our nervous system is picking up on and assessing our environment’s threats to our emotional, physical, social, and spiritual safety. Because young people are limited when they are underage, we adapt versus stand our ground for individuation (although I solidly tried as an angsty middle-schooler).

This is why our earlier years into adulthood can feel so jarring and traumatic memories can surface more vividly. Common traits I’ve seen in my clients, as well as my younger self, include facing new levels of autonomy, shifts in personal identity, struggles in decision making, changing relationships with peers/guardians, and a craving for understanding themselves.

Building emotional maturity is something I wish I’d learned long ago but now see many beautiful representations of it on social media and through my young adult clients. It is a practiced skill to learn recognition of emotions and how to safely express them, either independently or with support systems.

Trauma: The Description for This Post

There are a variety of people who have studied and researched trauma, with an increasing number of body-based modalities showing promising results for healing. Please note that the following information does not align with all professional practices and that there are varying therapeutic methods that can assist.

Both personally and professionally, I utilize nervous system-related work or “bottom up” approaches. The book “What Happened To You?” By Oprah Winfrey & Dr. Bruce Perry explains how our brains create responses to upsetting events that sink into our nervous systems.

One of my favourite definitions of trauma is by the Somatic Experiencing expert Peter Levine:

“Trauma happens when the organism is strained beyond its adaptational capacity to regulate states of arousal. The (traumatized) nervous system disorganizes, breaks down and cannot reset itself. This manifests in global fixation, in a fundamental loss in the rhythmic capacity to self-regulate arousal, to orient, to be in the present and to flow in life.”

Another helpful piece of Levine’s puzzle includes:

“Trauma originates as a response in the nervous system, and does not originate in an event. Trauma is in the nervous system, not in the event.”

Basically, we do not know WHAT will cause a person to be traumatized, but there is more acknowledgment that there are steps that can HELP AVOID becoming traumatized.

There are no guarantees, but knowing what resources/coping skills help us feel safe, recognizing the need to expel stress-induced energy to return to baseline regulation, and accessing healthy supports, can be very helpful in reducing the risk. These also happen to be ways toward healing and post-traumatic growth if the damage has already been done.

Responsibility

Before sharing, I need to make it very clear that I have forgiven the past versions of others and recognize that we as humans “only know what we know.” Meaning, if I can grow through gaining insights and awareness, so can others around me.

I am not placing judgment on anyone involved in the listed experiences and genuinely looking at everyone from a space of compassion and understanding to the best of my ability. Also, I acknowledge my part and responsibility in every circumstance, including the ones that I was the person causing psychological harm.

Finding balance in the fine line between taking responsibility for our suffering to help move forward and acknowledging the unfairness of our need to heal from pains induced by others is hard, but necessary in our recovery.

Traumatizing Times

The following list includes some (but not all) of the incidents and time periods that MY nervous system responded to in a traumatized manner, which many provoked my self-sabotage cycle…

Bullying during School Years
Issues with Law Enforcement (Grade 8)
Sexual Assault (Age 19)
Hurt from Romantic Relationships: Varying Experiences of Substance Abuse, Infidelity, Psychological Abuse, Lies (Ages 19–23)
Stalking by an Ex-Partner & Financial Theft (2010)
Sudden Death of an Ex-Partner (Who I believed I could “save”) (Age 23)
Deterioration of a Marriage (Where I hit my breaking point and coped in ways that were not only destructive for myself, but everyone around me) (2015–2016)
Abusive Relationship (My safety felt compromised) (2016)
Workplace Mental Health Injury: Patient Interaction and Off Work for 10 Months (2020)
The Pandemic
Countless Dangerous Patient Incidents (The cultural belief of this being “part of the job” for EVERY situation is unreasonable. Healthcare workers need support too and their responses should not be minimized if they surface, especially if the violence is blatant assault.)

These incidents shaped how I viewed the world, but just as importantly, how much worth I believed I held. As I navigated the world blindly, the undertone of trauma lingered.

My belief system included:

I will never be enough.
I am a bad person.
I must deserve the way I am being treated.
I am not worthy of love.
I have no control of my life.
No matter how hard I try, I keep experiencing pain.

