The College Experience of a Trauma Survivor: Navigating Friendships, Academic Performance & Romantic Love
We see a lot of college students at our Miami counseling practice, Psych Blossom. Thankfully, the new generations embrace growth and see therapy as a way to let go of trauma and tap into all that life has to offer. Many students don’t come to FIU or UM just to seek an education. They also come to Miami to escape abusive families and oppressive hometowns where they are subject to judgment and external pressures. In Miami and at college, they’re able to find a community that feels inclusive and accepting of who they truly are. The path is not always easy but thankfully, therapy can facilitate much of that growth.
In this article, I’ll share what is possible when you seek therapy as soon as you get to college. I’m writing this post shortly after finishing a session with a bright young woman I’ve been seeing for over a year. She’s a college student, insightful, beautiful, and has overcome some horrific traumas.
We picked up from a previous session and continued our reflection on friendships. We contrasted how difficult it was to be friends with the people she met freshman year vs. how easy it feels to be around her new friends. She continued to reflect and share with me the insights she was having as she looked back at her past relationships. She then looked at me with a smile and said “Yeah, I’m happy that I now look forward to spending time with my friends and I’m no longer failing classes because of how triggered I feel after interacting with them.”
Then I asked her how she got here. She answered quickly, “Therapy and my boyfriend”. I prompted her to elaborate. She went on to say how therapy helped her identify negative beliefs and where they came from. Through therapy, she learned to challenge her beliefs and understand how her beliefs affected her self-esteem & her behavior. She was able to identify how her beliefs were formed in an abusive environment that was far from being unconditional and loving. She came out of the house thinking she was not worthy of being loved. In therapy, she started understanding it had nothing to do with her. Her parents were judgemental, cold, and abusive, and it was not her fault. Then came her boyfriend who made her feel safe and loved for the first time. He confirmed she was not defective. He helped her believe she was lovable.
What I’ll share next are some of the building blocks that made the transition from her freshman to senior year of college possible. She went from failing classes, and doing whatever it took to have friends and boys like her, to graduating with honors, having supportive friends, and a loving boyfriend.
These are some of the uncomfortable but rewarding steps she took and continues to take to ensure her growth and fulfillment.
Experiment
She started experimenting with taking breaks from her (toxic) friends, noticing and processing in therapy how much lighter she felt when they were not around. She realized they hurt her mental health. Yet, she still felt it was her fault because she was not as cool and as “healthy” as they were. She continued to be a people pleaser and did what was necessary to remain friends. She felt the pressure to post on social media and pretend to be cool like them. Yet, she became aware that she felt judged & shamed around them and free & light away from them.
Identify the real judge
Therapy helped her pick up on how preoccupied she felt with what she thought her friends thought of her. Processing shame and how much it impacted her behavior was a huge milestone. She concluded that most likely, her friends don’t even think of her as much. This internal dialogue was her, projecting. She has an internal critic who talks to her just like her abusive parents did and believes everyone else also looks down on her. This realization helped her address the real judge, her internalized critic. Realizing the critic’s positive intentions allowed her to start modifying the way she talks to herself to make it more motivational and caring.
Seat with your feelings
As she took more and more space from her friends and poured the energy she gave them into herself, she was able to go inwards and face what she was avoiding, her feelings. It was as if, being with these judgemental friends was familiar and more comfortable than feeling what came up when she was alone. Therapy helped her build distress tolerance. It gave her a frame to understand her emotions and tools to handle the overwhelm that came up. She spent a lot of time by herself in her college apartment, journaling, cooking, listening to music, and painting. She smiled when remembering how wholesome it felt to reconnect with her creative parts. It felt nice to get to know myself for the first time. “I didn’t have to be who my parents or my friends wanted me to be. I did what I liked and allowed myself to just be me.”
Disconnect from Social Media
At first, this inward phase was very uncomfortable and it was anxiety-provoking to think of not having any fun posts to share. She worried about others seeing her as a loner, as somebody who didn't have friends or cool things to do. She hurt thinking they would see what she feared most, that she didn’t have friends because she was not good enough, not lovable, defective, incapable of having people like her. In retrospect, she’s so happy she went on this “detox”, as she calls it. “It was freeing to not have to report on anything, not have to pretend, instead it was more time for me. I was able to concentrate on the things that matter to me. I turned my grades around, focused on school, and learned about all the things that fascinate me.”
Fall in love with yourself
The unfortunate truth about trauma is that it leaves us with negative beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. It makes us feel unsafe and defective. Then it makes us develop all sorts of unhealthy behaviors to compensate for all the insecurities it leaves behind. The time alone to untangle these beliefs and emotions is essential in every healing process. It sounds very cliche and it’s probably in everyone’s TikTok feed, but it’s true. We need to make time to make ourselves a priority, heal & reconnect with our true selves. It allows you to fall in love with yourself and become the partner and friend you want to attract.
Envision the future
As she reflected, she said “The good thing is that even when I was going through my biggest depression, I always knew I’d have a great future. I always saw the life I have today. I remember my old therapist asking me at some point to list all the qualities I wanted in a boyfriend and not taking that exercise so seriously. Yet, when I was ready to start dating, it helped to have that list on my phone and read through it after going on dates. It reminded me of what I was looking for and helped me decide against people that were not right for me.”
