Part 1: When we’ve experienced violent trauma, healing can look violent too
Violence is sometimes part of the healing process
I once worked with a seventeen year old girl* who’d been court ordered to do therapy after she’d destroyed her grandparents’ property. She’d experienced every type of abuse you could imagine as a kid when she lost her parents to drug addiction. She was smart, intuitive, empathic, rude, reckless, usually high, & grieving. She loved Arby’s roast beef and never failed to try to get me to buy her a sandwich.
About six months into therapy, she was caught with way too much weed in her possession and ordered to go to court. On the day of the arraignment, she bit her nails and jiggled her legs furiously with anxiety as we waited for her name to be called. Periodically, she’d say, “I want to go. Can we go? What’s taking so long?” she said.
I’d respond, “Just a little bit longer. It’s gonna be your turn soon.”
But after an hour passed, and we’d watched dozens of teens and parents finish their court appearance ahead of her, she lost it. She muttered, “I’m not doing this shit,” stomped angrily out of the courtroom, cussed out the police officers in the lobby, thrust both middle fingers in the air at the receptionist who “shushed” her, and pushed through the front doors of the building.
Once she was outside, she beat her knuckles bloody on a brick wall in a fit of rage, and drew her blood on my car windows. She then wandered around the city blocks, while I trailed 30 feet behind, screaming her rage at the birds and cars and passing strangers.
When she finally stopped and let me catch up, she was crying. She said, ““You’re a piece of shit therapist who doesn’t listen! You never listen! THIS IS WHY MY GRANDMA KEEPS LOOKING FOR OTHER THERAPISTS, CUZ YOU’RE SO FUCKING USELESS. I told you I couldn’t do this, that I needed to leave, and you made me stay!”
Part of me also wanted to scream. Or cry. I was a scared, dumb baby therapist. I wanted her to please go back, apologize to the judge, and just get this thing over with.
But a wiser part of me knew nothing about this girl’s childhood was “normal”, she despised uncertainty & was anxious AF about waiting around for the judge to....well, judge her. We’d been waiting for a long ass time. A wiser part of me knew that she was repeating old trauma patterns in response to a threat, and that this violence + rage were part of her healing process.
My job, in that moment, wasn’t to get her to comply with the law (although it would have made my job easier).
My job was to be a loving witness to her pain.
She wasn’t doing this to be difficult. She was doing this because she didn’t know how to show people the intensity of her emotions without exploding. She was doing this because she wanted us to feel the same out of control, wild terror that she felt for years.
Modern, research backed parenting advice tells parents to stay calm & regulated (even if they’re triggered) when their toddlers are throwing temper tantrums. Meltdowns are a sign that kids are experiencing emotions too big for their little bodies to handle.
Tantrums + boundary testing are healthy ways for children to develop emotion regulation, identity, & personality.
Many CPTSD survivors never got the chance to learn to deal with triggers or experiment with healthy boundary testing because their caregivers were dysregulated, abusive, neglectful, or addicted. Consequently, they struggle with regulating intense emotions and feel constant inner confusion. When CPTSD survivors are faced with stressors as teens or adults, they respond with the coping skills of a small child. The same small child who experienced emotions too big for their little body to handle.
If caregivers can’t stay regulated in the face of kids’ emotional storms by empathizing, connecting, AND maintaining boundaries, children don’t feel safe. Even if they’re overwhelmed, they need us to feel (or pretend to feel) confident that we can hold space for & contain them. Because no matter how stubborn or strong-willed they may seem, their emotions terrify them.
And they’re watching closely to see if their emotions scare us too.
Because what happens to a child who never experiences empathy & connection in response to their intense emotions?
...who’s screamed at every single time they have a meltdown?
...who’s humiliated and shamed when they show intense anger?
...whose feelings are regularly ignored, dismissed, or invalidated?
...who learns that expressing honest feelings leads to punishment, isolation + disconnection?
They grow up to become adults who struggle with violence.
This violence is either directed inward (self-harm, eating disorders, suicidal ideation, self-hatred, toxic shame, addiction, self-destructive behavior) or outward (physical or verbal aggression, harming others, narcissistic tendencies, destroying property.)
They grow up to become adults who don’t know how to self-regulate & unconsciously, their toddler selves take over when triggered, desperately acting out in self-destructive cycles in search of the connection they never received.
Part of my teen client’s healing process outside the courtroom was allowing me to see her responses to triggers in real time.
Her responses to triggers were often illogical, out of control & violent. Like a toddler’s.
And like a child, she needed the corrective experience of throwing a tantrum with a safe adult and learn emotional regulation skills through our connection.
How could she heal if I shamed her for acting out in the same exact ways she’d “acted out” to survive her childhood? How could she heal if nobody ever taught her how to self-regulate the way she should have been taught when she was 3 years old? How could she heal if I was afraid of her pain?
Because she was the one who was holding the stress of years of unprocessed trauma within her body. She was the one living with these violent memories and emotions day after day.
And if I, the “professional” adult, couldn’t handle her violence & fury...How would she ever find the courage to be with her emotions rather than reacting explosively?
How would she ever find the compassion to be with her own memories, mistakes, & pain?
How would she ever learn to believe that she could handle herself if nobody else could “handle” her?
*details about the client have been changed to maintain confidentiality.