I’ll See You Next Week

As I launch my second career as a counselor, I am drawn to treating clients with trauma. Before I chose to switch careers, I had worked as a journalist for two decades. I saw a great deal of trauma during that time, especially during the five years I reported from the African continent. 

Working as a journalist, I was a frequent witness to human rights atrocities, and consequently experienced secondary trauma of my own, which I was fortunate enough to process years later, through my own therapy.

Now, as a counselor, the greatest gift I give those confronting trauma is a grounded space; one solid enough to hold a person’s worst experiences, yet soft enough to feel like, with me, they are safe enough to land again and again.

In order to better serve clients with evidence-based trauma interventions, I am training in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). The technique involves bilateral eye movements, or other forms of bilateral stimulation, which enable clients to access traumatic memories while staying grounded in the present. 

EMDR makes it possible to hold painful experiences without feeling overwhelmed. No longer does your heart beat fast nor do your eyes get wide recounting memories. Instead, with EMDR, those somatic indicators of trauma are replaced by a healthy distancing from the events, and the negative cognitions that once accompanied those memories are replaced with new, healthier notions about oneself.

As an emerging EMDR practitioner, I am continuously reminded by my clients that there is life after trauma and it is often beautiful. Human connection becomes possible once more. Defenses, which once served clients so well, begin to come down in ways that are safe and sensible. Life begins to look vibrant and hopeful again, even for those who, like me, lived in monochrome for years.

In the presence of a trained, compassionate counselor, equipped with evidence-based skills, trauma can be processed, people can be made whole again, and then, in time, they may - if they wish - choose to use their experiences to help others or to at least live life more fully. 

This is post-traumatic growth; a concept I wholeheartedly believe in because I have experienced it myself, and my decision to become a counselor is part of my own post-traumatic growth, and it is a gift I share with everyone who walks through my door.

One of my great regrets is that during the two decades I spent as a journalist, I always left the most traumatic scenes, and the people who were enduring them. 

Not any more.

“I’ll see you next week,” is what I say to clients now. And that makes all the difference.

Amy Costello is a counselor, writer and former journalist whose work focuses on trauma, grief, and how those experiences shape us.

(Feature illustration purchased on iStock to support the AI-free, human created art of Benjavisa.)