The power and the pain of processing trauma

Photo by Johann Siemens on Unsplash

Therapy speak is thrown around willy nilly these days. Millennials are ‘triggered’ and have ‘PTSD’ at the news that low-rise jeans are back in fashion, and ‘processing trauma’ can mean anything from a bad day at work to the end of Succession.

On one hand, it’s great that people are aware of these terms. On the other, it’s kind of a shock when you realise that the reality of processing trauma is actually quite brutal.

I’ve been in therapy on and off since having breast cancer, partly as a way to manage fear of recurrence, but also to process the emotional and physical assault of treatment.

While talking about previous medical experiences, my therapist asked a lot of questions about a pregnancy that I lost at 13 weeks in 2016. Initially, I was dismissive. I didn’t want to dwell on it (after all, we’re here to talk about cancer, right?), so I rattled through the details. At 13 weeks, tests showed the baby had Edwards’ syndrome and wouldn’t survive outside …