Healing CPTSD is Paradox

Healing is paradox. It asks us to move forward by slowing down, to find safety in discomfort, to soften in order to become strong.

It can look like feeling worse before we feel better. Like becoming more aware of pain as we begin to heal. Like grieving, what we never let ourselves feel when we were just surviving.

We can feel more fragile and more resilient at the same time.

In somatic therapy, we work with these paradoxes through the body—where two things can be true at once. You can want change and feel terrified of it. You can long for connection and want to run. The nervous system holds these complexities in real time, and instead of fixing or forcing, we practice noticing, staying, and allowing.

As we resolve trauma in the nervous system, our capacity to hold paradox, complexity, and nuance deepens. We begin to shift out of binary thinking—out of good/bad, all/nothing, safe/unsafe—and into a more flexible way of being. We gain tolerance for the unknown, for difference, for liminality. We no longer need everything to make perfect sense in order to feel okay.

“An open heart can accept all paradoxes simultaneously.”

— Kavitha Chinnaiyan

Healing doesn’t always make sense to the thinking mind. But the body knows. The body has its own timing, its own language, and its own wisdom. When we stop trying to make the process linear or logical, space opens for something deeper to unfold.

Sam Trivett is a Registered Clinical Counsellor providing therapy in Vancouver and online throughout BC.