Different therapists and therapeutic frameworks have helped me through the uncertainties of my life, and when I look back, they each helped to slowly unfold the life that I have lived.

In more recent times, I realised that I was sitting on an enormous iceberg of unknowable feelings and that I was in danger of being completely overwhelmed and entered into an 18 month period of psychotherapy. During that time, my therapist helped me to see that my life had been one of deep trauma inflicted on me at just about every level. I learnt to recognise the triggers that the trauma had left me with and learnt new ways to see these, finding ways to ‘dial’ down my reactive-pathways. However, I came to understand that my therapists own therapeutic framework, could not afford me the freedom to feel into what was screaming to be witnessed and that I held deep inside, without the naming of me as a ‘systemised set of pathologies’. 

For six months or so after my therapy had concluded, I was able to function but could not escape the feeling that I was being overwhelmed by an unknowable dread from which I would never be able to understand and free myself from.

A series of fortuitous events led me to reading about EMDR and then ultimately met Katie Heath-Tilford. We started working online and I immediately felt safe. Katie’s listening attention gave me the sense that I could bring to our sessions something of my deeper self, that I had never been able to explore with past therapists. The ‘sensate’ approach that Katie offered combined with her deep levels of open reflection, allowed me to open doorways and paths that I had buried deep inside. For the first time in my life, memories, connections and deep emotions began bubbling to the surface. Katie’s use of bi-aural clicks allowed access to emotions without feeling overwhelmed. They also somehow allowed my attention to feel very clear and in the moment. Our subsequent joint reflections gave me a sense of perspective, allowing me to be held but also to hold my deeply traumatic past.

Looking back now after our intensive three month time together, I am very aware of the gratitude I feel in having met a therapist that never sought to limit my own healing journey and instead sat alongside and accepted the intuitive pathways that I have been feeling into my whole life. 

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it’s hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you can do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

William Stafford