How I learned to invite my own trauma into the room

Full disclosure- *this blog post discusses death and loss*

What are you even talking about?!

Sharing this blog post is really important to me, but also super fucking scary. As a therapist, I (and we!) are trained to keep things close to the chest. However, in my work with fellow trauma therapists, I know that true healing happens when we are open and intentional in sharing about ourselves and our shared experiences of pain and trauma.

In recent years, many of my “once in a lifetime” moments were overshadowed by grief. The grief of loved ones who didn’t get to see me get married. The weight of pregnancy loss. Broken relationships with loved ones and friends. The loss of a “normal” pregnancy and birth experience as we hunkered down during COVID 2020, made heavier by my dad’s passing.

Losing my dad was almost too much…

He died in April 2020 while living in a nursing home where he contracted COVID. I had been my dad’s caregiver and legal power of attorney for over 10 years at that point. We had been through hell and back, but he always pulled through.

COVID was of course a different beast - and mind you this was the OG strain of the virus. He went downhill pretty fast, given all his pre-existing conditions and all. Thankfully he and I had already discussed in depth his end of life choices and I was fully supportive of his DNR. I also knew that there were members of my family who were NOT supportive of this. 

Once my dad was hospitalized for COVID, we had to decide about intubation. I knew he wouldn't want to intubate, and I didn't want that for him either. I was also the messenger to the rest of the family, and I took my job as his advocate very seriously. I stood my ground, and helped him voice his desires, knowing that meant he would die. 

My dad died on April 13, 2020 - just 6 days before his 75th birthday and while I was pregnant with my first child.  

I took one week off work, and then went right back into doing the trauma work that I love, but that had been made so different by the pandemic and now my father's death.

To say it was impossible to keep all my emotions bottled up is an understatement. Fortunately, at that time in my career, I had done a lot of work around how and when to self-disclose, but I had never navigated a loss like this in tandem with the same losses my clients were experiencing! 

Certainly, this is an outlier event but it solidified what I already knew - my clients need to know who I am.

In fact, they deserve to know me as a human being.

That doesn't mean they know all the things about my personal life, but they need to feel my humanity.

How I Invite My Trauma Into the Room:

Inviting my trauma into the room as a trauma therapist means being my human self with my clients.

For me, this shows up as allowing myself to tear up when I am touched and moved by my clients’ stories of pain, terror, and triumph. 

This means giving myself permission to self-disclose how their journey makes me feel. 

This also means sometimes telling clients why I am so moved. 

Even though we have had the obvious shared experience of the pandemic, we still don't talk enough about how to share ourselves with our clients in ways that can help them make leaps and bounds in their work. 

Why do I do this??

When my clients see my own humanity, they know they matter, they know their experiences are worth sharing, and that someone will listen and receive them with love and compassion and never a blank stare. 

By giving myself permission to be a human being with my clients, I also have permission to take care of my own humanness. 

That starts with sharing myself with readers like you, sharing my story with people who get it.

That's how I'm taming VT today.

Now What??

• I would love to know how you have intentionally and ethically used self-disclosure with your clients

  • How did it help them?

  • How did it make you a better therapist?

• Jump in the Facebook group to share your story

• Reach out privately if that feels more supportive - it is my honor to receive your own stories and to protect them for you

Thank you for listening, and for being BRAVE.