Reclaiming Your Story: Healing Identity After Trauma, Illness, or Chronic Pain

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen." — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

There are moments in life when everything we thought we knew about ourselves suddenly shifts. It may be the result of trauma, a major health diagnosis, chronic pain, or a loss that changes how we move through the world. These moments can shake the very core of our identity. Who am I now? Who was I before this happened? Will I ever feel whole again?

This post is for anyone who's ever asked those questions. For anyone who's had their sense of self unravelled by pain they didn't choose, and for those trying to find themselves again in the aftermath.

How Trauma and Illness Can Shift Identity

When we go through trauma, especially the kind that lingers in our body and memory, it changes how we see ourselves. It may affect how safe we feel in our bodies, how we relate to others, and whether we believe we're worthy of love and belonging. For many, it also creates a rupture in how we once identified ourselves: as strong, capable, nurturing, independent, sexual, energetic, and optimistic. These pieces can feel lost or buried under the weight of survival.

Trauma can also disrupt the timeline of our lives. It can make us feel frozen in time, disconnected from our past selves and uncertain of our future. Whether the trauma was sudden or long-term, physical or emotional, it often demands survival first, leaving little space for identity, expression, or healing in the moment. Over time, it can erode self-trust and replace clarity with shame, confusion, or numbness.

Similarly, illness and chronic pain can create an invisible loss. When your body no longer moves or functions the way it used to, it can feel like your autonomy has been taken from you. A diagnosis can alter your sense of purpose, disrupt your routines, and change how others perceive or treat you. I've experienced this personally. The impact wasn't just physical—it touched how I saw myself and how I believed others saw me.

I know what it's like to live with health issues that redefine your capacity. To be perceived differently by others. To question your identity when things like independence, sexuality, fertility, or strength are no longer what they once were. At times, I felt like I was grieving the person I used to be while struggling to embrace the version of me that was still here, still worthy.

And I also know what it's like to carry the weight of trauma, especially when that trauma began early in life. The kind that shapes how you see yourself, how safe you feel in the world, how you trust, how you relate. Trauma has a way of settling into the very core of identity, whispering stories about shame, silence, or survival that we carry for years, sometimes decades. It can feel like your voice was stolen, or that your worth has always been conditional.

These experiences are deeply personal, but they're also more common than we think. Whether it's the result of childhood trauma, sexual abuse, miscarriages, chronic illness, or something else entirely, the disruption to identity is real—and so is the opportunity to reclaim it.

The Importance of Processing Emotions and Experiences

Part of reclaiming your story involves allowing yourself to feel. To grieve what's been lost. To name the pain. To speak the truth, even if your voice shakes.

In therapy, this might look like:

• Creating space to explore what happened, without judgment, safely

• Validating the emotions that have been pushed down or minimized

• Acknowledging the ways trauma, illness, or pain have changed you, and the strength it took to survive

• Letting go of the pressure to always be the strong one

  
  

Sometimes, therapy becomes the one place where you don't have to hold it all together. Where you don't need to be the rock for everyone else. Where you can finally say, "I'm hurting. I'm human. I want to be seen and heard."

It can be the space to cry, to rage, to breathe. To release what you've been carrying in silence. To soften into your truth. Therapy can be that soft place to land.

You don't need to rush this part. Healing isn't linear. Some days will feel heavier than others. But with time, you may begin to feel like the story isn't just about what happened to you, but how you've risen from it.

Strategies for Healing and Rebuilding Identity

1. Mindfulness and Self-Compassion - Gentle awareness can help you reconnect with yourself in the here and now. Mindfulness allows you to notice sensations, emotions, and thoughts without judgment. Self-compassion invites you to speak to yourself with the same kindness you'd offer a friend. Together, they create a foundation for rebuilding self-worth.

2. Narrative Therapy: Rewriting Your Story - You are not just the events that happened to you. In therapy, we can explore how to shift the internal narrative—from one of shame or loss to one of resilience and truth. You get to decide how your story is told.

3. Strength in Vulnerability - There is real courage in allowing yourself to be seen in the midst of your healing. When you share your truth—even with just one trusted person—it can create a connection and remind you that you are not alone. Vulnerability is not weakness. It's the birthplace of authenticity.

4. Self-Care as a Healing Practice - Self-care isn't just bubble baths and journaling, though those things can help. It's also setting boundaries, listening to your body, resting when you need to, asking for help, and choosing environments that honour your healing.

5. Support Through Therapy - You don't have to navigate this alone. Counselling can offer a space to feel seen and heard, to make sense of your story, and to begin reconnecting with who you are beyond the pain. Healing doesn't mean erasing what happened—it means finding new meaning and strength within it.

Journal Prompts for Self-Reflection

If you'd like to explore your own experience more deeply, here are a few gentle prompts to support your journey:

• In what ways has trauma, illness, or chronic pain impacted how I see myself?

• What parts of my identity feel like they've changed or been lost?

• What would it look like to honour who I was and who I am becoming?

• What strengths have helped me survive that I want to carry forward?

• How do I want to rewrite the story I tell myself about this chapter of my life?

• What does self-compassion mean to me right now?

• What is something I've been holding in that I wish I could release?

  
  

You Don't Have to Do This Alone

Healing is not a straight line. There are hard days and hopeful ones. Some days, you may feel strong, and others, fragile. Both are okay.

What matters most is that you continue to show up for yourself.

If you feel ready to take the next step, therapy can help you:

•            Make sense of what's happened

•            Reconnect with your identity and values

•            Feel empowered to move forward, at your own pace

I'm here to walk beside you—no pressure, no expectations, just compassionate support.

You are not broken. You are becoming. Your story is still unfolding, and you are allowed to take up space in it, as you are.

In the next blog post, we will explore navigating identity changes throughout life stages and the aging process. I hope you will join me!