Why I decided to become a trauma therapist…

My first real job in the field was at a community mental health center. I was 22 at the time, and I got hired as a case manager for a non profit that had locations across the country. My job description was something like- “helping clients access essential resources and acting as a liaison between healthcare providers.” What I actually did was a lot of driving to and from medical appointments, standing with them in line at the social security office, speaking to their concerned family members, waiting at the food bank, talking to their doctors about their medication compliance, and occasionally calling 911 when they wouldn’t open the door for a wellness check. I worked with some of the most underprivileged, mentally ill people in Delaware County Pennsylvania. It was a rough job.

After grad school I worked at a rehab. These clients had more resources, but no less suffering. Some of the stories I heard from this job still haunt me. There’s a reason why people become addicts and alcoholics, and I think if we all heard their stories that lead to such intense desperation, we’d be a little more compassionate.

What I noticed at these jobs was immense spiritual, psychological, and physical suffering. These clients were unwell mentally but also experienced chronic illnesses like cancers, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, stomach ulcers, tooth decay, migraines, and all sort of phantom pain in their bodies. The treatment for these individuals was sup par at best, and harmful at worst. The most I could offer them at the time was some kindness and support through the form of talk therapy. I tried, and I did my best. But over the course of this job and the next, also at a rehab, I saw many people trapped in and endless cycle of detox, abstinence, relapse, leave treatment, come back and detox, rinse and repeat. It was endless. Few of them seemed to actually get better. I knew in my gut that what we were offering wasn’t enough. I knew that 7 hours of group therapy and a daily dose of Seroquel wasn’t going to fix their problems that often stemmed from extreme child abuse, family dysfunction, neglect, sexual assaults, and an array of other injuries and traumas that scarred their psyches.

I was fortunate to have a supervisor at the time who was trained in EMDR. I was curious about it and asked if I could sit in on a session she was doing with one of my clients. My client agreed to let me sit in on her reprocessing session. It was very difficult to witness. I remember this client reprocessing a memory of a rape that happened when she was using on the streets. In EMDR we have to ask the pointed question “what was the worst part of it?” I still have an image in my mind of what she said. (This client is doing well by the way, she is healthy, happy, has a young son and as far as I know, is sober now).

As difficult as it was to sit in on this session, it also opened up a door for me. I knew that what my supervisor was doing was next level. I could sense that what my client was going through during the intensity of the session was probably horrible but also necessary for her to get better. It wasn’t in that moment that I decided to become an EMDR therapist, but I look back on that day as a turning point.

When I think about my earlier years in the field, I have so much empathy for the clients I worked with. They had so much collective pain and such little reprieve. I don’t think people understand this depth of human suffering unless they’ve worked with people in the trenches. I know that me and my colleagues tried really hard to help them, and it wasn’t our fault that we couldn’t always find a cure. But what I see now is we actually didn’t have the tools. We weren’t properly trained to deal with the severity of injury in the brain, body, and nervous system that happens when people are traumatized.

After doing this work it almost felt like I had no choice but to continue to study and train in trauma therapies. If I actually wanted to help people I better damn well know how to get to the source. EMDR therapy is not a cure-all, but I have seen it do incredible things for incredible people, and this is why I became a trauma therapist.