There’s a line between caring because we want to do a good job and caring so much that we’re constantly in fear. One is about integrity. The other is about survival. We’re trying to protect our identity.

Six years ago, the life I had imagined ended. The dream I had clung to for so long, the one of being a mum, was over. Not because I chose it to be, but because life chose otherwise. After a long and painful journey, we lost the two daughters we were meant to adopt. And with them, I lost the future I thought I was building.

I tried CBT. More than once, actually. I learned to notice my unhelpful thoughts. I practised challenging them. I journaled. I had tools. But even with all that, I burned out. Three times.

There’s a quiet moment I often witness in therapy, the pause when someone realises they do have a choice. Not always the choice they wanted, not always an easy one. But a choice, nonetheless. And in that realisation, something powerful happens: they begin to reclaim a sense of agency, of possibility, of self.

The truth is, trauma isn’t always what happened, but how our system responded when it did. And when the brain and body can’t fully process what happened during a trauma, that memory can stay stuck.