During a recent session with a client, we discussed her experience with talk therapy.
She shared her frustration at having spent years talking about her problems, yet never once being asked about her sleep. Or her diet. Or whether she was getting regular movement.
She had spent years exploring her experiences and trying to understand herself, but important parts of her wellbeing had never been considered.
It got me thinking about how we approach healing, particularly for adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs).
Understanding your experiences is important. But understanding how those experiences have affected your whole system is just as important.
The impact goes beyond our mental health
Growing up in an environment shaped by alcohol harm can affect far more than our mental health. It can influence how we relate to others, how we respond to stress, how safe we feel in our own bodies, and how we navigate everyday life.
The effects can show up in our physical health, our relationships, our sense of identity and our ability to regulate our responses to pressure.
In my own experience, my mental health suffered, but so did my physical health. I struggled with gut issues and migraines, and developed allergies during a period when I was experiencing high levels of stress.
Beyond that, I felt disconnected from myself. I didn't really know who I was or what I wanted outside of the pain that had shaped so much of my life.
I had spent a long time trying to understand my experiences, but understanding alone wasn't enough to help me change how I felt and lived.
Healing requires us to reconnect with ourselves
For me, a turning point came when I began working on regulating my nervous system, reconnecting with my body and learning to sit with myself rather than constantly looking outside myself for answers or ways to cope.
As I developed that capacity, I began to notice a shift in my mental health, too.
This isn't to say that talk therapy doesn't work. Therapy can be incredibly valuable in helping us make sense of our experiences, recognise patterns and process what we've been through.
But for some people, particularly those whose early environments shaped their responses to stress and safety, talking may be only one part of the picture.
We also need to consider the body, our daily habits, our relationship with ourselves and the ways our nervous system has adapted to the environments we've lived in.
These things are interconnected. Our physical state can influence how we feel and think, just as our thoughts and emotional experiences can affect our bodies.
We cannot always think our way into feeling better if we haven't also addressed what is happening in our bodies.
Asking a different set of questions
If you're working with a therapist, it can be worth asking about their experience with trauma-informed approaches and whether they consider the wider impact of your experiences on your physical wellbeing, nervous system and daily life.
You don't necessarily need to choose between understanding your past and working with your body. Both can have an important role in your healing.
The goal isn't simply to understand why we are the way we are. It's to develop the capacity to live differently.
Because healing isn't only about making sense of what happened to us. It's also about reconnecting with ourselves and building the capacity to move forward without our past continuing to dictate how we live.