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Meet Carrie
My Story
My story has some bumps, so please read this on a good day and self-care accordingly.
Hi, I’m Carrie. I’m a Coach and trauma survivor. I experienced a spectrum of abuse as a child, which led to relational abuse and zero genuine connection in most of my adult relationships. I was conditioned to shut down, disconnect, stay busy, and take care of those around me. Suppressing myself eventually turned into anger, as adulthood felt muzzled and stifled, like my childhood. It took 3 decades for me to recognize the way I had been treated and was taught to treat myself, was abusive, and that maybe I too, deserved some care and compassion.
I began a new chapter...
After 15 years of personal growth, I now know my “normal” was very skewed. How do you know how to love yourself gently, if no one ever taught you how to be gentle and loving? If your parents weren’t taught it either, how do they know how to teach you? This is how silent generational abuse continues, you marry into it, and repeat old patterns, simply because they are habitual, not because they feel safe or make you happy. Then, one day you wake up as an adult and feel dead inside, so you sign up for therapy and try to figure out why. Sound familiar?
Fear and shame are powerful emotions, so it took time for me to understand my relationships weren’t healthy and neither was I. Accepting you have a problem is the first step in recovering your true self. I was unaware of the trauma I needed to process and let go of, how it was ruling my life and what it felt like for my family to witness my boundaryless behavior.
I was told I was
clearly co-dependent...
In August of 2017, when my second marriage began to fail, we started therapy and I stepped into recovery from toxic relationships. Many of the professionals we hired to help chose to judge my anger, yet not one of them asked me why I was angry. It was devastating to go to therapy thinking I would be supported, only to arrive and be blamed for my partner’s choices and told to leave him alone and go work on my own childhood. I’m not sure I can even put words to how betrayed and abandoned I felt by my partner and the therapists we enlisted to help. My body and mind were extremely hypervigilant, I rarely slept and woke up in fight or flight most days, feeling drained before I got out of bed.
Therapy wasn’t helping, it was causing damage.
When you choose a therapist, you expect to meet in a safe environment. If the therapist works with a co-dependent model, I have lived and learned, you are not safe. It is now becoming more widely known that the co-dependent model is abusive and victim blaming. I lived it with 3 different therapists for over 3 years trying to save my marriage and that’s exactly what it felt like-abuse. I did nothing wrong, yet they wanted me to take responsibility for actions that were my partner’s high-risk choices, not mine. When I refused to do this, I was labeled as difficult to work with, pathologized and shamed.
Learning to understand my trauma...
Where do you go for help when the counselor refuses to see or hear you? I ended up suicidal twice because I was living in covert abuse and being manipulated daily. And we were getting nowhere in therapy. These therapists weren’t trained to recognize covert abuse, so it was never identified, and allowed to continue. The longer this went on, the crazier I felt and looked to people who didn’t understand Complex-PTSD or covert abuse. My trauma taught me that I’m not safe and neither is the world, and this got worse the older I got. This mindset kept me protected as a child and it kept me isolated and scared to connect as an adult. The longer I lived, the less I felt alive. I was not living into the truth of who I really was, and it was killing me to stay in a toxic environment where I wasn’t valued or respected.
It took a concerned friend begging me to see her compassionate based therapist before I would consider therapy again. I eventually took her advice, as this therapist was a trauma survivor, compassionate and relatable. She was also trained in Complex-PTSD and lifelong relational trauma. It took months to build trust, and feel safe, considering my previous experiences. After a year or more, I began unraveling the sweater of what really happened to me as a child. I was taught the importance of processing through the stuck feelings and traumatic experiences so I could learn to trust myself and create my own safety in the world. This sounds much easier than it is. I had no idea how to feel, or have compassion, let alone knowing how to create safety in my life. I had a boundaryless parent, so I had no idea how to have a healthy boundary. I married two alcoholics who lived with one foot out the door for years. I’d never experienced a safe, long-term emotional bond before, even with myself. It was up to me to recover my lost parts, evolve, and grow. This was not easy, in the mental clutter and adrenal fatigue I was standing in as my life was once again turned upside down, and I faced the journey of starting over as a single parent for the second time.
As I slowly began to stand in the truth of how I’d been treated, my body began releasing constriction that had been trapped inside for decades and I woke up in ways that I hadn’t experienced in years. I kept investing in self-care and doing emotional recovery work. In time, I realized I was less angry. I had evolved. I began to master healthy boundaries and self-care became a top priority. I saw this as an opportunity to learn healthier ways to live and love myself. I began to feel better for the first time in years.
I simply needed compassionate understanding instead of judgement. I was stuck and unable to move until someone safely met me in the pain, held my hand and validated what happened to me. Then I was able to calm down, trust, work through my anger, and take in new information. Next, I learned how to feel and not be shut down or overwhelmed by my emotions. With safe support, I learned to trust more deeply and became more present. It was only then I found the strength to examine the gaping emotional wounds I’d carried my entire life. Once I was able to process and release unresolved emotions and trauma, then I could look at living and loving myself fiercely, with wild acceptance. Processing through what happened helped me heal and move into a new reality around the past and a new, healthier world view for my future.
Over the years, my brain has shown me my traumatic memories, only when I was ready to heal and leave them in the past. After much work on me, I was able to begin the healing process with my parents and understand the trauma they endured, not having access to quality support, or even an awareness of the need to heal. I have worked hard to repair the relationships with my adult children and the people that matter, all while loving myself at the same time.
It took time and persistence to keep going, while learning to be gentle and loving. Eventually I was able to forgive and make peace with everything that’s happened. I know in my heart, in my soul and in my bones, I didn’t deserve to be abused or abandoned. The soul reclamation process has been life-saving work and I have been worth every, grueling step of the journey. I just needed help believing it in the beginning and compassionate, loving support along the way. I now understand those therapists showed up to teach me what happens for clients when you try and help, and you haven’t done your deep emotional work. I have finally arrived at a place of resolve, and I am grateful for the lessons. I continue my recovery and this work is my life’s purpose. It is my hope to use my experience, strength, and knowledge to help others accelerate their recovery of the lost self on the pathway to becoming whole. Once you climb over that mountain of shame, there really isn’t anything you can’t conquer with the right support and loving humans surrounding you. Here’s to your journey of living, loving, and learning healthier ways to be every day.
Respectfully,
Coach Carrie