Realising school was traumatic helped me start healing

I had been out of school for a couple of months after two years of spotty attendance before I realised that school was traumatic for me. At the time, I was on maybe week five or six of counselling with a new counsellor. I was used to therapy by then; I had been going on and off for about three years by this point, and honestly, I was fed up with it.

The problem was that I couldn’t go to school, and I struggled to understand why. I felt that nothing was changing, and I was starting to accept the “fact” that I was a failure and my life was “going nowhere”. I had grown used to talking about my experiences, followed by the look of disappointment I would get when I would give the same answers to the same questions from different therapists:

“Do you like school?”

“I like learning new things, and I’d like to go to college one day.”

“Do you have friends? Are you being bullied?”

“Yeah, I have friends and I can talk to people in school. No, everyone’s pretty nice to me.”

“Why don’t you try going to school for even just one day this week?”

“I can try, but I don’t think it’ll work. I just can’t do it. School scares me.”

“What do you think would help you?”

“I don’t know.”

Trapped in a cycle of panic and shame

And I really just didn’t know. Nothing I tried seemed to help me in school; I couldn’t even see the school or the uniform or the students without terror filling my veins. My life soon became a toxic cycle of trying to go to school, having a panic attack, feeling ashamed until that shame turned into “I refuse to keep living like this, I have to go to school”, and we’d go around again. Try, panic, shame, try, panic, shame until I crashed, and yet I’d start it all again.

Hearing words that made a difference

So here I was, sitting with yet another counsellor, awaiting the same questions, the same disappointed look after telling her about school, when instead she said something I had never heard before.

“That must’ve been so traumatic for you.”

I had heard about trauma before. I was always interested in psychology and mental health, so I knew about trauma in passing, but I had always associated it with situations that were far different to mine. I had never heard anyone talk about trauma relating to emotional experiences before. To me, trauma was for soldiers, not for sixteen-year-old girls who were too scared to go to school.

I remember sitting there and looking at her as the words set in.

“That must’ve been so traumatic for you.”

Recognising emotional trauma

I mean, it made sense; it explained things that I didn’t understand about myself. It explained the nightmares I would have of school and the feeling of absolute terror whenever school was mentioned. It explained why I wasn’t able to see the school or anything even remotely associated with the school without having a panic attack. It explained why I felt crazy when I would randomly smell the school even when I was miles away and why that phantom smell would send me spiralling for days.

Being seen and validated

And so I sat with my counsellor, the words sitting in my chest, and for the first time in years, I felt truly seen. I didn’t feel like I was being dramatic or overreacting anymore. After all this time, my feelings had finally been validated with just one word.

What I experienced was traumatic.

School, while being neurodivergent, was scary. Being in a space where my support needs were not being met was painful. My requests for support were often met with disapproval and brushed off, since I was high-functioning and my autism never directly affected my learning.

I felt that my experience was treated as one of social anxiety, while my disability was disregarded, and it made me feel that by simply existing, I was being inconvenient to those around me. I was a child who felt unsafe in a space where I was expected to spend the majority of my time, and the adults who were meant to keep me safe, I felt I couldn’t trust. Looking back, I’m proud of myself for surviving that.

Understanding myself at last

Everything felt just a tad bit lighter. This counsellor actually saw me. Here was an adult who was validating me, and for the first time in a long time, I started to feel like I could trust an adult to support and understand me. She gave me the space to unlock the final piece in understanding myself. I sat across from her and for the first time, I said it aloud,

“Yes, school was traumatic for me.”

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