❤️🩹 As a trauma therapist myself working through my own trauma, the underlying current of aloneness is so real and so tender for all of us. Thank you for putting this into words in a way that I know will resonate with so many.
Thank you for this. There's something really powerful about therapists who understand this wound from both sides. Your vulnerability here helps normalize that healing is ongoing for all of us, even those of us holding space for others.
“It's not just the original hurt that damages us; it's the way we learn to carry it alone, to make ourselves smaller so others can remain comfortable.” WOW. I love that last line. Thanks for a great article.
This really hit home for me in so many ways. Being alone, feeling alone in my childhood experiences of emotional trauma left me feeling personally responsible for what I’d been through. I’ve felt like I was broken for decades. Like all of the trauma that I’ve experienced throughout my life occurred because there was something wrong with me. With the help of both a trauma informed therapist and somatic therapist I’m finally beginning to feel, believe in and trust connection. It’s hard work, it’s going to take time, and I will heal.
I'm really glad you've found therapists who can help you feel and trust connection again. You're right that it's hard work and will take time, but the fact that you're already experiencing that shift speaks volumes about your strength.
This article hit home for me. I have been "alone" with my trauma for my entire life, even with therapists. I have shared some of it successfully with good therapists, but I have not felt safe enough to share some of the worst of it until I met Greta. After 2 years of working with her and a promise not to abandon me, I started sharing some really painful stuff I had never shared before. 3 months after she promised not to abandon me, she walked into a session out of the blue and announced, "I've decided to terminate you; I'm not competent to treat your trauma." She knew about my trauma from what I wrote in the intake documents and after 6 months I told her the details of the assault/attempted murder. But as I related more of my childhood trauma, suddenly she became incompetent.
Her parting shot? "I'm not trained to treat trauma; I'm not interested in treating trauma; I'm not interested in learning to treat trauma." Translation: "I'm not interested in treating you." And she insisted that she wasn't abandoning me over and over and over because she offered to teach me "DBT tools" so that "not being abandoned" wouldn't hurt so much. Her exact words.
So having been alone my entire life, I finally (at the age of 72) begin to feel not so alone, only to be betrayed, abandoned, and rejected by my therapist (who I found out 4 months later was an intern, which she did not disclose to me. She got rid of me as soon as she had acquired enough supervised hours for her license).
It's been 2 years this weekend, and I'm just as devastated now as I was then. The betrayal of trust is something I don't believe I will ever get past. I thought for the first time that I wasn't alone; it turned out I was always alone, and I just didn't know it. I learned from her that I have no ability to determine who is and isn't trustworthy even now at age 74. Therapists can do so much harm. She knew exactly what she was doing, and it was a plan from the beginning to keep me as long as she needed me and discard me as soon as possible.
I now have another therapist, but I have a terrible time trusting that one day she won't do the same thing. Reassurances don't help. I had been told Greta wouldn't abandon me. She actually admitted to me that she had been planning it for 18 months when she said it. What kind of person DOES that? She is now a fully licensed psychotherapist (social worker) who advertises that she treats trauma. And there is nothing that can stop her from doing to others what she did to me. The powerlessness is overwhelming to me. I was alone when I was gang raped and nearly murdered. I was alone as a child with trauma after trauma. And I continue to be alone because of the planned betrayal by a therapist I had come to trust.
What that therapist did to you was a complete betrayal, especially after you finally found the courage to share your deepest wounds. The fact that she was an undisclosed intern using you for hours makes it even more devastating. You deserved so much better.
Your insight about the "planned betrayal" really captures how therapeutic harm can be even more damaging than the original trauma—because it happens in the very relationship that was supposed to heal. The fact that you're working with another therapist now despite how hard it must be to trust again shows incredible courage.
What happened wasn't about your inability to determine trustworthiness—it was about her complete failure as a clinician and human being. You have every right to feel devastated and angry.
