“You might feel worse before you feel better”. It sounds like a disclaimer, a therapist butt-covering exercise if you will. I used to think so too.

But after many years of doing trauma and EMDR therapy, I have learned that you can absolutely feel worse before you feel better. It is legit, but it does deserve some attention, because feeling worse and getting worse are not the same thing.

That distinction changes everything about how you interpret what's happening when trauma therapy gets difficult.

This episode covers:
• The difference between feeling worse and actually getting worse
• The dust on the mirror effect: what it is, why it happens, and why it's actually a good sign
• Why the worst thing you can do when therapy gets hard is stop
• What the research actually says about clinical deterioration from EMDR

If you've ever had a rough week after a therapy session and wondered whether you should keep going, listen to this.

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Follow Helen: @helenbillows | @thetraumanerd

You don't have to be a perfect parent. But there is one thing that makes an enormous difference to what your child thinks about themselves, and it's not whether you lose your temper.

It's what you do after.

Young children can't separate what happens around them from what it means about them. When a rupture goes unaddressed, a child's brain doesn't file it under "mum was stressed." It files it somewhere far more personal.

Repeated enough, that filing system can shape how they move through the world as adults.

This episode covers:

• Why unaddressed conflict becomes the story a child tells about themselves, not about you

• What a genuine repair actually sounds like (and what it doesn't)

• Why the gap between rupture and repair is where the damage actually lives

• Why it's not too late if you're only hearing this now

If you've been losing sleep over the moments you got it wrong, those moments aren't the whole story. What comes next is.

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Follow Helen: @helenbillows | @thetraumanerd

You've had the insight. Someone laid out a completely airtight case for why the belief you hold about yourself is wrong. You saw it, you agreed, it made total sense. And then absolutely nothing changed.

This is not a you problem.

It's actually a clue, and it's telling you something specific about what kind of belief you're dealing with. Because not all beliefs work the same way, and if you don't know which one you're up against, you can spend years doing the right work in the wrong place.

Some beliefs live in the body and the nervous system. Some live in the intellect. They formed differently, they feel different, and they need completely different things to shift. Throwing logic at a trauma-encoded belief is like trying to argue someone out of a panic attack (completely useless, FYI).

This episode covers:

• Why you can have perfect insight and still feel exactly the same, and what that's actually telling you

• The difference between trauma encoded beliefs and learned worldview beliefs

• Why some people can do 50 sessions of therapy, understand everything, and still feel like their irrational beliefs are true

• How to tell which layer you're working with

• Why the gap between knowing and feeling isn't a flaw in your thinking, it's diagnostic information

If you've ever wondered why you keep arriving at the same realisation without anything actually shifting, listen now.

Get The Reality Audit Here — a free resource listing the most common distorted beliefs from dysfunctional environments, with the accurate version alongside each one. https://www.helenbillows.com/the-reality-audit

🎙️ Listen on Spotify, Apple or Youtube
📩 Join the mailing list
Follow Helen: @helenbillows | @thetraumanerd