Growing up it felt impossible to know myself in a home where my parents were battling their own generational traumas.

When things at home were good happiness felt vivid, but when things were difficult, they were overwhelmingly difficult.

As a child I deeply felt uncertainty, pressured, and lacked emotional connections, so I learned to disconnect. Later in life relationships were like sandcastles: they gave me a temporary illusion of safety, of feeling wanted and loved, but beneath the surface they fueled my deepest anxieties. I often felt misunderstood, anxious, and depressed because I believed that there was something wrong with me. I felt alone in moments of stillness, and slowly began to connect to a deep belief that I wasn’t good enough to be loved with a deep sense of shame.

These beliefs and feelings followed me late into adulthood. I strived to better understand how my experiences influenced my life including the intense belief that I was flawed which kept me stuck for a very long time. Later, I rebooted my career, but old beliefs that were never truly understood, crept back. I began to strive for a false sense of security and buried myself in work at lightening speed. External validation from my peers gave me a sense of pride and belonging, but this was fleeting and there were times when worry and fear became overwhelming again, and I felt alone.

Things shifted for me when I started to understand the role that anxiety and sadness played in my life, the protection they gave to manage an environment that was sometimes difficult to comprehend and navigate. Exploration through my own therapy and my development as a psychotherapist have helped me better understand that patterns of thought, behaviour and the accompanying feelings learned through early life relationships were strategies to protect me from what felt hurtful, to try and keep my emotional self safe. Processing the felt sense of despair and fear and working to become more grounded in those emotions and sensations has changed how I react to various life circumstances, the way I perceive intent, and receive care from myself and others.

Now as a Registered Psychotherapist, I continue to develop my understanding of the effects of trauma and grief on our self-worth. For me, healing and therapy are not about control, organization, or fixing, but creating space for all that has been held inside and allowing it to finally be felt and understood.