After the Session: When Healing Feels Heavy

Tonight I’m focusing on rest, gentleness, and giving myself space to feel without judgment – though the last part is easier said than done.

Trigger Warning

Today’s trauma therapy session brought up farm more than I expected. Things I had buried so deeply that I forgot I had ever thought or felt them resurfaced as I revisited the topic during the session.

Before I go further, I want to explain a little about how my truama therapy works.

We focus on one topic at a time, continuing to work through it over multiple sessions until it feels more or less resolved – for lack of a better term – before moving on to the next.

Each session involves revisiting that chosen event. I read my journal entry aloud and share how writing it initially made me feel. Over the following week, I return to the same entry. During my first review, I often rewrite it, realizing I remember mroe details than I did the first time. I track how I feel before and after reading – whether that’s numbness, anger, sadness, resentment, forgivness, joy – and rate those feelings on a scale from 1 to 10. The hope is to see if and how the ose feelings begin to shift as I continue working through it.

At each session, we review those changes and talk through any new details or emotions that came up.

This is only my second event, and we’ve been working through this perticular event since November. I’ve realized I’ve hit a major stuck point with this one.

This event was the first time I had to bury a part of myself to survive.

I remember feeling trapped in a toxic marriage, with a man who had just forced himself on me for the first time. I was told it was because I had a “rape fantasy,” that he was only giving me what I wanted. Even then, I remember thinking there was no way someone who truly loved me could do something like that and then falsly blame me for it.

I did still love him at the time – but I aslo knew something wasn’t right.

I forgave him because, at that point in my life, I truly believed I had nowhere to go. I had been disowned by my family, and I was living with his. They had already begun taking my daughter from her crib while I slept, leaving for hours without telling me where they were going. It was made very clear to me – a first time 18 year old mom – that they could – and would – take her from me if I didn’t comply.

I’m getting a little sidetracked, and some of that belongs to the other parts of my story, but I wanted to give enough context to understand what came next.

I went into survival mode.

I forgave him for raping me when I was about 2.5 months postpartum, still healing after giving birth naturally and needing over 30 stitches from ripping open. I won’t go into deeper detail here, as this part of my story deserves its own space later.

What stayed with me were the emotions: rage, hate, shame, resentment, and a deep sense of being lost. I left the session feeling overwhelmed, angry, and emotionally exhausted.

But when I walked out, Rish was there.

His hug and his words helped bring a sense of hope back into my chest – something I really needed in that moment.

Even with that support, and the grounding my therapist tried to help me with before I left, I’m still sitting with a lot tonight. Writing this part of how I’m rpocessing it – so I can return to that intention of rest, Gentleness, and giving myself space to feel without judgment, especially for what I had to do to survive.

One thing my therapist and I are still working on is how to fully ground me before I leave a session. If anyone has ideas or practices that have helped you in those final 10 minutes, I would truly appreciate hearing them. And if you’ve ever walked out of a session feeling like this – raw, heavy, and overwhelmed – what helped you come back to the present?

I also want you to know this:

You are not alone in these feelings.

Healing is messy, heavy, and sometimes deeply confusing – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t working.

Keep that in mind as we continue to grow, heal, and discover together.

Still healing. Still growing. Still rising – crowned in scars.

~ Milli