WOMEN'S HEALTH
Mental Health: A Corrective Experience with My Younger Self
Clients will do many exercises to help them process strenuous or traumatic life experiences. As they reflect on their lives with a better vision, they can reconstruct a more realistic, empowering, productive, or empathetic narrative. Many of us carry experiences that have created unknown rules of engagement with ourselves and others, mainly because we remember what we felt being on the receiving end.
"Psychotherapists are very aware of the heaviness attached to some of those memories."
One helpful exercise the client participates in is corrective experiences. This explorative process allows clients to re-experience negative past situations through more nonjudgmental lenses. For instance, if a client grew up in a household where they were reprimanded for expressing anger or frustrations and has learned to please people because they fear how people may respond, their therapist may provide a space that is supportive through action when they are reminded they can express frustration with their therapist without fear of reprimand. It helps validate and modify, not deny, our reactions and how we want to respond in the future.
With time and practice, clients are encouraged to repair the traumatic influences of previous experiences. It is one of the safest ways to demonstrate how we can respond to uncomfortable situations without entering a repetitive state of negative self-talk, self-deprivation, or emotional shutdowns. Psychotherapists are very aware of the heaviness attached to some of those memories. In light of being transparent, below are shared corrective experiences I practiced to emotionally validate some of my childhood experiences with phrases my younger self needed to hear.
I’m sorry you were told you were too dark. Your skin tone did not devalue you or make you less desirable.
You most certainly did not need to be told to bleach your skin to ‘look better.’
Your full lips will be highly sought after in the future.
You deserved to feel safe and cared for even if you were not part of the family.
I am sorry you felt alone when you needed someone to comfort you.
Hearing ‘get over it’ when you grieved your friend’s death by suicide was unloving.
You definitely should have written that book at 13 because why not?
I wish more people in your corner spoke about how you were treated. There was only so much a child can do.
Even though you never heard it as a kid, you are loved, and you get to hear someone say it.
You get to create the home you dreamed of, and you will feel safe and understood.