The First Step in Healing My Trauma Was Acknowledging It

After my divorce in my early thirties, and still carrying my stories of abandonment and unworthiness, I set out on a path of pain-numbing destruction fueled by sex and booze. While many in my then-circle refer to that period as “the good ol’ days,” for me, it was the onset of my darkest time.

There was a part of me, the younger, wounded version of me, who was angry and rebellious. I was, even decades later, seething for having endured my parents’ abuse and abandonment. I was outraged over my lost childhood. And the broken lens through which I viewed the world, especially myself, kept me from true connection, love, and joy.

During the day I was a successful white-collar criminal defense attorney representing millionaire executives. But by night, I was emotionally desperate and craving complete annihilation. On the nights when I wasn’t out looking to get blackout drunk and have sex with emotionally unavailable men, I was home alone panicked and unable to sleep. Memories of the past kept me pacing compulsively through the hallways of my house.

One particular night, when the memories of my parents' fights and dysfunction were scalding and thick, I stumbled to the bathroom and flipped on the light. Staring at myself in the mirror, I didn’t recognize my form. My green eyes were hazy like heat rising off a city street after a summer storm. My skin was tired and dull. My mouth was drawn into a frown that wouldn’t budge. I twisted my thick blonde hair into a top knot and splashed cool water on my face. The fear and anger that raged inside me would not stop. I was terrified it might break my heart or cut off my airways, deciding I’d served enough of a sentence in this life.

The terror of losing myself once and for all rattled me. I knew something had to change or the weight of it all would surely kill me. And while I was, at that time, an adult chock-full of wretched panic, I also held a younger, rageful version of me locked in the past.

In that moment, when my apathy toward life roared into full-blown anxiety, I questioned the limiting patterns I’d subconsciously placed on my life. Even as a successful professional, I felt unworthy of love, happiness, and life itself. I rebelled against intimacy and denied myself the joy of belonging.

Why was I doing this?

I began to see that the limiting story I’d written for myself—the one that was supposed to keep me from being hurt again—was now causing me to reel in an abyss of misery. My negative, untrue story was now woven into the fiber of my being.

Acknowledging my story was a powerful inroad to healing and I did it in two steps. First, I identified the origin of my story or the traumatic event that caused me to write my story of abandonment, unworthiness, and shame. While there were many instances of abuse in my past, I wrote my story after being emotionally and physically abandoned by both my father, who was sentenced to prison by the federal government, and my mother, who was sentenced to her bed by debilitating depression.

The next step in acknowledging my story required me to cultivate self-awareness about the story I was telling myself. This required full-throttle, eyes-wide-open, call-it-like-it-is honesty on my part. For years I’d lived inside my false story without question. I even felt deserving of my story. Thoughts like: I was abused and abandoned, so I’m entitled to feel this way ran amok in my brain.

After a few therapy appointments and a lot of journaling, I saw that my inner landscape was a landmine of negativity and limitation. And with some persistent questioning, I also began to see that my story wasn’t helping me. Instead, it was holding me back from love, success, and being my most authentic self. And so, I set out to upend my story and I’d do it by using objective and factual language to acknowledge my trauma and my story instead of the mean-spirited language I’d been accustomed to.

Where my story used to sound like this:

People always leave me. I am unworthy of anything good. I am unworthy and unlovable. Even my own parents didn’t want me.

It changed and sounded like this:

Because my mother tried to give me away at birth (factual), I falsely believed that I was unworthy and unlovable.

Because my father went to prison (factual), I told myself the untrue story that everyone would ultimately leave me and that I was unworthy of happiness and love.

While the full unraveling of my story would take a few more years, finally being objective and honest about my story was what began transforming my life from limitation to complete emotional freedom. This small, but essential, step created the brain-heart coherence needed to heal.