From Surviving Trauma To Thriving In Life

A year ago, I grew tired of carrying trauma from my childhood, so I started EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) therapy. The first session freed me from hypervigilance at night. My body stopped jerking every time I heard a noise outside after dusk. I felt peace at night where there had been fear.

I had EMDR sessions from August 2024 to April 2025. After my therapist’s two-month health break, we focused on generational trauma within my family: two genocides, Russian pogroms, and abuse. I realized I carried significant inherited trauma that added to the effects of my own trauma.

In the first session after my therapist returned, we addressed my grandmother’s childhood. She lost her mother to the Spanish flu at age three and, following Volga German custom, was sent with her sister to a foster family for three years.

The foster family, expected to be caring Christians, exploited my grandmother and her sister as virtual slaves. My grandmother was also sexually abused by her foster brother, a trauma that haunted her into old age.

In every EMDR session, there is a negative cognition to release and a positive one to embrace. My negative cognition was, “I’m not responsible for other people’s feelings,” with the positive cognition being the converse. I carried a sense of responsibility for how other people felt. If they were down, I thought it was my responsibility to lift their mood. My grandmother never said she felt the same responsibility, but looking back at her life, I know she did.

That session, I let go of the illusion that I could make other people happy. I accepted that I am only responsible for how I process my feelings. I adopted the mantra, “I am only responsible for myself.” I felt lighter emotionally.

More generational trauma from my grandmother has come up. During another session, we dealt with my low self-esteem. As the session started, I remembered how I felt as a little girl. I hated myself and everything about me. I had a strong sense of shame that I always thought came only from having been sexually abused. My great-grandmother’s picture came to mind early in the session, with the thought that she carried shame from being pregnant before she married my great-grandfather. Her shame echoed down through the next three generations.

The shame I carried around like a boulder lifted off of me. I no longer saw myself as damaged goods. I started believing that I am enough. And session after session since that day have strengthened that belief.

I continue shedding trauma and misbeliefs about myself during session after session. I am transforming from a trauma survivor to someone who thrives in life. That transformation requires hard work. EMDR fatigue is all too real. My body is worn out. However, as my therapist says, it’s better to be exhausted than to carry around trauma.