Taking Risks and the Therapeutic Journey
Sometimes, Trauma… is a culmination of a long journey with clients and therapy. I ran an agency in Bristol for many years and offered “Reflective Practice” groups for staff at another. I found training and supporting developing therapists, workers and clients in these roles hugely fulfilling. I love seeing light bulbs go off for people, as confidence, competence and knowledge increases.
Approaching Therapy
My own path to becoming a therapist began in 2002, as a student at Wiltshire College, qualifying some 4 years later. I had been the confused recipient of some disastrous therapy myself at university. The counsellor seemed more scared than me: mostly silent for 50 minutes, then panicking and saying they couldn’t work with me, before referring me to a psychotherapist. The pattern repeated with the psychotherapist, who referred me to a psychiatrist. He was calm in himself and personable, kind – direct. He told me he wasn’t too worried as it was all very “existential”, and that I would come to sort it all out – which over time proved very true.
Around this time, I also met my father’s psychiatrist, who was literally helping to keep him alive from the ravages of his bi-polar depression. I asked her how I could help the father I loved so much. Her answer had a profound impact on my whole life: “You only have to be his daughter. Not his therapist. I am doing that”. I found over time, I wanted to be that therapist for others like my father and try and make a difference in their lives.
Deepening Directions with Neuroscience
More recently, the dissemination of scientific knowledge in the way that we identify, label and treat Trauma as therapists has been professionally exciting and liberating for me. The ability to offer support that has a rigour behind it, (noticeably seeing the regulation and confidence of clients increase as symptoms reduce) has been deeply rewarding. I am a very practical person, and my brain likes a logic and “down to earth” feeling to anything I do.
And then Covid…
Lockdown changed my therapeutic journey, as I no longer needed to commute from Devon to Bristol to run an agency. I finally had more time for a larger private practice. After a weaning period, all my work took place from Devon, and I left those organisations that needed in-person work. However, three years on, I noticed that I missed the beauty and drama of groupwork and felt sad to build a waiting list, turning clients away I couldn’t fit into my diary. I have realised that I also miss writing and delivering training – other skills that I have honed over years but have been redundant more recently. Time for something new to come in…
The Parallel and Personal Meet
Running in parallel, my personal journey has long been made richer through my own explorations of music and poetry. I have been lucky to always be around creative people, though I have typically kept the therapist and the “creative” HanJan parts very distinct. Recently, this segregation of self was challenged at a CPD event. Therapy has changed a lot. I have changed in it. I decided it was time for more integration! The poetry I place here is a collection specifically chosen, as I hope it might add some meaning to a therapeutic journey for client or therapist. At times, these poems have been my own “call to arms” – my intention to live life fully, to allow pain to find a place, to notice and benefit from a relationship with death, or to make sure I deploy mindfulness in my daily life.
What’s in a name?
Which brings me to the critical point here. Why “Sometimes, Trauma…”? In part, the answer is: “Because the name came to me in the night linked to a poem I wrote, and I had to get up and write down the entire idea for this project.” This is true, but the deeper answer is more than that. I recognise it is a weird name for a “business”, but I came to realise it is the right name for me. “Sometimes, Trauma…” is the start of a phrase that inevitably leads to an answer; just as all trauma work leads us to answers about what has happened, which in turn, become the new truths that we carry. Even as I write this, Hannah might say “Sometimes, Trauma has arrested my capacity to take risks”. This is a truth. And yet the phrase also inherently has within it the possibility for a different ending – or a stipulation that comes from it.
My sentence then becomes true with: “Sometimes, Trauma has arrested my capacity to take risks – and yet here I am, creating a platform about Trauma, which may be the greatest risk of many that I have allowed myself to take”.
Taking Risks
We know on some elemental level that truly living is about risk. I suspect that whoever you are, reading this in this moment of your lives, that you also understand this inherent risk yourselves, even as you check out this website to see if it offers itself or anything to you, just as you will have an experience of the risks involved in recovering from the traumatic.
Sometimes, Trauma... 