my trauma informed 2025
As a Christmas enthusiast—yes, I understand it's not even Thanksgiving yet.
2025 has been a rough one for me.
That’s something I’ve felt every end-of-the-year for several years now. Yes, even before COVID. It makes sense considering I entered an abusive situation several years ago, was stuck in it for a while, and then went through the wringer of escaping, legally confronting, and healing after.
2025 has only consisted of the healing bit, and it turns out healing is particularly gnarly (not in the Katseye way) and comes with new layer after new layer of painful self-awareness.
This has also been the most rewarding, love-filled year of my life, as well as the year I felt the most genuine happiness. That’s something I’ve felt every end-of-the year for a few years now, ever since I met my fiancé.
Getting engaged as a domestic violence survivor and seeing my own growth as I’ve been working through EMDR makes me feel proud. And cool. Maybe even superior. But planning a wedding—no matter how customized and nontraditional—is no joke, C-PTSD and EMDR are no joke, and handling it all amidst estrangement from some of the people once dearest to me is…no joke.
There are some things I’ve shed—like trigger-induced gagging—and some things I can’t seem to let go of no matter how hard I try (okay, maybe I could try harder). Maybe I could try harder to say when I’m upset rather than keeping my mouth shut or white knuckling my way through it. Maybe I could try harder to stop asking ChatGPT to validate me and turn to my real-life friends instead. Maybe I could try harder to stop resent-stalking people who I don’t even know.
I don’t know. I’m being too hard on myself at the same time, I guess. This year, I experienced being truly disabled for the first time and it shocked me, to be honest. It felt crazy that I really could not feed myself sometimes or face another human being or read a text from certain people without doubling over and gagging. It also felt crazy the way my body would snap-to when it really had to—how I’d go from uncontrollably crying on my couch to corporate-bantering with my boss’s boss in the span of two minutes because I’ve got a job to do and a reputation to uphold! Of course, it wasn’t always perfect. I remember giving a presentation without realizing I was anxious, only for my vision to blur mid-me-speaking-and-reading-the-screen.
I’m being hard on myself because I’ve managed to work past that. I’m back to blowing people away without secretly having mid-meeting crises. I don’t find myself performing so much anymore. In fact, I seem to have lost the ability. If you’ve pissed me off or I don’t like what you’re saying, there’s no masking it anymore. I’ve got a natural aura that just spills out and I can’t seem to protect anyone from it—which might actually be a massive improvement.
My anger-at-the-world also seems to have lost its edge and simmered down to anger-at-like-four-people. A lot of people around me have gone from infuriating to bearable without anything in them actually changing at all! It’s cool to feel softer in a way that doesn’t make excuses but also doesn’t condemn everyone right away. I’ve realized that for a second there, my thoughts were aligning too much with those of anime villains, and while I do still think Stain and Pain have some valid points, maybe it won’t do to write everyone off. Or kill them. Even if it’s only in my head.
I guess I’m writing this just to capture where I’m at right now. Where healing has led me. I’ve come a long way and some of my intensity and fear has melted, which is nice, but there’s still more where that came from. I’m working through my fourth negative cognition in EMDR right now and figure there are at least several more to go. That’s cool. I like it. It’s also hard. And I’m so curious where I’ll be a month from now, a few months from now, a year from now. I change a lot and I like that—I think it’s the ways that I stay the same that I struggle with. Maybe I’ll learn to be cool with it. Stay tuned!