Thank you. I know that, but the younger parts of me are just devastated. I'm doing IFS with my new therapist, and we are working with the part that was so traumatized by that betrayal. I filed a complaint against her almost a year ago for not telling me she was an intern, but I'm aware that she will just lie to them and say she did, and they will dismiss for "insufficient evidence." She was the second therapist who betrayed my trust, and she knew about the first one. And did it anyway. The last time I saw her was like a nightmare. It came out of nowhere. Two days earlier I had gotten an email from her talking about her hopes for our future work together (which to her meant my paying for more sessions for her to teach me DBT "tools" so that her betrayal (she insisted she wasn't abandoning me because of that offer) wouldn't hurt so much.
I fully expect my complaint to be dismissed, but I filed it anyway to let her know that i KNOW what she did was illegal and unethical. Of course, no client can claim abandonment if the therapist writes "I'm not competent . . ." or "you're not making progress . . ." for "I felt threatened by this client." Get out of jail free cards, and all therapists knows they just have to write one of these in the record to avoid being accused of abandonment.
I have said and believe that if God came down and asked me to choose having to endure either the gang rape/attempted murder or the soul murder that therapist inflicted on me, I would choose the gang rape. Yes, it has had terrible effects on me, but I knew they were my enemies, they hated me (I am White, they were Black and the "white trash" epithets were constant during the attack). I thought this woman was going to help me, and instead she hurt me much more than they did. And she walks away scot free, while after 2 years (today) I continue to feel like I was tossed away like a dirty Kleenex.
Nancy. I hear you. I grew up feeling deeply lonely in my family. My older brother bullied me daily until I was about 14 years-old. I begged my mother many times to get him to stop, but it didn’t stop until he got bored with bullying me.”
In the late 1990’s my wife and I went through some challenging times and worked with a marriage counselor. We discovered in that work the un-mothered child in me. When this happened, the marriage counselor said “I’ll be the mom”. I had no idea at that time how dangerous that was.
Over time, that therapist became the mother to that un-mothered child in me that that part of me had always wanted. One day, I asked her, “the little boy in me wants to know if you love him”. I couched that question as safely as I could. From that point forward, EVERYTHING CHANGED! Each time we went to see her, it felt like my soul was getting cut with a knife.
Eventually, that relationship failed. That therapist sent to another therapist who knew about childhood trauma and un-mothered parts. That second relationship failed 3 years later. I was DEVASTATED!
In 2021, I started very cautiously working another therapist. I described to her what happened with the marriage counselor, and over the next 2+ years, we healed the betrayal and the wound I experienced with the marriage counselor. That wound is fully healed. The devastation has been healed. I am still healing other wounds, but that one has healed. It took 20+ years to build the courage and do the work to heal. I am so grateful!
Nancy, you can heal! With the right therapist, and the right working chemistry, healing can happen!
Thank you for sharing your story with Nancy and offering hope. The fact that you persevered through multiple failed therapeutic relationships to find healing gives me hope for anyone struggling with trust in the process.
I have been blessed. My wife is one of kindest, most compassionate souls on the planet. We’ve been together 40 years, and we have supported each other in healing. Her upbringing was even more challenging than mine in certain ways. 😊
The therapist I have been working with the last 4 years has been hugely helpful. She realized that the wound with the marriage counselor was due to unclear boundaries. So, she and I have consistently attended to the boundaries, which created a very powerful healing relationship. I am so grateful for her understanding this.
Before, this new therapist and I worked together, my inner feeling was just varying degrees of feeling bad. I was very afraid of the unattended sorrow that I felt, so I didn’t let myself go there. As a result of “going there” and feeling the grief and rage, I actually feel good at times, frequently, and when I feel bad, I am much more free to experience it and can integrate it more fully and more quickly.
Sun sees you, Nancy. So do I. Those kind of betrayals cut too deep to the bone to be forgotten or forgiven. It's all too easy to think you will never be able to trust anyone after that.
For your sake, I wish for you to find someone who will give you what that betrayer denied. You deserve to heal.
This made me feel so seen. Thank you for writing this.
