Learning how to answer the question, 'What do you want?'
Due to my history of child sexual abuse, I found being asked the question 'What do you want?' extremely challenging. I didn't trust that it was safe for me to express my needs, because of how I'd been groomed and taken advantage of in childhood. Being asked years later in therapy what I wanted also prompted a deep sense of grief, not just at the bad things that had happened, but at all the good things that I'd missed out on too. It was therefore a profoundly painful question.
But what I experienced in therapy was a therapist who helped me to grasp the concept through some very careful and measured self-disclosure, where she showed me what it's like to have and express needs and even wants – without shame or fear.
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I’m Carolyn Spring and I’m an author, trainer, consultant and Founder of the Trauma Recovery Community. I help counsellors and therapists help their clients recover from complex trauma. Over 40,000 people have accessed my live or online training , and I’ve provided hundreds of hours of 1:1 consultations with therapists to unpick the really tricky aspects of working with complex trauma.
I combine perspectives from both the clinical literature and research with the first-person insight of someone who’s actually been there, and I make the complex simple … but without ever being simplistic. I believe in hope for recovery from even the most appalling suffering … but only with the right support. I support the supporters.
Learn more about me and my work here: https://linktr.ee/carolynspring
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