- Haley Moore
- 4 days ago
- 8 min read
A Look Inside Therapy: Real-Life Stories Of Anxiety, Trauma & Healing
A behind-the-scenes look at the therapy process, emotional regulation, and healing from anxiety, trauma, and people-pleasing
Written By: Haley Moore
About the Author
Haley Moore, Clinic Director and Registered Social Worker (RSW)
Meet Rachel*.
She’s a 34-year-old ER nurse working in a busy downtown hospital in Toronto. She first came to therapy after a two-week period of waking up every night with panic attacks and complete exhaustion because of this. The panic left her exhausted, and the lack of sleep was beginning to affect her ability to function at work.
Before coming to therapy, Rachel went to see her family doctor. She assumed something medical must be causing the sudden night-time panic and insomnia. After some assessment, her doctor told her something unexpected: she was experiencing anxiety.
Rachel didn’t identify with that word at all.
Anxiety?
She didn’t think of herself as an anxious person. Rachel had always been the bubbly one - the person who showed up for everyone else, the one people relied on in difficult moments. In her mind, people with anxiety were too overwhelmed by fear to function, and that simply didn’t sound like her.
Other than the recent panic attacks at night, she felt completely fine.
Still, her doctor suggested therapy. Rachel agreed to try it - she knew she couldn’t keep doing her demanding job if she wasn’t sleeping.
Enter Therapy
Rachel arrived at our first session with nervous laughter and a huge smile - something therapists often recognize as a sign that someone has been deflecting their emotions for quite some time. She was exactly as she had described herself: bubbly, warm, friendly, and very quick to minimize anything difficult.
When she explained what had been happening, she dismissed the impact of the panic attacks almost immediately. She was sure the sleep problem would fix itself soon. Maybe something was “in the water,” she joked, laughing again.
We continued through the intake session together. Intake sessions are designed to help therapists understand the bigger picture of a person’s life and mental health.
We talked about:
How she had navigated other challenges throughout her life
What she did after particularly difficult shifts at the hospital
Her romantic relationships and friendships
Her family of origin
Significant life events and losses
And what she hoped to gain from therapy
What emerged was a story that was much more complex than a sudden case of insomnia.
Rachel’s Story
On top of her stressful career in emergency medicine, Rachel had also experienced significant loss early in life. Her mother died of cancer when Rachel was very young, something that ultimately inspired her to become a nurse.
After her mother’s death, Rachel’s father remarried. She suddenly found herself sharing the limited time she had with her workaholic father with a stepmother and two new step-siblings. Her stepmother was consistent but emotionally distant, and Rachel often felt she had to take care of herself.
In her romantic life, a similar pattern appeared. Rachel frequently found herself dating emotionally unavailable partners. She invested deeply in relationships that gave her very little in return, which left her feeling confused and heartbroken.
Despite these challenges, Rachel had strong friendships and a very active lifestyle. She worked out regularly, spent time walking her dog, and kept herself busy outside of work.
But when we explored what she did purely for enjoyment, something that gave her energy or helped her reconnect with herself, she struggled to answer.
Between shift work, social obligations, caring for others, and maintaining her routine, there wasn’t much space left for Rachel herself.
Patterns That Emerged
Throughout the intake session, several important patterns began to emerge:
1. Rachel Didn’t Know Herself Very Well
Rachel spent so much time caring for others and prioritizing their needs that she had very little connection to her own.
When asked what she enjoyed beyond spending time with people, walking her dog, or going to the gym, she wasn’t sure. She had rarely stopped to consider what gave her energy, joy, or rest.
This is actually more common than people think.
2. Her Inner Critic Was Extremely Harsh
Although Rachel appeared very positive on the surface, her inner dialogue told a different story.
She believed that despite experiencing significant trauma both in her childhood and throughout her nursing career, she should simply “deal with it” and move on.
She minimized the emotional impact of witnessing suffering and loss in the emergency department and in her personal life. Internally, she felt intense pressure to manage everything perfectly and never let anyone down.
3. A Deep Belief That She Was Undeserving
Children who experience loss or trauma early in life often develop unconscious beliefs about responsibility. Although Rachel logically understood that she was not responsible for her mother’s illness or death, a younger part of her still believed something different. At an emotional level, she carried a quiet belief that if she had somehow been better, her mother might still be alive.
This belief wasn’t something she consciously thought about, but it showed up in the way she treated herself - always pushing harder, giving more, and rarely allowing herself care in return - and in the little care and support she expected from others.
4. Anxiety Had Been Present for Years
Rachel believed her anxiety was new, but when we looked more closely, the pattern had been present for most of her life.
