Therapy really showed me the ugly parts of myself—a difficult thing for a perfectionist to face. It forced me to truly see my own role in the pain and suffering I had experienced throughout my life. I learned to get out of the victim mindset and start taking ownership of the emotions and behaviours that come with life’s tests.
Life isn’t fair. My old mantra was: Why me? Why did this have to happen to me? I’m a good person. Don’t I deserve to be treated fairly? Unfortunately, life doesn’t care if you’re a good person or not. It tests us in the most beautiful of ways, though we never see it in the moment. Only when we look back on an experience that pushed us to our limits can we acknowledge, and hopefully appreciate, the growth.
Childhood
My childhood had its good moments, its bad moments, and its absolutely terrible moments. The problem is, when you are young, you don’t quite understand how deeply the "terrible" can impact you, how it conditions you and forms a large part of your personality. This was something I was always terrified about when I was pregnant with my son. I wanted everything to be perfect. I did not want to tip the scale at all. I knew how important it was for him to have a childhood that did not reflect my own. This isn't to say that I didn't want him to experience the good moments, but I was adamant that he would never experience the terrible ones.
Out of My Control
It’s an uncomfortable place to be when things are out of your control. As humans, we naturally want to have some sort of power over our lives and their outcomes. However, I quickly realised how difficult this was during my pregnancy—difficult to accept, more than anything. This longing for things to be perfect stemmed from a fear of failure, which was a direct result of past life trauma. There were so many things that were completely out of my control as a child, and so, as an adult, I was trying to regain that control in any way I could.
Trauma
I wasn’t quite aware of how much trauma I had encountered throughout my life until it came to a boiling point. The biggest trigger for me was birth trauma, something I speak about often. It felt like the worst kind of injustice because it’s a combination of negligence and a lack of choice—way out of my control. Unfortunately, it is very common, and the impact can be extremely detrimental. The trauma I had experienced earlier in life, I was able to bury deep. However, the birth trauma felt completely different, like a beacon shining brightly in the night. I couldn’t hide my pain, and I couldn’t run from it. I had to face it. And that is what started my therapy journey.
Therapy
Therapy is never linear. There is a lot of flicking back and forth from past to present because that is where the real work is done. I had had therapy in the past, but nothing like this: integrative therapy. It's a more personalised approach using a series of techniques. Unfortunately for many, the talking therapies and CBT that the NHS offers to patients are not always enough. I needed to go deeper than that, and I needed regular sessions in which to do it.
Therapy was hard, emotional, and painful. It brought up things that I hadn’t even considered. It got me to look at things from a different perspective, and it also helped me to take accountability for my own actions and move away from a victim mindset.
Yes, bad things had happened to me. Yes, it was unfair. But I was keeping myself trapped in a cage because I was unable to let go of that victim mindset. This isn’t to say that it’s not right or wrong to feel victimised; it’s a very normal human reaction when you have been dealt hardships in life. However, staying in that mentality can be harmful and detrimental to how we continue to show up in the world. It keeps us stuck—stuck replaying the same story, reliving the pain and suffering. This is what causes the mind and the body to shut down or react in defensive and destructive ways.
Parenting
I can confidently say that therapy has helped me tremendously with my parenting. Anger and resentment were the biggest emotions that kept coming up for me in the early stages of motherhood. I felt anger at many things and resentment towards many people. This became evident when I started to experience "mum rage," a feeling I’d never had before. I felt like I couldn’t control my emotions and was close to having a breakdown. Therapy helped me to pick this apart, and it inevitably led back to my childhood. There was anger there that had started from a young age.
My mum wasn’t able to control her angry outbursts. They were channelled through shouting, stomping around, slamming cupboards, and other unhealthy coping mechanisms. I knew I didn’t want to repeat this pattern with my son, and so I addressed it. Now, I am able to help my son with regulating his emotions, which is exactly the outcome I wanted. We do breathing exercises to calm down, we stomp around (together) to get our anger out, and we sing and dance together to increase happiness. I never shame him for his emotions and try to validate him in every way I can.
At the end of the day, I believe it’s about doing the work so your children won't have to. Whichever way that looks for you.
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