Scratching the creative writing itch. Here we go… 

Your eyes are closed. Now open them. 

You’re in large rectangular prism or “box”. You can’t see outside of the Box. Scattered randomly around the floor, walls and ceiling of the Box are buttons. Big, red, plastic, arcade-style looking buttons. And you notice your scale. You realize that you are quite small in this box as if Rick Moranis pointed his shrinking laser at you and you shrunk to the size of small flower petal. Your height doesn’t quite reach across the diameter of the red buttons when you lay next to one. And now, the Ball. A large sphere slowly glides through the air within the box. It’s moving so slowly that you can walk beside it when it’s near the floor, and underneath it once it bounces towards the ceiling. The Ball moves in straight lines and its angles are predictable after it makes contact with the Box’s surface. The perfect sphere looks like a smooth boulder and it continuously and predictably moves. 

“Hmmm,” you notice yourself groan in some confusion. 

You look towards the other side of your new home, the Box, and realize that while it is quite a large box, you could easily walk to the other side without much effort—maybe a 5 minute walk. So you do that; you start walking towards the other side to investigate the other end of your new habitat when suddenly a jolt of what feels like electricity consumes your body. You collapse and while on the floor a memory floods through your brain and almost instantaneously you notice sensations in your body: your heart pumps fast, a pit in your stomach and weakness sets in making your legs feel immobile.

“Am I dying?”

After a few moments, you manage to turn over onto your back looking up towards the distant ceiling when you notice the Ball gliding towards you. I need to move, I’m going to be crushed. Before the ball flattens you, you manage to roll over a few times to avoid your obliteration. An hour later, you’re able to stand again. Confusion and fear race through you. You figure you’ve crossed some sort of invisible boundary so you decide to head back to your starting position. On your walk back, sore from the experience you just had, you notice the Ball slowly moving towards one of the big red buttons. You look at the button and then back at the Ball and quickly realize that the Ball will certainly hit this button. And you stand there and watch….

At such a slow speed, it pushes the button down, and again, you collapse. But it’s a different memory, some of the sensations feels different and this time you have thoughts of shame. You realize that this must have been what happened previously; the Ball hit a button. When you recover, you of course realize you need to do something about this. So as the Ball moves towards the floor, you attempt to push it off course. But it’s much bigger than you and it’s dense and heavy. After several attempts, you realize there is nothing you can do to influence the path of the Ball. You notice some objects in a crate in the corner of the box. How did I miss this before? You jog over and find a crowbar.

ZAPPPPPP, down you go. The most painful of the three buttons. Guilt and shame race in your head and you have the urge to punish yourself. 

After recovery, you take your newfound crowbar determined to pry a button loose from the floor so you can destroy it. You wedge this steel bar between the floor and button and jump on the bar only to see it snap in half. After several attempts to unearth one of these buttons, you realize that the buttons are there to stay and for the next few days (though, it’s hard to track time in the Box), you’re occasionally zapped when the ball presses against one of these buttons. After enough time, you retreat to a corner. You’re pretty safe from the ball in the corner and when you see the ball moving towards a button, you brace. And after more time, you surrender by laying down on your side facing the wall and take the zaps as they come. You lay there crying wishing the ball would just squish you out of existence. 

Break. 

When I interview prospective therapists, teach graduate students at the university or chat with potential interns, I always ask them “Do you think someone can fully heal from Trauma?” The question is a trap because it’s a closed-ended question that requires an open-ended answer. Many fall into the trap of answering “yes” or “no” and then provide an explanation. In my mind, the first answer to the question IS a question: “How do you define heal?” The answer to THAT question might be a little bit different for everybody. 

