I had another breakthrough in therapy last Thursday. I have been going to the same therapist for a little over 2 years now. I found her by googling, “sex issues and childhood trauma therapy in my area”. Holly is a Licensed Marriage and Family therapist, a Licensed Certified Sex Therapist and Clinical Sexologist, if that gives you a little context as to the help I was seeking. I am not trying to be intriguing or coy in sharing this, it is just the truth. I am still finding the right words to describe my trauma and its impact in my life.
But I digress. That is still a work in progress. Let’s bring it back to my breakthrough in therapy.
In our last session, Holly asked me to journal on a few things. #1. When do I find myself most susceptible to my chronic looping negative thoughts? #2 What makes me snap out of my looping thoughts. #3 What is it exactly that I don’t think I know about myself? (Our session was largely about the fact that I don’t feel like I know myself at all, and Holly was offering that this simply is not true).
Therapy is very draining for me. It takes a lot of my energy to continually deep dive into my inner workings. That work, on top of our kids, our marriage and the life I lead requires that I protect my time and energy fiercely. I am constantly “listening to my body” (as I tell the kids) and trying to do and be what it needs. It took me a few days before I felt like I could sit down to journal on her questions. Eventually I did sit down to do the work.
And something did come up.
After a few pages of journaling I realized that the enduring theme after my childhood sexual trauma, was a deep fear of exposing my whole self and then being rejected. Of course, the most impactful expression of this fear is the reality that my 7-year-old self was never able to tell the people who love her most how she had been deeply wounded and left confused and broken. In addition to that formative awful experience, I can look back on all my other scary, sweat inducing memories and feel that underneath those experiences is a longing to be fully accepted, to fit in, to belong. To this day, the fear of not belonging, not fitting in, still comes to attack me when I am low, hurt, or vulnerable and it threatens to destroy the life I have created. I have a very layered, yet simple, looping thought that stems back to my childhood trauma.
It goes like this, “You have a secret that will destroy everything. You are a lesbian.” Repeat. Spiral.”
Maybe yours is different from mine, but I am told by Holly that almost everyone has something that haunts them. Something that comes for them when they are low, or sad or quiet. I cannot adequately express how those words have hurt me, destroyed my innocence, haunted me for years. The thought of its power over me brings me to tears with overwhelming shame and ugliness, even now, even as I type this. I hate how it still can hurt me. I hate that it makes me feel like a homophobic a**hole. I hate that I can’t make it go away. Therapy has shown me how this looping thought, my shame monster and my trauma are all connected. I don’t know how my 7-year-old self got it in her head that being a lesbian was the absolute end of her belonging. I don’t think I even knew what being gay was when I was 7. What I do remember is the visceral feeling that if anyone knew what I had done, what had happened to me… I would be cast out, unlovable and, the cake topper, going to hell. This is equal parts terribly sad and also not super surprising, I suppose, based on my isolated Catholic upbringing. From the age of 7, I have wrestled with how something can feel equal parts true and untrue, shameful and honest. I have long since wondered why I don’t fit into any one box, completely hetero, completely not, completely happy, completely not. I became very good at hiding myself in plain sight or behind the type of success and achievement that garnered praise and acceptance from others. I covered the scary and shameful parts with a version of myself that I knew would be more socially acceptable.
This elaborate routine was a careful balancing act. There were many times when it felt like, at any moment, I would make a wrong turn and expose my deepest scariest secret. Naturally I tried to avoid those turns. I tried to be agreeable, not make waves, be the peacemaker, just go along with it and be quiet. This mentality littered my early development with fear and shame and has led me to the place I am now, with a deep sense that I don’t know my truest self.
But,
What if I take back my power? The thing I gave away so early on as an innocent child, just trying to protect herself. Could the missing piece to my peace be the radical acceptance of all my thoughts, actions and experiences, good and bad, right and wrong, joyful and shameful? Accepting that the truest version of myself is not a woman who lived some alternate life where she was able to tell her mother what happened and receive compassion or a woman who was able to see that her sexuality was not defined by this one traumatic experience. But a woman who accepts that she will never be easily defined in any way. If I am able to accept this is true for me, could this be true for you? I want it to be true. I am thinking it may be true.
For a long time, I have been thinking my truest self was some masterful perfect being hidden away, waiting for me to unearth and bring her up to the light. I now see the bigger truth. My truest self is the fully embraced and accepted person I am right now. A woman who is curious about who she is and what makes her happy. A woman who isn’t a fully formed image of those things now, or ever. A woman whose main hallmark is the ability to question what she believes, who she is and where she is going and then make changes to move in some new direction. My truest self is an acceptance of the simple reality that there isn’t ever going to be a complete picture, one label or a simple explanation. Who I am (on every level) won’t ever make complete sense or fit into one box. I’m just forever evolving. Radical acceptance allows me to hold everything together and see myself as a whole. I am the parts of me that are broken, scarred or in process. I am also the parts that “fit” into cultural norms and expectations. I am also the parts that light my soul on fire.
My truth is that I am confusing and hard to pin down. I am unexpected and most importantly, free. By accepting this I feel a great sense of relief and clarity. It doesn’t make sense on paper maybe, but it does inside. Besides, not making sense on paper is the story of my beautiful life. This feels like freedom. The freedom I have been chasing since I was 7.