Rachel began to realize the symptoms of anxiety she hadn’t noticed. She:
Pushed herself excessively to achieve perfect grades
Worried constantly about what others thought of her
Experienced stomach aches before big tests or soccer games
Struggled emotionally around the anniversary of her mother’s death
Was crippled if she thought that she might get in trouble
At the time, she explained these things away as normal stress or “just being a good student.” But looking back, they were clear signs that anxiety had been part of her story for a long time.
Setting Collaborative Goals
Therapy is a very collaborative process, and working with Rachel was no different.
When I shared these observations with Rachel, something clicked for her. She told me she felt mind-blown. For the first time, she could see how many of her experiences, past and present, were connected, and how much her anxiety had guided her decision making up to that point in time.
From this new understanding, we set goals together:
Developing deeper self-awareness and self-understanding
Learning how anxiety affects thoughts, emotions, and behaviour
Improving emotional regulation skills
Strengthening self-care and boundaries
Softening her inner critic
Reducing people-pleasing patterns in relationships
Eliminating night-time panic attacks and improving sleep
It might look like a long list, but these goals are very common for people starting therapy.
Unlike traditional SMART goals, therapy goals are often ongoing processes rather than tasks to check off the list. Personal growth is rarely linear, it’s something we continue to deepen over time. It may not feel as clean and simple, but that’s life.
The Treatment Plan
After the intake session, I developed a treatment plan with Rachel.
Some clients feel uncomfortable with the word “treatment”. Rachel did too. It made her feel like something was wrong with her. I always like to reframe it - treatment simply means adding support to help something function better.
If you break your arm, the treatment might be a cast and physiotherapy. If you’re preparing wood for staining, it needs treatment first so the stain applies evenly. If you’d like to change your appearance, a hair colour treatment might be in store.
Mental health treatment works the same way. A treatment plan looks like the steps that a therapist takes to help support the client in reaching their individual goals.
In Rachel’s case, her therapy included several approaches:
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT): Helping Rachel understand how her thoughts, emotions, and behaviours influence one another.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT): Developing emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and coping skills.
Somatic Therapy: Learning how stress and trauma live in the body and how to release physical tension.
Psychoeducation: Learning about anxiety, trauma, burnout, and people-pleasing patterns.
Internal Family Systems (IFS): Exploring and healing the different parts of Rachel that were still carrying pain from earlier life experiences.
Although long-term therapy doesn’t have a fixed timeline, some approaches, particularly using CBT for anxiety, can create noticeable improvements fairly quickly. When we understand more about ourselves and the way we operate, it gives us much more autonomy to start to make changes to the ways we’re living which can be very impactful right away.
Starting The Work
Therapy with Rachel progressed steadily.
We began by helping her understand the connection between her nervous system and body, and her thoughts, emotions, and behaviours.
She learned practical emotional regulation skills like:
Box breathing
Grounding techniques
And Mindfulness practices
She also learned to notice her thoughts, challenge unhelpful beliefs, and explore where those patterns had developed. Over time, we worked on healing the parts of Rachel that were still carrying unresolved grief and trauma.
Therapy also focused on unlearning patterns she had developed over many years:
Workaholism modelled by her father
Over-responsibility for others from feeling neglected and abandoned in her childhood
Difficulty prioritizing her own needs forged in trying to be seen by her step-mother
Change doesn’t happen overnight, and they didn’t with Rachel either. But with time, consistency, accountability, and the belief that change was possible, Rachel began sleeping through the night again.
More importantly, she began reconnecting with herself. She realized that the bubbly personality she had relied on for years wasn’t entirely authentic. It was a version of herself she believed others would like more. Recognizing that allowed her to start asking a powerful question: “Who am I, really - and how do I want to show up in the world?”
Do You Relate to Rachel?
Life is tough. Between the state of the world, work, relationships, and the constant pressure to keep moving forward, many people learn to ignore their own emotional needs. Eventually, though, the body often finds ways to get our attention.
For some people, it’s panic attacks or insomnia. For others, it might look like:
Stomach aches
Headaches
Tightness in the chest
Chronic tension
Brain fog or exhaustion
These symptoms (and many others) aren’t personal failures. They’re signals from the nervous system that something needs care and attention.
Many of us were raised in systems that encouraged pushing through, staying ‘strong’, and prioritizing everyone else. While resilience can be helpful, we also deserve support, compassion, and space to heal and grow.
Therapy can help you slow down, understand yourself more deeply, and learn new ways of caring for your mind and body.
If Rachel’s story resonates with you, therapy might be a helpful place to start. If you're looking to book with a therapist that can help you get closer to where you want to be, reach out to us. Our team of trained therapists can help support you in navigating your own story of anxiety and trauma to find a path forward towards healing and growth. Book your free 15-minute video consultation with one of our team members today using the link below!
*Author’s Note: Rachel is not a real client, but instead a representation of clients familiar to our clinic.
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