Therapists are not meant to save clients. Sadly, we cannot save people from trauma. We can love someone with trauma, support them through their struggle, rub their back, tell them loving words—but there’s no saving. Many of our clients are initially hopeful that the therapist holds the secret to where the escape from the Box is. Sometimes, I myself, have fallen into the trap of trying to save clients or people that I love—or thinking that I do, indeed, know where an exit is. Who wants to see someone that they care about in this box I’ve explained? However, I have learned that clients CAN heal themselves from Trauma (depending on how you define the word “heal”).

Back to the Box with all the Buttons.

Though time is hard to track in the Box, you know it’s been a very long time that you’ve been laying in the corner staring at the wall. You roll over to see if anything has changed and see what you’ve always seen—a large box with a plethora of big red buttons and the ball still smoothly makes it way from one bounce to the next. You get up and start walking around when suddenly you notice something. There’s a button on the wall with fine print on it that says, “Push for Help”. You wonder if it’s some cruel trap that the maker has setup. Maybe if you press it, you’ll be stung once again and whoever put you here will watch and laugh. So you don’t press it right way. You wait. You go back to your corner and your occasional zaps until you realize that you have nothing to lose. Heck with this! What’s one more button push? You rise to your feet and smash the button with conviction. Still facing the wall, you turn your head left and right to see if something has happened. After noticing nothing, you hear a voice from behind you.

“Hi.”

You turn to see some stranger. They seem gentle, warm and inviting but of course you can’t trust them. You stare for awhile.

“What’s your name?” The stranger asks.

You recite your name softly.

“What do you like to do here?”

“What?” You reply.

“Just want to know what you like to do. Do you like to read?” 

“I used to.”

“Do you like sports?”

“I used t—Hey, how did you get here?” 

“You called for help.”

“Okay, but where did you enter? How do I get out?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just appeared in here. But I’ve been in boxes like this before. And one thing I do know is that you can’t get out. But, things can appear and disappear.”

“What do you mean?! What are you saying? How did you just appear?”

“You asked for help, and now I’m here.”

“Well go away if you don’t know the way out!” 

ZAP! It’s a bad one and you collapse and shake. You cry, curse and sob, crushed by the fleeting sensation of hope that you had that this stranger would know the way to your salvation. And again, you lay there staring at the ceiling waiting for your body to recover. And that’s when the stranger sits beside you and grabs your hand.

“Are you okay? I can tell how much you’re hurting.” As patronizing as saying that could have been, the voice of your new stranger is soft and kind.

Confused that you’re not shooing their hand off of yours, you surprise yourself by answering their simple question, “No. I’m not okay. I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to be here anymore?”

“Do what anymore?”

“Be in all of this pain. Be zapped all the time. Deal with all of this shit.”

“It sounds like your feel exhausted and hopeless.”

“And guilty and ashamed.”

“What do you mean?”

“When a button gets pressed, I feel shame and guilt and have horrible intrusive memories and thoughts. And when I sleep I have nightmares.”

“What are your nightmares about? And what did that last button push make you feel guilty or ashamed about?”

“Well, I had a memory of my old friend hurting me in a way that I feel like I can never recover from. But it’s my fault, I should have stood up for myself.”

“So getting hurt by someone is YOUR fault? I’m confused. Help me understand that more.”

End. 

A therapists job isn’t to throw a ladder into the box and ask you to climb. We help press the buttons in the safest space possible. We wait until your ready. We ask questions, we support you, love you, challenge you, push you. We reflect and summarize and help label feelings. We point out the ways in which you’re treating yourself well and not so well. And we go button to button with you and let you jump on it. We’re right by your side. And sometimes, when a ball smushes a button, you realize that by talking about the memories and feelings so much, the button has been diffused. And while the memory comes back and button pushes, you don’t feel all those sensations anymore. Maybe you feel resolve, peace, pride or gratitude. You’ve taken the power of the buttons away.

When you’re not being zapped all the time, you realize that you can ask for more help. You realize that on the other side of the box that you were too scared to venture to is another help button and when you push it, supplies and tools appear. And you slowly build a beautiful and happy life where you least expected it: inside the Box with all the Buttons.