All the while, I was living my life. Pushing my pain down through distraction/avoidance, eventually exploding, cleaning up the mess and recreating another inauthentic method of continuing. That changed in 2020 when the patient situation debilitated my ability to cope by my nervous system going into prolonged fight/flight energy.

Healing Journey

When I hit my crisis point in 2020, I had no choice but to lean on professionals and develop support systems. I could have coped horribly based on the guilt and shame I had associated with my disconnection from the hospital. My identity as a “good nurse” was shattered with the idea that the ONE thing I felt confident in was no longer.

But, because I reached out to amazing supports, I made it through. Not only that, I am thriving because this rock bottom helped spark a craving for finding meaning in my pain and moving on from all of the past stuff that was connected to my present life.

The following resources popped up at varying times in my journey toward Post-Traumatic Growth and not in syncretic order. Some intentional and others not. The most important part was that I became CURIOUS about different methods and allowed myself to be VULNERABLE in attempting to find what worked for my personalized needs.

Supportive Others

The more learning I do about trauma therapy, the more I realize that we have missed the mark on collective healing. We need to feel supported and a sense of belonging to flourish. It is a basic human need to have safe people to go to in times of upset. It helps us to regulate. For me, they included:

Romantic Partner
Friendships
Family
Mental Health Professionals (Occupational Therapist, Counsellors, Psychologist, Psychiatrist)
Massage Therapists
Safe Spaces Support Group
Nurse Rx with Sandra Payne

Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing

This is a trauma healing modality that may be worth looking into. There is a lot of research that shows the benefits of EMDR, but there is far too much for me to share regarding this treatment. Please look into it further here, www.emdria.org.

Sharing My Story

When I posted a blog about my workplace mental health injury, countless people reached out sharing their own experiences. Many coloured with personal shame, but so much gratitude in realizing they were not alone.

In this, I realized I wasn’t alone either.

EMDR helped me to remove the embarrassment I was feeling and brought me to a moment of empowerment to share my experience. This created a domino effect of wanting to help myself and others in profound ways.

I’ve shared my experience on multiple podcasts and social media platforms. If you are interested in reading the original blog post, you can find it HERE.

Exposure Therapy

Did it work? Yes. Should I have also been taught about my nervous system and how to regulate it through using ways to settle myself safely? Definitely.

This is when you slowly continue to put yourself into situations that provoke fight/flight energy and prove to the system that it is actually safe through experiential knowledge. The process was incredibly uncomfortable, but for my clients, I use the next system of healing to assist with the process of exposure.

Nervous System Work

In 2022, once I started being a counsellor, I came across Somatic Experiencing and Polyvagal work. This has changed my life and the lives of many clients I have worked with since.

In short, you learn WHAT YOUR response to triggers looks like, WHAT the triggers are and HOW to get to a place of feeling regulated through a sense of safety and connection. It takes intentional time and energy for this process to become natural, but once it starts, it can be amazing.

I don’t internalize my reactions as ME responding, but my PROTECTIVE methods REACTING in fear or anger. My brain cannot differentiate between true danger or a threat to my peace, so I need to show my WHOLE SYSTEM that I am safe versus ignore or suppress it.

I am always learning more on ways to implement body-based modalities with clients. Additionally, I am constantly better understanding my own triggers and methods of feeling safe or connected when in distress.

Insights and Learning (Full List Here)

Sense of Belonging: Realizing the basic human survival desire to be accepted and the importance of finding people who make you feel secure in who YOU are. This can be professionals, support groups or personal relationships. A book that helped me to deepen my sense of being myself is Belonging by Toko-Pa.

Relationship with Alcohol: Becoming sober curious and changing my relationship with booze was one of the best things I ever did. Not only from a health perspective, but a self-worth one. I don’t deserve debilitating hangovers or a life that I want to escape from. Two books that supported this were Sober Curious and Quit Like a Woman.

Self-Compassion: Acknowledging my humanness has created monumental changes. It is impossible to always feel confident, but you can frequently give yourself the gift of compassion for being a human. Dr. Kristin Neff’s work has been a game changer for me and the first place I was introduced to it was her book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself.

