Dealing with trauma in the therapeutic process

Sarah, an HR manager in a big pharma company, saw the deck of cards on my desk and asked to work with them. I was delighted! I always enjoy a routine breaker in my sessions. So I asked her to randomly choose a card and tell me about it.

A moment of silence was followed by a big smile! "It's interesting that this card chose me. The past few days I felt a change in my thoughts and feelings about meeting a new partner. I would like to go ahead with it, I'm thinking about romance more and more."

Sarah's Marriage ended 5 years ago, after 20 years of being happily married. Her ex-husband, the father of her children, confided in her that he is a homosexual.

Since then, Sarah was unable to form a new relationship, she had a trust issue.

I took a deep breath and asked Sarah to choose a card that will show her the next step she can take in this process. Amazingly, Sarah picked up 3-4 cards, each featuring a single horse, and kept rejecting them. One was too ugly, the other had scars, one was too old etc. It seemed like she was terified.

"What's going on?" - I asked her? "I want to. But i'm also afraid"

Relationships, for Sarah, became a traumatic event. All her thoughts and emotions kept going back to that traumatic moment when she found out she was living a lie for so many years. The cards brought her fear and the ambivalence into the room, enabling us to work with it and process her trauma.