My fear is, I AM this depressed mother that sometimes is too sad to function. And when I see the look in my children’s eyes, it hurts me more. God knows I’m doing everything I can to get better. I do therapy, I am building up relationships with my girlfriends and try to show my real self. But when life gets tough, the depression returns and then my worst fear is that my children feel as alone as I did as a child. I connect with them as much as I can but depression can feel like living behind a glass wall. Or like your example, under a layer of ice. It’s especially hard doing it all alone. No breaks, or hardly ever.
I pray for them to feel surrounded by love. It’s all I have for them!
Just to say, the people who let us down as children might just as well be drowning themselves. That doesn’t make it any better. It’s so sad that this disconnection is such a big part of our society.
I’m sorry to write such a depressing comment. Just wanted to say thank you.
Your children will benefit tremendously from having a mother who's honest about her struggles and actively working to heal. That's not depressing, that's courageous.
This is so true. I remember hearing Gabor Mate speak about this once. He said something along the lines of how trauma isn't necessarily the event itself, but sitting alone with it afterwards. And so much of childhood trauma involves being alone, and that feeling persists throughout life regardless of how many caring people one is surrounded by.
Yes! Gabor Maté's work has been so influential in understanding trauma this way. That quote about trauma not being the event but "sitting alone with it afterwards" really gets to the heart of what I was trying to convey. It's that aloneness that can persist even when we're surrounded by caring people.
Thank you for speaking to what I always saw as the worst part of my childhood trauma. It was never just that my junkie bio-father ruled with terror, threatened and beat my mom (and later me) and looked ready to do the same to my little sister when we left. No, it was that the people around us decided to minimize, dismiss or outright look the other way when we called out for help.
It's why I no longer care about that place in East TN where it happened now that I'm away. They failed me when I needed them most.
❤️🩹 As a trauma therapist myself working through my own trauma, the underlying current of aloneness is so real and so tender for all of us. Thank you for putting this into words in a way that I know will resonate with so many.
Thank you for this. There's something really powerful about therapists who understand this wound from both sides. Your vulnerability here helps normalize that healing is ongoing for all of us, even those of us holding space for others.
“It's not just the original hurt that damages us; it's the way we learn to carry it alone, to make ourselves smaller so others can remain comfortable.” WOW. I love that last line. Thanks for a great article.
Thank you for taking the time to read it and comment :)
This really hit home for me in so many ways. Being alone, feeling alone in my childhood experiences of emotional trauma left me feeling personally responsible for what I’d been through. I’ve felt like I was broken for decades. Like all of the trauma that I’ve experienced throughout my life occurred because there was something wrong with me. With the help of both a trauma informed therapist and somatic therapist I’m finally beginning to feel, believe in and trust connection. It’s hard work, it’s going to take time, and I will heal.
I'm really glad you've found therapists who can help you feel and trust connection again. You're right that it's hard work and will take time, but the fact that you're already experiencing that shift speaks volumes about your strength.
💔----->💝💯👏👏👏👏👏
I have loved finding other therapists on here. So much connection: https://substack.com/@becomingreal?r=5s8e0e&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile
I really needed this article today. Thank you 🙏.
Im glad you found it!
Thank you. This helps with my journey towards healing.
So much resonates. Thank you
Thank you.
This article hit home for me. I have been "alone" with my trauma for my entire life, even with therapists. I have shared some of it successfully with good therapists, but I have not felt safe enough to share some of the worst of it until I met Greta. After 2 years of working with her and a promise not to abandon me, I started sharing some really painful stuff I had never shared before. 3 months after she promised not to abandon me, she walked into a session out of the blue and announced, "I've decided to terminate you; I'm not competent to treat your trauma." She knew about my trauma from what I wrote in the intake documents and after 6 months I told her the details of the assault/attempted murder. But as I related more of my childhood trauma, suddenly she became incompetent.
Her parting shot? "I'm not trained to treat trauma; I'm not interested in treating trauma; I'm not interested in learning to treat trauma." Translation: "I'm not interested in treating you." And she insisted that she wasn't abandoning me over and over and over because she offered to teach me "DBT tools" so that "not being abandoned" wouldn't hurt so much. Her exact words.