Suffering is Suffering: Dr. Edith Egar is a holocaust survivor who later became a psychologist. Her story of suffering during and afterward are inspirational beyond belief. It was her growth and healing of her own traumas and her compassion for others who experienced less than her, gave me a deeper sense of permission to feel my pains. The book that changed my perspective was The Choice.

Inspirational Humans: In Dr. Egar’s journey, she came across the mental health professional and author Viktor Frankl and his book Man’s Search for Meaning. I’d already read his book of holocaust survival with the theories he created in the aftermath and loved his insights, but reading the importance of inspiration and knowing that someone else has made it to the side of healing was truly life-altering. I had never found someone I aspired to be more than Dr. Egar, just as she felt about Frankl.

Strengths: Positive Psychology has really helped me to embrace my strengths, intentionality of using them often and developing an overall sense of well-being through building my life into one that I desire. The first book that helped me in recognizing this was Happier by Tal-Ben Shahar. It solidified that I was on my path toward meaning, which felt amazing.

Brain Health: The book You, Happier by Dr. Amen discusses a lot about the impact on our brain health of injuries and trauma. Biological focus on the physical organ rather than just the mental impacts. Although not all of his healing methods align with my beliefs (e.g., restrictive diet suggestions), many of the evidence-based suggestions for both the body and the mind are amazing.

Societal Pressures: Acknowledgement of how much society puts pressure on how we “should” see the world is so important in our healing. Additionally, seeing how society monetizes our suffering while inducing it is essential in helping us move into our own perceptions. The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor, although appearance-based, is a fabulous representation of how we are influenced by external forces.

Generational Struggles: Speaking of external forces, regardless of how much (or little) guardians and parents do to support littles, their unhealed worldviews influence their styles of caregiving. Adult Children of Emotional Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson, PhD., is a great read because the author does not overcomplicate the information and provides practical examples and solutions. This book helped me to realize that I fall into the category of “internalizer,” which helped me understand my people-pleasing to new heights.

Post-Traumatic Growth: This recognition has been the final piece of the puzzle for recognizing how far I have come. The book The Unexpected Gift of Trauma by Dr. Edith Shiro shares her methods of helping people reach a place of fulfillment BECAUSE of their trauma, not only because they survived it. It summarizes many of the steps in my journey mentioned above and her writing affirmed that I am now flourishing because of everything I’ve been through.

Post Traumatic Growth

I can confidently state that I am in the final stage of Post-Traumatic Growth. What am I experiencing?

Changes in priorities.
Greater appreciation for my life.
Living within MY values.
Understanding my personal version of spirituality and connectedness to meaning.
I know who I can turn to for support.
I feel more compassion and closeness toward others.
I express my emotions.
Belief that I can manage difficult and traumatic things.

There is so much more that I am experiencing, but words will never be enough to describe the sense of purpose and self-worth that now inhabit my being.

Bottom line, I am no longer in chronic fight/flight/freeze. I am now able to regulate my uncomfortable responses to triggers, name them, and soothe them.

Suffering is inevitable, and I fully anticipate that it will continue to occur for my entire lifetime. The difference now is, I have embodied healthy mechanisms of coping, give myself compassion when I make a mistake, and know how to derive meaning from upsets. My level of tolerance for stress is also higher because I’ve built up my resiliency throughout my healing.

Conclusion

Healing is possible. I am no more human than anyone else in this world. I acknowledge and recognize any positions of privilege that I hold, but also do not minimize the limitations or inevitable pains that exist in my world.

This is MY journey toward Post-Traumatic Growth and would love to know if this resonates with you on any level. The only expectations I had in sharing this were to:

Summarize my experience so that I could acknowledge how far I have come and the countless hours of work I put into my well-being.
Provide another story of healing for those seeking hope in their own journey.

My true self is so worthy to shine through and I bring her into every circumstance I face at this point. I am proud of my accomplishments AND my failures because I have derived meaning from it all. I am a better counsellor, partner, and loved one.

Sending you so many well wishes wherever you are in the world and however far along you are in your path toward post-traumatic growth.

Happy Healing!