Transcript
(birds tweeting)
- Writing the trauma narrative,
it's basically talking
about the thing you
went through the most
that caused you
the most distress,
the most discomfort
in your life.
You write about it.
(gentle music)
It's necessary, 100% necessary.
It's like pulling a thorn
out that you've been
carrying the entire
time, and if you don't
write that trauma narrative,
you're never going
to get the thorn out.
(gentle music)
Yeah, it's going to be
rough, it's going to be hard,
it's going to be painful.
You have to dig it out,
but in the end, it's out,
and you feel so much better.
Once you start,
things that you forgot about
that you never even
remembered were
even there start coming out,
and then pouring
out on the paper.
I mean, you keep
remembering more and more,
and what it smelled like,
and what it felt like,
and what were you feeling
it the time it happened,
and what did you see?
Then you remember
more and more things,
so you got to keep
writing and writing and...
It was very difficult.
A lot of times you
had to stop because
tears would hit the paper,
but I always kept
pushing through it.
And to me, I got
finished with it,
and a little sigh of relief
kind of came over me.
(gentle music)
The reading it to
my therapist was
kind of a surprise
because before I know it,
all this stuff started
pouring out of me,
stuff I didn't even know I had.
It just started
flowing out of me.
I allowed myself to feel the
impact on what happened to me,
and actually feel
the emotions that I
had bottled up for so long.
And then when that happened,
this huge, huge relief
just came flowing
over me, and instantly almost,
this giant chip I carried
on my shoulders for nearly
a decade just dissipated,
and I felt so much better.
It wasn't I wouldn't say by
any means an instant fix,
but I definitely felt a
lot better after I did it.
I can breath again (chuckles).
(gentle music)