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I was abused by my dad, and also my grandad. And in many ways, I want to just leave it there and not say any more, because every time I say it a huge cloud of fear comes up and a voice screams in my ear that none of it really happened. It’s like, for a moment, my heart falls into my feet and I’m overcome by this terror that I really am just making it up.

It might have been ‘just a routine blood test’ but that didn’t stop me passing out. Again. From a teenager through into adulthood, even the word ‘medical’ could render me light-headed. For a long time I didn’t understand why I was such a ‘wuss’, as I saw it.

What do you do when the worst thing you think could happen to you does happen? In this searingly honest and vulnerable piece, I talk about how I coped with a double loss of attachment figures and how what I had feared the most actually became a springboard towards new growth.

You’ve come a long way. Misdiagnoses, mistreatment, maltreatment even—but eventually you’re here. You’ve found a therapist willing to work with you – either privately or on the NHS – and so now you’re expecting it just to happen. Right? Wrong!

Rather than engaging with mental health services because we trust that they will be helpful, many of us – rightly or wrongly – fear any involvement with them partly because we fear losing further control by being ‘sectioned’. We fear losing our liberty, losing the right to make decisions about our life, and losing the right to choose the kind of treatment we receive.

‘Can we heal?’ she asked, quivering with the significance of what she was saying, as if her very life depended on it. ‘Can we really heal?’ I could well understood the agony in her eyes. I lived for many years overwhelmed by trauma, the symptoms of unhealed suffering. And if recovery is impossible, then why are we even trying?

It feels a long time ago now, the time when my abuse sat silent within me. It’s been over ten years. Back then, I didn’t understand any of the dynamics of abuse. The things that had happened, the things that had been done to me, the things I had been made to do – they sat silently within me as heavy weights on my soul, fetid non-reminders of my badness, this toxic mush that I thought was me.

Coming to terms with flashbacks – understanding what they are, learning how to manage them, and eventually figuring out how to reduce them – is a cornerstone of recovery. Carolyn Spring explains what goes in the brain during a flashback and how to learn to manage them.