So having been alone my entire life, I finally (at the age of 72) begin to feel not so alone, only to be betrayed, abandoned, and rejected by my therapist (who I found out 4 months later was an intern, which she did not disclose to me. She got rid of me as soon as she had acquired enough supervised hours for her license).
It's been 2 years this weekend, and I'm just as devastated now as I was then. The betrayal of trust is something I don't believe I will ever get past. I thought for the first time that I wasn't alone; it turned out I was always alone, and I just didn't know it. I learned from her that I have no ability to determine who is and isn't trustworthy even now at age 74. Therapists can do so much harm. She knew exactly what she was doing, and it was a plan from the beginning to keep me as long as she needed me and discard me as soon as possible.
I now have another therapist, but I have a terrible time trusting that one day she won't do the same thing. Reassurances don't help. I had been told Greta wouldn't abandon me. She actually admitted to me that she had been planning it for 18 months when she said it. What kind of person DOES that? She is now a fully licensed psychotherapist (social worker) who advertises that she treats trauma. And there is nothing that can stop her from doing to others what she did to me. The powerlessness is overwhelming to me. I was alone when I was gang raped and nearly murdered. I was alone as a child with trauma after trauma. And I continue to be alone because of the planned betrayal by a therapist I had come to trust.
What that therapist did to you was a complete betrayal, especially after you finally found the courage to share your deepest wounds. The fact that she was an undisclosed intern using you for hours makes it even more devastating. You deserved so much better.
Your insight about the "planned betrayal" really captures how therapeutic harm can be even more damaging than the original trauma—because it happens in the very relationship that was supposed to heal. The fact that you're working with another therapist now despite how hard it must be to trust again shows incredible courage.
What happened wasn't about your inability to determine trustworthiness—it was about her complete failure as a clinician and human being. You have every right to feel devastated and angry.
Thank you. I know that, but the younger parts of me are just devastated. I'm doing IFS with my new therapist, and we are working with the part that was so traumatized by that betrayal. I filed a complaint against her almost a year ago for not telling me she was an intern, but I'm aware that she will just lie to them and say she did, and they will dismiss for "insufficient evidence." She was the second therapist who betrayed my trust, and she knew about the first one. And did it anyway. The last time I saw her was like a nightmare. It came out of nowhere. Two days earlier I had gotten an email from her talking about her hopes for our future work together (which to her meant my paying for more sessions for her to teach me DBT "tools" so that her betrayal (she insisted she wasn't abandoning me because of that offer) wouldn't hurt so much.
I fully expect my complaint to be dismissed, but I filed it anyway to let her know that i KNOW what she did was illegal and unethical. Of course, no client can claim abandonment if the therapist writes "I'm not competent . . ." or "you're not making progress . . ." for "I felt threatened by this client." Get out of jail free cards, and all therapists knows they just have to write one of these in the record to avoid being accused of abandonment.
I have said and believe that if God came down and asked me to choose having to endure either the gang rape/attempted murder or the soul murder that therapist inflicted on me, I would choose the gang rape. Yes, it has had terrible effects on me, but I knew they were my enemies, they hated me (I am White, they were Black and the "white trash" epithets were constant during the attack). I thought this woman was going to help me, and instead she hurt me much more than they did. And she walks away scot free, while after 2 years (today) I continue to feel like I was tossed away like a dirty Kleenex.
Nancy. I hear you. I grew up feeling deeply lonely in my family. My older brother bullied me daily until I was about 14 years-old. I begged my mother many times to get him to stop, but it didn’t stop until he got bored with bullying me.”
In the late 1990’s my wife and I went through some challenging times and worked with a marriage counselor. We discovered in that work the un-mothered child in me. When this happened, the marriage counselor said “I’ll be the mom”. I had no idea at that time how dangerous that was.
Over time, that therapist became the mother to that un-mothered child in me that that part of me had always wanted. One day, I asked her, “the little boy in me wants to know if you love him”. I couched that question as safely as I could. From that point forward, EVERYTHING CHANGED! Each time we went to see her, it felt like my soul was getting cut with a knife.
Eventually, that relationship failed. That therapist sent to another therapist who knew about childhood trauma and un-mothered parts. That second relationship failed 3 years later. I was DEVASTATED!
