A set of parents took a step back to ask if our discrete trauma treatment for their children was taking into account the impact of the horrible event on them, a question their couple’s therapist had asked them to ask. Without fully understanding what was meant, I shared the itch gnawing my intuition: I didn’t know the husband yet and his presence often disappeared from the room. The wife agreed that her husband wasn’t “therapized" like she was. He defended by saying that he’s been in plenty of years of therapy.

But, she’s been in therapy for years and years, and therapy revealed to her that she had been living in the world as is, but there was a floor beneath the world—one filled with nuance, complexity and layered meaning. Over the years, she realized that the floor was actually just a hallway to floors upon floors until you reach the center of the world, and she loved living in that world, exploring its ever changing and revealing landscape. Her husband only visited a few floors from time to time.

I actually freaked out for a second. How did she know about this world?! Who showed her?! I felt both validated and banal and needed to know the name of her therapist.

Afterwards, the nature of our trauma work plunged into the gravity of Kairos.

*shared with permission