Being strong

“You’ve always been strong…Perhaps too strong.” But that wasn’t true. She wasn’t strong so much as capable of numbing herself to the worst and watching every blow land with wry fatalism. She’d buried parts of herself that hurt and raged, turning wary and self-contained. It had worked for years. – Monster of Mine by Shalini Abeysekara

What is strength and what is simply survival?

When do we learn that numbing ourselves helps us get through, so other believe we are strong?

Where do we learn to bury those parts of ourselves that feel deeply?

These are all questions that are part of the work with complex trauma. So often what others see and praise as strong is simply a person trying desperately to survive. This is an adaptation to traumatic circumstances.

And these survival strategies often have an expiration date, when suddenly the person no longer feels able to do what they’ve done to survive. This is often when people come into therapy, have a crisis, etc.

Learning to help people identify where they learned these strategies, how to disentangle these adaptations from their sense of self, and to live more fully in the present is such a skill.

My preferred method of doing this work is EMDR therapy. If you’re interested in learning about how to do this important work with clients with really complex histories then you should join the next Precision EMDR Academy’s Basic Training.