I am looking at this like someone who knows the pattern, and I see that it’s more than an ode to people who decided to live. I see their entire path through the core of trauma processing.

The feelings you have locked away

Start with what trauma does to you. It teaches you not to feel. What is too big, too close, too scary, you tuck away. It’s a survival method. Anything in that moment that you can’t carry, you put aside. A part of you separates itself from what happened and continues to live, whilst another part gets stuck in the time of the trauma.

And that comes at a cost. If you don’t face that feeling, you won’t contradict it either. Psychological suffering is like a conversation that stalls, the significance of what is happening in the part that got stuck, is going to drown out the part that continued to live. “Nobody stays, I’m not worth it.” That voice gets louder when it’s not contradicted. Every look from someone who does care about you is being bent into proof of the opposite being true. And at the end, all that is left is the monologue. And that monologue pulls you down. Towards self-destruction, and sometimes towards death.

Space is created

That’s how you get to the bottom. What people call rock bottom: the realisation that this is the lowest point, and there’s nothing underneath it. And then something strange happens there. There, where the monologue has nothing to defend, space is created. Not because rock bottom is something beautiful, but because there’s nothing left to destroy and the feeling you’ve been hiding away for so long can finally resurface.

What went down, can come back up

That’s what integration can be; not brushing away the past, not becoming stronger by not feeling something, but letting in the feeling you tucked away, and really feeling it. Being mentally stable doesn’t mean you don’t feel anything. It means feeling something, and feeling something else after that, without getting stuck in one place. What went down, can come back up. Carlijn captures this in a sentence: the whole package, everything included, doesn’t make you less, but more of a person. The parts of yourself that you locked away are being acknowledged. That what makes you more.

And this is the biggest step there is. It’s daunting, because you’ve spent years learning how to do the opposite. You don’t do this all by yourself. The contradiction to this monologue comes from the outside: from someone who continues to sit next to you and doesn’t ask for the ‘light’ version of you, who keeps saying: take everything with you. Someone who opens the door again but in a different direction. And that makes a difference. Only with someone next to you you dare to feel what was once too big.

The core of trauma processing

So look at what Carlijn wrote. What she describes goes further than just comforting someone. It reaches the core of trauma processing: that the feeling you tucked away is not the enemy, but your way back. And that you need someone by your side to make this possible. Who would you sit next to when they close the door? And who would sit next to you? That’s where it all starts.