In 2021, I started very cautiously working another therapist. I described to her what happened with the marriage counselor, and over the next 2+ years, we healed the betrayal and the wound I experienced with the marriage counselor. That wound is fully healed. The devastation has been healed. I am still healing other wounds, but that one has healed. It took 20+ years to build the courage and do the work to heal. I am so grateful!
Nancy, you can heal! With the right therapist, and the right working chemistry, healing can happen!
Bless You My Dear! Bless you! 🙏🏻😊
Thank you for sharing your story with Nancy and offering hope. The fact that you persevered through multiple failed therapeutic relationships to find healing gives me hope for anyone struggling with trust in the process.
I have been blessed. My wife is one of kindest, most compassionate souls on the planet. We’ve been together 40 years, and we have supported each other in healing. Her upbringing was even more challenging than mine in certain ways. 😊
The therapist I have been working with the last 4 years has been hugely helpful. She realized that the wound with the marriage counselor was due to unclear boundaries. So, she and I have consistently attended to the boundaries, which created a very powerful healing relationship. I am so grateful for her understanding this.
Before, this new therapist and I worked together, my inner feeling was just varying degrees of feeling bad. I was very afraid of the unattended sorrow that I felt, so I didn’t let myself go there. As a result of “going there” and feeling the grief and rage, I actually feel good at times, frequently, and when I feel bad, I am much more free to experience it and can integrate it more fully and more quickly.
Thank you. Despite deep discouragement, I do have hope that this therapist can help me.
Sun sees you, Nancy. So do I. Those kind of betrayals cut too deep to the bone to be forgotten or forgiven. It's all too easy to think you will never be able to trust anyone after that.
For your sake, I wish for you to find someone who will give you what that betrayer denied. You deserve to heal.
This made me feel so seen. Thank you for writing this.
My fear is, I AM this depressed mother that sometimes is too sad to function. And when I see the look in my children’s eyes, it hurts me more. God knows I’m doing everything I can to get better. I do therapy, I am building up relationships with my girlfriends and try to show my real self. But when life gets tough, the depression returns and then my worst fear is that my children feel as alone as I did as a child. I connect with them as much as I can but depression can feel like living behind a glass wall. Or like your example, under a layer of ice. It’s especially hard doing it all alone. No breaks, or hardly ever.
I pray for them to feel surrounded by love. It’s all I have for them!
Just to say, the people who let us down as children might just as well be drowning themselves. That doesn’t make it any better. It’s so sad that this disconnection is such a big part of our society.
I’m sorry to write such a depressing comment. Just wanted to say thank you.
Your children will benefit tremendously from having a mother who's honest about her struggles and actively working to heal. That's not depressing, that's courageous.
Thank you. That means a lot.
This is so true. I remember hearing Gabor Mate speak about this once. He said something along the lines of how trauma isn't necessarily the event itself, but sitting alone with it afterwards. And so much of childhood trauma involves being alone, and that feeling persists throughout life regardless of how many caring people one is surrounded by.
Yes! Gabor Maté's work has been so influential in understanding trauma this way. That quote about trauma not being the event but "sitting alone with it afterwards" really gets to the heart of what I was trying to convey. It's that aloneness that can persist even when we're surrounded by caring people.
What if your child’s healing begins with your own?
In this deeply personal piece, I reflect on reparenting myself — and now teaching my daughter to do the same.
It’s the most sacred part of my motherhood.
✨
https://galinasinger.substack.com/p/the-most-sacred-part-of-my-motherhood
Thank You for this article! It tells my story. 🙏🏻😊
This is so lovely, true, and feels so hopeful. I like the idea of a constellation of support. Thank you for writing <3.
Thank you for speaking to what I always saw as the worst part of my childhood trauma. It was never just that my junkie bio-father ruled with terror, threatened and beat my mom (and later me) and looked ready to do the same to my little sister when we left. No, it was that the people around us decided to minimize, dismiss or outright look the other way when we called out for help.
It's why I no longer care about that place in East TN where it happened now that I'm away. They failed me when I needed them most.