(Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional and everything on this website are my personal view, based on my personal experience, your experience might be completely different. My opinions are meant to provoke conversation and not substitute Therapy with a licensed mental health professional. If you feel unsafe please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room)
Every person deals differently with emotions, so of course the same goes for healing from trauma. My personal view on this is that I believe that “trauma recovery” is an illusion. It’s a term that sounds good and something we are being told so we don’t loose hope and give up on pursuing our personal path to an healthier self. There is no one fits all path to healing, however there are a few tried and true ways that lead to a healthier self. Being that this is my website, you will read about my path towards a more centered and healthier self, however there are many ways and it really depends on what works for you. I think there are a few commonalities that one will encounter when trying to heal from trauma- the most obvious one is that it is scary, painful and life altering. When I started my journey I was a different person. I was broken and was only 25% of the person I m today, That’s not to say that I have recovered from all my trauma, I am not even sure if that is possible.
Once someone is traumatized, the challenge is that any bad experience can traumatize you again, so even thought you might have dealt with childhood trauma, along the journey you can keep getting traumatized much easier then if you did not have any trauma to begin with. It’s complicated and I am not a doctor, but when I look back on my life, I have been in therapy since the age of 16 with a few short breaks, and I will be starting a new therapy soon. It seems the reason I started therapy is not the same why I am continuing it today, however of course they are related.
Recovery isn’t about erasing the scars—it’s about learning to live with them, to learn from them and to grow and move forward to a brighter tomorrow and not allow our fear to imprison us in our own minds. I can tell you from my own experience that this was my biggest challenge- believing there is a better version of myself I can become. Even thought I have been in therapy for so long, my biggest growth spurt and personal change came after I did ketamine therapy for 1 & 1/2 years. In my experience, the benefit I have archived from ketamine is bigger then all my talk therapies put together. Now, I feel as if I can utilize talk therapy the way it was meant to and continue my transformation. When people ask me what did ketamine do for me my answer is: “
Ketamine has allowed me to become the person I would have grown up to be if Trauma/life and unhealthy lifestyle choice had not gotten in the way. (Claude Vale)
It is suggested to not start therapy for borderline personality disorder without a support network. Great advice, unfortunately I did not have that luxury. Not because I did not try to get my families support, but I think they have not done the necessary healing for themselves to be able to understand what I was asking them. To this day, my siblings still refer to me reaching out to them when i started my therapy as something negative, manipulative and god knows what. I know that is not true. I am convinced they were afraid what they would find out about themselves. Until they have walked that path I know I can’t be in contact with them. Mostly because I refuse to allow my siblings who have not had a normal conversation with me since I was 25 years old, to act as if I had malicious intentions towards them. I tried re establishing contact with one of them, but when I asked for a respectful relationship where we both matter equally and both our feelings and fears matter equally my sister made it clear that she does not want a healthy dynamic between us. It’s sad, but I cannot engage with people, siblings or not who only want a relationship with me if they can make me the scapegoat for everything. Unfortunately that is often the case with people who are highly sensitive and have bpd, they were always the family scapegoat.
When those closest to us walk away rather than seek to understand the full picture, it sends a painful message.When you face your deepest trauma alone and are still here to tell your story, a website isn’t just deserved—it’s necessary. This is my way of staying true to who I am, of proving to myself that I exist beyond the pain.
Let me know in the comments if you have similar stories when you started to heal and change. Did you family support you or where they afraid of who you might become?