How I'm learning to process trauma and find hope

Topics mentioned: trauma, anger, alone and misunderstood, derealisation and depersonalisation, counselling and therapy

About: Kay understands how lonely processing trauma and dissociative symptoms can feel, but you are not alone. She shares her advice on finding hope and support.

Before I begin, I want to address that I’m still processing the fact that I’ve experienced trauma myself. I definitely haven’t fully accepted it yet. The idea of writing this blog was born from how completely alone I have felt in this process. I want to reach out to anyone struggling with accepting they’ve experienced trauma in any form to share my experience. You are most definitely not alone.

I remember the first time my psychologist put a name to my experiences. I felt like I’d been winded for a second – but then the sudden fear that I’d somehow misrepresented the situation flooded in. I don’t think this feeling has ever really left.

For a very long time, I couldn’t say the word ‘trauma’. I couldn’t even write or type it. I felt guilty for the word even being associated with my experiences. Feeling angry and betrayed, alongside overwhelming guilt and shame, I fell into more self-destructive habits and withdrew into myself. It felt like most of the things I’d forgotten had happened came back to swirl around my mind constantly - I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Then came the overwhelming desire to be ‘strong’ and prove my strength. I wanted to feel tough when I felt weak (a stage I’m currently trying to work through). I imagined myself not being a people pleaser. Not letting past experiences dictate every single interaction. I imagined feeling safe somewhere or with someone and how good that must feel and how much I want it. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I wanted to tell someone, anyone, everything.

I struggle with dissociative symptoms (feeling disconnected from yourself) and episodes and have done since I was about 11 years old. There is a chunk of about three or four years of my life that I have very little recollection of and the bits I do remember are either incredibly random or horrible - with nothing in between. I sometimes experience a sudden flooding of intolerable emotions that I didn’t even know existed, and I can’t place why. It is genuinely terrifying and physically painful.

The most difficult thing I've found with dissociative experiences is when I feel so far removed from myself and my body. I feel even further from my friends and people I love. Sometimes it feels like they’re strangers I could be passing in the street and the guilt that comes with that can be so overwhelming. For the past year, there has been no break from the derealisation/depersonalisation. While there have been times where it has varied in intensity, I haven’t once, even for a second, felt in my body. It’s like I just dropped out of my body and never came back. I’ve found it incredibly hard to find people who understand what it’s like which makes the experience even more lonely.

Writing, alongside music and theatre, has always been something I’ve hugely enjoyed. As I’ve got older, I have realised that a lot of the short stories and plays I wrote when I was younger featured characters with similar experiences and emotions to me, except they were ‘saved’. Now I’m using writing to face up to my reality as opposed to trying to escape it (okay, well, maybe both).

The most vital thing that I want to stress is that this is my experience. Yours might look really similar, but it also might look really different, which is absolutely okay! I’m sending hope to you, because you’re not a lost cause and it won’t be like this forever!