It’s so hard to explain what it feels like to live inside your own skin. Most days, you carry "quiet" heaviness, like you’re walking through life with a weight strapped to your chest that no one else can see. You laugh when people expect you to and nod along in conversations. You play the role, but there’s always a part of you that feels disconnected, like you’re standing outside yourself, watching someone else live your life. The memories blur together, definitely not always clear, but the feelings stay sharp. You remember being young, wanting someone to notice, to care and to step in, but they didn’t. And then there are the memories you wish you could erase altogether about the time(s) when the trust you should have been able to rely on was broken in the most personal way. You were left feeling exposed, powerless, and confused about what it meant for you. Instead of comfort, you were left with silence, or worse, blame. You learned to question yourself and often wonder if somehow it was your fault, because that’s the message you were given. That confusion grew into a kind of shame that clings to you so tight.

Now, as an adult, the past shows up in ways you can’t always control. Certain looks, certain touches, even certain silences trigger something deep in you. It feels like your body remembers things that you don’t want to! Your mind tells you to move on, but your chest tightens, your stomach knots, and suddenly you’re right back there again, carrying the same fear, the same helplessness, the same broken trust. Relationships are the hardest because you crave closeness, but when someone gets too close, you panic. You question their intentions. You question yourself. Do they see you? Would they still want you if they really knew what happened, or how broken you feel inside? You hold people at arm’s length, terrified they’ll hurt you, but aching when they leave. The early betrayal(s) makes it so hard to believe that anyone can truly be safe because, unfortunately, that has not been your experience.

Sometimes, you hate how well you can function. How you can go to work, smile, and joke like nothing is wrong, then come home and collapse into yourself. The loneliness is crushing. Even in a crowded room, you can feel completely alone, like nobody would ever believe the storms that live inside you. At night, when it’s quiet, that’s when it all floods back. The shame, the fear, the emptiness. You try to silence it with distractions, with scrolling, with staying busy, but it always finds a way through. There’s this voice inside you that says you’re not enough, that you’re damaged, that you’ll never really be free. And even though you want to fight it, too often you end up believing it. Still, something in you keeps hoping. Hoping that one day you won’t feel haunted by things you never asked for, that you can finally rest without fear of being blindsided by memories and learn how to feel safe in your own body and in your daily life. That hope is a perfect reason to take a step forward. You don’t have to keep carrying this alone. Therapy can help you begin to untangle the weight that you’ve been holding for so long. Scheduling a consultation call is the next step toward the relief that you’ve been searching for.