Focus on Safety
“When I started dating, anxiety came back. My worst fear was falling for a narcissistic guy”. My client has gone through some pretty horrific traumatic experiences with her narcissistic father and her mother, who failed to protect her. This meant it was hard for her to feel safe in intimate relationships while also craving love and connection. When loving doesn’t feel safe growing up, our adult relationships could be very triggering. That’s why being in therapy when you’re single could be game-changing. Relationship therapy, when you’re single/casually dating, can help you identify self-sabotaging patterns, process their origin, and create the awareness necessary to change your behavior. During this phase, she educated herself on narcissistic abuse, which helped her understand her current struggles and stop blaming herself. This was very empowering- now she knows what to avoid in a potential partner which made dating feel safer.
Focus on connection
When she started dating her boyfriend, it felt like a new phase in therapy just started. One that felt difficult, confusing, and dysregulating. She was feeling unloved and misunderstood often, daydreaming about being single again, finding the relationship suffocating at times, and underwhelming at others. It just felt like a lot of work and there were many days where being single felt so much easier. Part of the work during this phase of treatment was focused on helping her effectively regulate her emotions. Another significant part of the treatment here was psychoeducation on attachment styles. She took her attachment quiz and we dived deep into understanding disorganized attachment as a trauma response. I used a lot of IFS tools to help her understand her internal conflict. Being able to identify how parts were interconnected helped her create distance to observe her behaviors and make more congruent choices.
Tap into the power of communication
Being able to ask for what they need/want is hard for a lot of clients. My clients, by the way, are generally, highly accomplished, educated, insightful, and articulate. Their communication struggle is typically a trauma response, not a lack of skill or vocabulary. They grew up in an environment where speaking their minds was either not safe or pointless. Therefore, avoiding conflict and pleasing people were great survival tactics. However, as adults, these behaviors hinder intimacy and personal growth. Additionally, most trauma survivors have a secret wish to be loved like they never had. They feel like if their partner loved them enough, they could predict their every need and meet them 100% of the time without them saying anything at all, they would just be able to tell. Unfortunately, adult relationships don’t work that way. A healthy partner can and would be willing to meet most of your needs, yet not all. They won’t be able to consistently predict what would make you happy either unless you can communicate it. This is why relationship therapy or couples therapy could be so beneficial. Therapy can help you sort out your fantasies, and understand how they’re getting in your way. As well as help you realize that your childhood fears don’t hold in a healthy relationship. Speaking up won’t get you in trouble, nor will it be dismissed. When I’m working through these challenges with clients, individually or as a couple, I often validate the desire to be loved in such a way while helping them see that a healthy partner loves themselves first, and then us. The more we can do the same, the better it’ll be for our relationship and the more transparent and assertive our communication gets. At this stage, I remember asking her often, “If you could get it your way, what is it that you want? Now, can you ask him to do that?” We spent some time here. It takes time to gather the necessary courage to speak from the heart and to have meaningful conversations that end up transforming our relationships. At first, doing so didn't feel safe, shame stopped her often. Her inner child believed that asking for emotional needs to be met made her a burden, too needy, too emotional, etc. Since this was frowned upon as a child, she feared her boyfriend would just end up breaking up with her. Then as she took a few small risks and saw that her partner was relieved that she said something and gave him a chance to get it right, she started feeling safer. When you keep practicing open communication, you then feel like you’ve tapped into a superpower. This is what’s happened to her, she now knows that no matter what or how difficult a situation, they can always talk about it and they can typically resolve whatever conflict gets in the way.
Commit to self-care
This is not a fairy tale of a happily ever after story. Those are works of fiction, this is real life. The reality is that the absence of bad doesn’t always mean that we are where we would like to be. I see therapy in two major phases, we first stop the bad things from happening, toxic relationships, panic attacks, disordered eating, substance abuse, etc. then, we rebuild. This second phase can take some time. Building a life where you live in peace and have no major fires to put out, takes some getting used to. There’s even a bit of an identity crisis when I often hear, “I don’t know how to have fun. I’m not used to things being so still, now that I’m not depressed, what do I do with my time?” That’s a lot of our work nowadays. It centers around creating the life she wants and deserves, learning how to have fun in a healthy and wholesome way, opening herself up to new friendships, etc. Therapy in the absence of crisis is a truly transformative experience. Here is where I get to see clients excel in their careers, truly accept themselves, free themselves from shame, be unapologetic about who they are and what they want, and allow themselves to love and be loved in such a pure and mature way, that is a real treat for me to witness. As I reflect on our current work, I’m thinking of her and several other clients with whom I've had the privilege to be part of their journey. In my experience, it often takes years to get here but these are the most resilient and determined people I know. So, they continue to show up to therapy, even if it’s every other week; they exercise consistently, they read and educate themselves all the time, and they continue to reflect on their feelings and hold themselves accountable. As healing progresses, therapy becomes more existential, their relationship with their bodies improves, their exercise routines become more intentional and light-hearted and their self-reflections are abundant with curiosity and self-compassion.
This article was inspired by therapy with college students and it does focus on the impact of trauma on the developmental milestones of early adulthood. Yet, after reading it over I feel that the principles shared here are relevant to many trauma survivors, irrespective of age. The steps she’s taken are essential in any healing journey, no matter when you start. I hope you find this motivational and that it’s given you a sneak peek into what’s possible when you decide to not let your past determine your present or your future. We, at Psych Blossom, believe that’s your birthright. Our Miami therapists are trauma-informed and equipped to facilitate your healing journey, just like I’m doing with this client. Give us a call and start today.
