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Julie Answers: How can I move past trauma?
Laura asked: For most of my childhood, I lived in an unsafe home environment. From emotional to sexual abuse, I resorted to drug abuse & find myself feeling numb every day. I try to improve my life but I fall back on depressed months after that. Tried counseling & was disappointed with the results.
Dear Laura,
As you well know, such severe trauma as you experienced leaves a deep imprint on a person. “Treating” trauma, or helping individuals heal in its aftermath, has long been a focus and a goal of therapy. However, there has been an incredibly steep learning curve as therapists in the field of trauma treatment have painstakingly made their way through conflicting ideas and theories about what it means to heal, how people get there, and how therapy helps them along the way. This has meant going back to the drawing board and redefining exactly what trauma is, how it impacts a person, what it means to heal from it, and which interventions are therapeutic and which are not. It is a field of study that is continuing to develop all the time.
That is one reason I’m gratified that you are reaching out with this inquiry. I don’t know your age or how long ago you tried counseling, but the fact that you are reaching out now is evidence of hope. It demonstrates that something in you believes that more healing is possible than that…
