My Journey to Truest Self

Before I was ever a Masters level psychotherapist, I had mastered living with intense emotional pain.  For much of my life, I lived with severe and chronic anxiety, depression and unresolved trauma. I ached internally and felt perpetually lost. I didn’t know who I was or where I belonged for a very long time. I did not feel like I fit in with people. I did not feel that I belonged.  The relationships that I found myself in felt shallow and often unsafe although I could not have articulated that then. I was looking for love in all the wrong places, as they say, and rarely found it.  

As I explore deeper, I realize that no one in my life even from a young age demonstrated truth telling about life’s realities which added to my confusion. I hadn’t spent any time with whole, healed, emotionally honest, healthy people. I didn’t know what that looked like or felt like so I had no frame of reference to draw from moving forward towards future relationships (in clinical terms this is called ‘”co-regulation”–when healthy attachment is formed by the nurturing and modeling of safe, secure, consistent love by primary caregivers allowing for nervous systems to co-regulate together forming healthy, secure attachment). 

Inside me was a massive pit of unprocessed grief, sadness, confusion, unrealized and unmet needs. I felt desperate although I couldn’t name that at the time.  I knew nothing about trauma or its impacts then. I just knew that I hurt. Really bad. I needed someone to see me. Hear me. Help me. I needed comfort, empathy, someone to help me make sense of my internal world.  I felt so alone. It took me many years to fully realize just how alone I had felt for most of my life.  

My road to healing was what led me to my first therapist at 21 years old. I will never forget the relief I experienced for the first time sitting with her in her office. The utter surprise that took place of finally learning not what was wrong with me (which was why I believed I was there) but what had happened to me. The compassion, empathy and validation I received from her felt like it translated to me/inside of me on a cellular level. My body felt immediately lighter and calmer–and the connections we made helped me piece together how I had gotten here.  Sifting through all of my distorted beliefs, perceptions, self-loathing and paralyzing shame was nothing short of profound for me. All of the lights came on.   

The message that it wasn’t my fault. It was never my fault. And that I wasn’t all bad–some really bad things had happened to me.  

Although I was very young, I knew that I had stumbled onto something life changing–potentially the most powerful thing a person could ever experience. The physical relief I experienced in my body as well as the new understandings and awareness I was receiving were so real and compelling I knew that I would never be the same. I also knew that I wanted to be a part of that–help bring relief of emotional pain and be a witness and comfort to someone else’s pain and suffering. I wanted people to experience what I had.  My 21 year old self had dropped into a deep internal knowing  that for me there would be nothing more meaningful or rewarding than this life’s work.

My road to becoming and healing took a very long time with many more wounds and traumas along the way but that initial visit with my first therapist was transformative. The truth is that the vast majority of people in my life would not know these things about me–that I most deeply understand and align with the experiences of longstanding emotional anguish and suffering.  Appearances deceive. Some that know me have known about my high levels of anxiety and depression throughout my life but most would not– even my own family members.  

It took me many years and decades to find me. To know me. To listen to me. To trust me. To love me.  To learn to observe my surroundings –who was unsafe for me and who wasn’t.  

I continue to believe that moving to the place of Truest Self is the most courageous work one will ever do. The unraveling. The unlearning. The grieving. The discovering. The truth telling. The active, conscious removal of our masks and false selves. It is brave, gritty work. 

Today I assist others in their own journeys to Truest Self. It would be accurate of me to say I consider it to be the purest joy of my life (along with being a mother to my four children). When clients ask me ‘how I do this all day’ I tell them that I have come to believe that I was born for it.

I have always been deeply curious and highly attuned to people and their experiences. I have spent many years confronting and processing my own fears, grief, and traumas. I have gone to the abyss of my own emotional pits of terror and despair. Along the way I found my strength, my voice, and my people–the people who support me working on me and who consistently validate my existence and purpose in the world. I know my own limits and boundaries. I don’t apologize for taking the time, resources or energy I need for myself. I rest. I feel. I grieve. I love deeply. I own my parts of things. I know my strengths and weaknesses and continually take responsibility for myself.  

I want my life to demonstrate that yes, we can do this. We can feel this pain. We might not have deserved or asked for what life has thrown at us but we still can survive it.  We can heal from things that don’t feel survivable or surmountable. We can actually grow stronger. 

I was drawn to this work because I know what it means to suffer but I want you to learn sooner than I did that we don’t have to suffer alone. I often say that it is in the moments we most want to retreat into solo isolation that are the moments we most need others. The moments we typically are the most embarrassed or terrified or anguished. We are so afraid of others seeing us in the rawness of our humanness. But I wonder what could happen if we unlearned that. If we allowed a safe, trusted person with us into those hallowed moments.

I wonder how it might transform us and the way we show up in the world– with ourselves and others.