According to a nationwide survey, conducted by NSCH, nearly 35 million children have experienced some form of childhood trauma. When I first read this, I was dumbfounded. When I took a step back and thought about it, everyone I personally know has shared a similar connection with trauma. This statistic, although staggering, seems to be pretty accurate. Trauma can be subjective to perception, thus making it far more prevalent. I was no exception. In fact, I spent most of my life dancing with trauma until it became an insane crutch for my utter victimization.

I was 5 when I had my first encounter with trauma. Unequipped and invalidated, my experience was swept under the rug and that 5 year old girl was instantly enslaved to fear. I had zero coping skills and no advocate to fight on my behalf. I remember being confused at the pressing questions that followed my accusations and honestly, I began to prefer avoidance over confronting the discomfort. Little did I know, all that little girl wanted was to be heard, protected, and loved.

Fast forward to my adolescent years, trauma continued to be a common theme for me. Avoidance, dissociation, co-dependency, and eventually full-blown addiction became my survival. My inability to cope resulted in unhealthy self-sabotaging behaviors. I trembled in the face of any confrontation (good or bad). I was repulsed by true intimacy. I refused to trust anyone, myself included. My actions were driven by a thousand forms of fear. I even began to seek out trauma, after all I knew exactly how to respond and react to chaos. Security, serenity, and self- love were all foreign concepts to me. I began seeking oblivion through any mood/mind altering substance.  Eventually, I couldn’t indulge enough in any person, place, or thing to numb the pain. Legal consequences and fear of losing my son became the bottom upon which grace met me.

I left for treatment, at a dual-diagnosis treatment center and thus my story really begins. I remember walking into treatment on a pink cloud of sorts. After all, I had the advantage of stepping into rehab almost two weeks “sober”. My naivety would soon be smashed, once real sobriety was thrown my way. I assumed healing was putting down drugs and alcohol, but the truth is… they were my solution. Underneath all of the self-medicating behaviors was that scared little 5 year old girl, fundamentally incapable of coping. As soon as I was asked to talk about my trauma, I retreated and essentially rebelled against the idea of even recognizing my past.

I managed to make it to a year and a half sober before utter misery crept in. I no longer had the “medicine” to remedy the old emotional wounds of my past. I was finally in enough pain that the fear of change was far less worrisome. I was either going to drink again or face my fears head on. Two years sober and I sought out trauma therapy. Turns out, all of the nightmares, anxiety, flashbacks, irritability, and panic attacks were not ‘the norm.’ I remember my therapist telling me I needed to “hug that little girl”. I remember feeling awkward and uninterested in the idea that I needed to help this little girl. In my mind, she was gone..in my mind, she never really got a chance to live her life.

Victim of circumstance and the pressures to grow up overnight, I never felt like I had the real opportunity to be a kid. When asked to connect with the little girl, it seemed impossible. Over the course of the next few sessions I tried my best to avoid this conversation all together. My therapist was on to me. She knew exactly what I was doing, and the gig was up. I remember her explaining to me the importance of Inner Child Therapy, especially in cases of trauma such as mine. You see, the problem lied in my defiant dissociation from my past. Like an old, unhealed wound..the infection was spreading into every area of my life. I would never experience true freedom until I pulled the pain out by the roots and began to administer new remedies to fill the hole left behind.

As therapy continued, little by little, we began to unravel the webs my trauma webbed around every essence of my being. The more we talked, out loud, about my trauma the memories started to come back. My therapist constantly reminded me that the trauma had nothing to do with that little 5 year old girl. Instead, she began to make sense of how that little girl was truly a victim of these circumstances. I started to become aware of the fearful child inside of me, as I reacted seemingly unprovoked with irrational responses. Empowerment began to creep it’s way in and I wasn’t so afraid of connecting with that little girl. Healing and utter grace met me in that place. I am still a work in progress but today I no longer wallow in irritability, restlessness, and discontentment. I have found a new hope and a new freedom.