Here’s What No One Tells You About Finally Healing Your Trauma

Here’s the ugly truth no one is talking about

I have nightmares almost every night. I’ve had them since I started working on past trauma in therapy. No one tells you about this when you start. To be fair, my therapist warned me that it could have an emotional impact, but I didn’t know this was what she meant. I wasn’t prepared for the frequency of the nightmares or just how hard they hit me.

I also didn’t expect wave after wave of memories hitting me at the most inopportune times. I had triggers before, but this is next level. My son was trying on rings in my room, and he mentioned how his dad never takes his off. He showers with it and sleeps with it. I stop in the middle of getting ready and feel the wave of emotion that comes with remembering that my ex-spouse never once wore his wedding ring during our marriage. Not for over a decade of being married to me.

It’s an old loss that still hits hard when I remember what that felt like. What it still feels like to realize I partnered someone who never wanted to marry me in the first place. To hear how he happily wears a wedding ring now in his second marriage hurts in an unexpected way. Divorce was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I don’t regret it. It still hurts to see the contrast in how I’ve been treated and how my exes go on to treat others.

This is my life now. I go through every day hitting one memory after another from different points in my life. I’m having constant flashbacks of childhood and my various relationships — tiny, seemingly-insignificant memories mixing with the more impactful ones. I feel like my heart has been wrenched open, and everything inside is coming out.

I know that the trauma work I’m doing is valuable. With every EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) session, I can see a positive difference. But I didn’t realize quite how much would come up in the process.

I’ve been very good at burying things I didn’t want to deal with. Dissociation and compartmentalization were two of my go-to techniques for dealing with emotions I couldn’t handle. All those boxes I packed away are open now, and it’s my job to go through them.

This is what baggage looks like. We all have it. We just don’t all deal with it.

I see it all the time. It’s obvious if we’re paying attention. We all have old pain we carry around. It’s closer to the surface than we may realize. Trauma work starts moving it further from the surface, processing it, healing it, and placing it in long-term storage as a memory rather than a visceral emotional experience.

Doing the work is necessary if we want to be healthy in our lives and in our relationships. We can choose to see a therapist, which I strongly recommend, or even read self-help books and practice what we learn. Trauma isn’t supposed to be this fixed part of our stories that changes who we are from that point forward. At least, we’re not supposed to be using it as an excuse for behaviors that come from un-healed damage.

I am doing the work, but I was not prepared for this. I am being hit by one painful memory after another during the day, and at night, I wake up choking on a sob or with a pillow wet from my tears. I’m exhausted no matter how early I go to bed, and I know that this is part of the process. This is what healing looks like. It’s just the ugly side of the process no one really tells us about.

With all that being said, it still feels amazing when an old, long-established trigger fails to get a reaction from me. It feels good to know that some old pain has been put to rest. I am getting stronger. I am learning to separate other people’s problems from my own when I’ve always taken them on. Every day, I am becoming better.

It still doesn’t feel any less like walking through a minefield.

Maybe no one tells us about this part of the process because we’d reconsider participating. Therapy already takes work. It takes the willingness to be self-aware, to realize difficult truths, and to put in the real, hard work of changing our own behavior. To do all this and also experience challenging side effects is a lot to ask. It’s still worth it. Even with the nightmares and the barrage of memories, it’s worth it.

I hope you choose your healing. I hope you walk through your nightmares and through the minefield of memories to find your peace. That’s what I’m doing. I hope you choose to do that, too.