What Helps When You Are the One Hurting
By Victoria, co-founder of Healing Arts Center in Virginia Beach. Somatic and mindfulness coach, trauma-informed Reiki practitioner, trauma-informed meditation practitioner. She has practiced for more than fifteen years.
I keep a journal, and I rarely reread it. I did the other day, and found this from 2022.
This is my life unraveling before me, with tears and screams and hollow aches. Today I deny the truth of my exhaustion, my frustration, my unspoken anger. The sun may shine, but all I see are grey skies pressing down over the city's bones. There I am, invisible in my office, pain unseen.
Anger sits beside me. I listen, and beneath it sorrow reveals itself, silent and profound. This well-worn path, paved by daily ache, leads me back to this room as if by memory alone. My body knows the way, guided by familiar hurt. Yet even as I trace these steps, I begin to notice that each shadow, each ache, is a thread weaving something unspoken into the story I am still living.
What changed
Reading it again, what I felt was gratitude, and some surprise. Exhaustion no longer cuts that far into me. The sorrow that used to press against my chest, the weight that made every step cost something, is not what my days are made of now.
I want to be precise about how that happened, because the version where someone simply feels better one day is not true and does not help anyone. What changed is that I stopped waiting for the feeling to pass on its own and started doing something with my body while it was happening. Not once. Repeatedly, over a long stretch, usually badly at first.
The questions I ask in session
When a client is in the middle of something heavy, I do not try to talk them out of it. We work through a few questions instead. We notice how the body responds to these questions:
How do I let this be here without letting it take the whole day? What reminds me that this is not permanent, when it feels permanent? When the ache rises, what actually brings any relief? What does this wound need in order to close?
What actually helps in the moment
The answers people arrive at are smaller and more physical than they expect, and that is not a shortcoming of the answers.
Kind words said out loud to yourself, in your own voice, even when they feel absurd at first. A hand on your chest or your face, because pressure and warmth register somewhere words do not reach. Rocking, or any slow repetitive movement, which is the oldest way a body has of telling itself it is safe. Rest, taken deliberately rather than collapsed into.
Arguing yourself out of the feeling addresses the part of you that was never in charge of it. Touch and slow movement act on the nervous system directly, which is where the distress is actually happening. Giving yourself the care you have been waiting for someone else to offer is not a lesser version of being cared for. Most people find it unfamiliar and slightly embarrassing the first several times, and then they find it works.
Why writing it down does something
Naming a feeling is a different act from arguing with it, and it does different work. A thought moves faster than you can examine it. Put it on paper and it has to slow to the speed of your hand, which is the first useful thing journaling does. Most people find that what they were feeling turns out to be more specific than the general dread they had been walking around with.
The second thing is a change of position. Once a feeling is on the page it is in front of you rather than inside you, and you are describing anxiety instead of being anxious. That gap is small and it matters. Putting an emotion into words reduces the intensity of the physical reaction to it, which is why writing "I am furious about this" tends to take some of the heat out of being furious about it.
The third is slower and only shows up if you go back and read. Several months of entries make patterns obvious in a way they never are day to day. The same situation, the same reaction, the same story you tell yourself about what it means. Seeing it laid out is usually what makes a person willing to try responding differently. I am not good at this part myself, which is why finding that 2022 entry was an accident rather than a practice.
Why I keep the journal
I did not write that 2022 entry so that I would have something to look back on. I wrote it because I was in it. What it gives me now is evidence, and evidence is difficult to argue with when a hard week convinces me nothing ever shifts.
If you are somewhere like where I was, write it down. Not for anyone to read, and not because it has to be any good. Just so that some version of you three years out has proof of where you actually were.
Book a session: vagaro.com/healingartscenter
Frequently asked questions
What can I do in the moment when emotional pain feels overwhelming?
Small physical actions tend to work better than reasoning with yourself. Kind words said out loud, a hand on your chest, slow rocking or repetitive movement, and deliberate rest all act on the nervous system rather than on the argument in your head.
Why does touch help when I am upset?
Slow, warm contact registers in the part of the brain that handles emotional significance rather than the part that processes pressure or temperature. This is why a hand on your chest can settle you when an explanation cannot.
Does journaling actually help with anxiety?
Writing slows a thought down enough to examine, and putting an emotion into words reduces the intensity of the physical reaction to it. Reading back over months also makes patterns visible that are invisible day to day.
Is self-soothing the same as avoiding the feeling?
No. Avoidance means getting away from the feeling. Self-soothing means making it survivable enough to stay present with, which is the opposite move.
Does heaviness like this actually lift?
For many people it does, though rarely on a schedule and rarely all at once. Writing down where you are gives you something concrete to compare against later, which is more reliable than memory.
Do I need to be in therapy first?
No. Some clients have finished therapy, some see a therapist at the same time, and some are on a waitlist and want something to work with in the meantime.
