Not all trauma is loud. Developmental trauma, especially the kind rooted in emotional neglect, parentification, or growing up in unpredictable environments, often leads to coping through control.
You become the high achiever. The one who always holds it together. The one who doesn’t ask for help, because you learned early on it wasn’t safe to need anything.
But underneath the competence can sit chronic anxiety, burnout, and a nervous system still running on survival mode.
Therapy helps you unlearn the belief that your worth and safety are tied to how in control you are.
Healing isn’t about letting everything fall apart, it’s about slowly learning you don’t have to carry it all alone. And that safety can be found in connection.
⭐️ Download my free guide “Trauma, Survival & Grounding” for practical tools and psychoeducation to support your healing journey — link in bio.
#trauma #complextrauma #emdr #developmentaltrauma #childhoodtrauma
If EMDR makes you feel worse before you feel better, that might mean it’s working.
Think of it like being on a train going through a tunnel. At first, it’s dark. Disorienting. You can’t see clearly, and it might even feel like things are getting worse. But that doesn’t mean you’re lost. It means you’re moving.
Your brain is doing something it couldn’t do at the time, it’s processing what was stuck, so it no longer hijacks your present.
EMDR doesn’t re-traumatise you. It brings unprocessed material into awareness so it can finally move through.
You don’t have to feel better immediately for it to be helping. Sometimes you just need to keep going — and trust that there is another side to the tunnel. And that your therapist will be with you on the train and will help you make it through to the other side.
I’m curious for those that have done EMDR - does this make sense to you?
#trauma #complextrauma #emdr #healing #traumarecovery
People-pleasing doesn’t end when you walk into the therapy room.
Many trauma survivors bring the same survival strategy into the therapeutic relationship: they try to stay agreeable, stay contained, stay likeable.
You might avoid going too deep because you don’t want to overwhelm your therapist.
Or you might hold back because you think what you’ve been through isn’t “bad enough” to take up space.
Either way, the outcome is the same: you censor the parts of you that most need to be seen.
But therapy is not about being easy to sit with.
It’s about being real — even when that feels like a risk. It’s about allowing yourself to feel that discomfort and work through it. Because you’re not responsible for other people’s emotions.
If you’re still managing the space, protecting the therapist, or performing safety, it might be worth asking:
Is this safety or is this survival?
📥 Download my free trauma & grounding guide (link in bio)
#trauma #complextrauma #peoplepleasing #peoplepleaser #peoplepleasernomore
