You’re Not Broken: You’ve Been Protecting Yourself

From KLM

You’re Safe to Be Seen

This piece is for anyone who’s ever wondered if they’re too broken to begin healing. You’re not.

It was written for someone dear to me — someone afraid to return to therapy — and for anyone else standing at the doorway to healing, unsure if that door is open for you. It is.

Photo by Naz Israyelyan on Unsplash

It’s a reflection on EMDR therapy and how the body learns it is safe again. Told through three imagined voices — a therapist, a client, and someone yet to begin — it offers a gentle reminder: you don’t need to be ready to start again. You can just show up as you are.

The Witness

She came in tenuous.
Not withdrawn — guarded.
Like someone who had learned that silence was safer than truth.
Her eyes scanned the room before her body settled into the chair.
As she settled, I felt a tightness in my own chest — a mirroring of her guardedness.

I didn’t ask for her story.
I asked what was happening in her body right now.
She said, “I’m not sure.”
This was the first time anyone had ever asked her that.
But her shoulders told me everything.

Her hands were fidgeting.
Her breath was quick and careful.
Her eyes not fixed, but not looking.
Her body remembered what her mind had buried.
Her body didn’t respond to words. It listened for tone, for breath, for presence.
And when it was met with steady attunement, it began to feel safe.

We started with EMDR.
Not to force memory, but to make space for feeling.
The tapping, the rhythm, the bilateral movement —

it was like watching someone sit in the fog with a lantern —
And then, deciding to walk through it.
She didn’t need to see the whole path.
I held the lantern steady — not to light the way, but to show her that the dark wasn’t hers alone.
That the dark was not as dark as she believed it to be.
She just needed to know she wasn’t walking it alone.

And so, we walked.

Some days, she cried — not wanting to and not knowing why.
Some days, she laughed as though laughter might ease the pain — 

and realizing this, apologized for it.
I reminded her she didn’t have to remember her pain to heal.
She didn’t have to tell her story to be heard.

And slowly, I witnessed her learn to trust her body, trust the ache, and trust the glimmers of joy that began to surface.

Photo by Izabella Szymański on Unsplash

The Shape of Remembering

Some days, I feel like a ghost in my own life.
I laugh at the right moments. I show up. I listen.
But beneath it all, I’m scanning — always scanning.
Not for danger, exactly.
For familiarity.

People touch my arm and I flinch.
They say, “You’re safe now,” and I nod,
but my body doesn’t believe them.
I’ll have to show it otherwise.

It’s not that I don’t want to trust.
It’s that trust feels like a language I forgot how to speak.

I’ve learned to read people’s eyes, their faces, their tones.
The way they soften when they mean well.
The way they harden when they don’t.
I don’t remember learning this, but I know it like instinct.

It started small.
A laugh that didn’t feel forced.
A morning where I woke without dread.
A moment where someone reached for my hand, a hug, and I didn’t pull away.
Instead I felt warmth, for a fleeting moment, I had stepped into my body and was safe enough to stay.

I didn’t trust it at first.
Joy felt like a trick — like something that would vanish if I looked too closely.
But it stayed.
It was a subtle voice that laid low, beneath all the other sounds — calling louder when it seemed it was farthest away.

EMDR therapy helped.
Not by giving me back the memories whole,
but by helping me hold the fragments without fear and with acceptance.
The buzzing, the right-left eye movements, the back and forth — it was like walking through the fog with someone holding my hand.
No expectations for me to know the way.
Just to show up — feel it, name it, and release it.

The fog didn’t lift completely, but I saw light enter through places I’d walked before — places I never thought light could reach.
And when walking through the woods, I noticed the way the light filtered through the leaves — around me and into me.

I didn’t cry.
I didn’t brace.
I just breathed.
EMDR cleared the dust from my lens — gave me clarity and space.
It gave me a joy that helped me feel rested, creative, and like a version of me that I had forgotten existed.

Photo by Joice Kelly on Unsplash

Next In Line

I don’t know your name.
I don’t know what you’ve been through.
But I know the silence.
I lived in it.
I know the ache that lives in your chest like a second heartbeat.

It’s hard to show up to therapy. It’s scary.
I get it.
You’re protecting yourself the only way you know how.

That’s not weakness. It’s a common, shared experience — avoiding —
if you don’t show up, you don’t have to deal with it.
You don’t have to remember.
But your body still does — it remembers what your mind cannot hold.
Therapy can be the place where your body learns it’s safe to show up, to do hard things, to stay.

If you’re afraid to begin or begin again, know this:
You don’t need to prepare, plan for it — get ready.
You don’t need to take on everything.
EMDR didn’t fix me, but it helped me stop avoiding and repressing.
It helped me to feel safe enough — be with what’s there — without drowning in it.
It didn’t give me answers, it gave me space, it gave me breath, it gave me my vision back.

You are going to wonder if it gets easier.
Not always — but it gets clearer.
You learn to trust your body, trust yourself, trust your emotions.
You learn that survival isn’t the only way to live your life.

There will be days when you feel nothing.
There will be days when you feel way too much.
Both are okay.
Both are parts of the way through.

Write what you feel, even if it’s just one word.
You will wonder, what I wrote first.
“Afraid.”
Then “Safe.”
And now, “Grateful.”

The hardest part is showing up.
You will feel like you need to know the way or have the answers or dig up memories.
But you don’t. And, I’ll give it to you straight.

There is another hard part.
It’s staying — coming back — week after week.

You are going to want to quit.
You are going to feel misunderstood.
You are going to want to shut down.
But, the way forward is through — turning inward, not away — with another and not alone.
You will find the courage to return.
Your body will feel heard — your mind will catch up.
You will open up and raise your chin and smirk again.

You’re going to ask what do I do with all the thoughts in my head?
All the emotions in my body?
All the feelings in my heart?
Note them.
Thank them.
Feel them.
Share them (if it feels safe for you).
Then — release them.
Therapy will show you how.

But for now… Follow me.

Place one hand on your heart.
Feel it beat.
That’s you — still here.
Even in the thick of the woods, even in the silence — there is a way through.
And you dear one — don’t have to hold all of it —
not in that heart, that mind, that body of yours.

You don’t have to walk back to yourself on your own.
There is a light to guide your way.

Photo by Silas Schneider on Unsplash

Author’s Note:
Even though this is a fictional reflection, it captures some of the emotional reality of my own EMDR experience. I was inspired to use the phrase — the dark is not as dark as you believe it to be — because of something that a therapist said. That things can feel more overwhelming than they actually are because of the narrative we hold about ourselves. Those narratives shape our perspective and our decisions. This insight became a guiding light for me.

Therapy can be a held space to be with our narratives, and EMDR can provide the tools to stay present without becoming overwhelmed. This piece is my way of passing that lantern forward.