Trigger Warning / Content Note

This article contains themes of childhood trauma, emotional dissociation, internalized shame, and psychological exhaustion. While there is no graphic description of abuse, the memory includes symbolic representations of suppressed emotional pain, and therapeutic confrontation with self-protective coping mechanisms. Please read with care.

Narrative Memory: Memory Eleven

Okay then, now describe your heart for me.

My heart?

Yes, you said that you don’t want to feel it, you shut the door on it. Describe the room for me.

The room my heart is in?

That’s the one.

Ok. It’s in an old English type house. Like you see in the scary movies. Musty and mouldy smelling. There’s ivy growing over the grid window at the end of the hall. The doors are old, paint peeling. Ones only hanging on by one hinge.

Where’s your heart?

In the room at the end of the hall. Closest to the window. The doors still working there, you just have to step over the bricks and reach into the room to pull it shut.

There’s bricks?

Yes. A bit of a wall being made in the doorway. It doesn’t go very far up, but you still have to step over it to get in the room. There’s some starting to be made up the doorway a bit, but not very much.

How far do you go in the room?

Just one foot. Then I lean in to get the handle and shut the door.

What does your heart do?

Steps forward and holds the handle. Doesn’t try to keep it open, but doesn’t help me shut it either. It’s just touching the handle.

What do you do when it touches the handle?

Look at the floor? I don’t know, just wake up I guess. I don’t look at it. Avoidance again I guess.

It’s real to you. Reality is scary.

It’s not real, it’s just a silly thing I made up in my head. Just to answer your questions.

Why do you call it silly?

Well, what would you call it?

Interesting, I guess…childlike.

Exactly, silly.

No, not silly. Childlike. It’s an innocence that you’re not wanting to hurt anymore, but also that your not wanting to face. You were a child, you were innocent. You’ve been told anything that’s real is silly and to not think about it too much.

I guess.

He looks at me, raises his eyebrow, “avoidance?”

I just want to stop?

Stop the session?

Stop my head. I’ve had enough.

Of your head?

My head, me, everyone. Just enough.

Nap time?

Nap time.

Introduction: Therapy, Avoidance, and the Symbolic Heart

Trauma-informed therapy often requires a unique literacy: one that listens not only to what is said, but also to the metaphors that protect what is unsayable. In this memory, the therapist does not ask for facts, but for symbolism. The client responds not with logic, but architecture – a rotting house, half-built bricks, a heart she cannot face. Rather than avoidant, this is profoundly intimate. It is the language of the unspeakable.This article explores “Memory Eleven” as a case study in therapeutic resistance that is not resistance at all, but reverence. Using trauma theory, attachment frameworks, and symbolic interpretation, we explore the visual metaphors used by the narrator to distance herself from, and slowly reapproach, her emotional life. The act of describing this decaying room is itself a form of emotional proximity – one that deserves to be honoured, not rushed.

The Architecture of Avoidance

In trauma recovery, avoidance is not failure. It is memory protection. The house the narrator describes is not random – it is a coherent symbolic container for emotional material too dangerous to confront directly. As van der Kolk (2014) notes, the body and brain respond to trauma by prioritizing survival, often through dissociation and compartmentalization. The “musty, mouldy” house with bricks partially built is not simply decaying – it is maintaining. It allows the narrator to keep the heart both present and unreachable. This mirrors Ogden et al.’s (2006) description of trauma containment as “a controlled withdrawal into symbolic safety.” The bricks are not a barrier; they are a boundary. They say: “not yet.”Trauma survivors often fear that if they open the emotional door, they will be overwhelmed. The narrator demonstrates this with profound visual logic: the heart is reachable, but not quite. There’s a path to it, but only one foot enters. This controlled ambivalence is not dysfunction – it’s adaptive ambivalence, one foot in healing, one foot in protection.

Childlike, Not Silly: The Exiled Inner Child in Therapy

When the therapist calls the narrator’s metaphor “childlike,” she recoils. “Exactly – silly.” But the therapist gently reclaims the word: childlike as innocent, vulnerable, unguarded. This exchange exposes a common legacy of abuse: the deep shame attached to any display of softness. Survivors often equate vulnerability with weakness, or even ridicule, because their experiences of openness were met with punishment or dismissal.Winnicott (1960) described the “false self” as the self survivors construct to avoid disapproval. It is polished, competent, guarded. The inner child, by contrast, is unpredictable, feeling, creative. In this memory, that childlike part has built a metaphorical room and invited the therapist in—not with trust, but with careful symbolic distancing. It is the narrator’s adult self who stands at the door. The heart, like the child, waits in the room, neither helping nor resisting. To call the metaphor “silly” is to minimize its emotional risk. But the therapist sees what the narrator cannot name: this is a symbolic self-rescue. The child is still there. She is not broken. She simply cannot yet be looked at.

Bricks, Doors, and Half-Hinged Belonging

The symbolism of infrastructure in this memory – the bricks, the doors, the peeling paint – tells a second story: one about identity. As Bourdieu (1991) suggested, symbolic structures often reflect internal socialized roles. Here, the narrator’s heart is neither hidden nor shown. The door is functional but old, and the bricks don’t block the way – they signal a beginning.Attachment theorists like Bowlby (1988) suggest that emotional safety is built over time, like architecture. The narrator’s emotional system has built partial walls – enough to protect, not enough to imprison. Her avoidance is porous. This is hopeful.The peeling paint and one-hinged doors, too, are not dysfunctions – they are signs of past weathering. They imply a history of attempted containment, failed closures, reopened wounds. In this sense, the house is not a horror story – it is a living memory of failed repairs. That the narrator continues to revisit it in therapy is not regression. It is renovation.

Therapeutic Resistance or Spiritual Exhaustion?

When the therapist pushes slightly – “avoidance?” – the narrator doesn’t argue. She crumbles. “I just want to stop… my head, me, everyone.” This is not resistance. It is depletion. Linehan (1993) writes that emotional exhaustion is often misread as noncompliance. In reality, trauma survivors may reach a point in therapy where even symbolic engagement becomes too much. What we hear in “nap time” is not triviality, but longing – for rest, silence, obliteration of thought.This moment echoes trauma fatigue, described by Herman (1992) as the state in which prolonged hypervigilance gives way to collapse. The narrator doesn’t want to quit therapy – she wants to be relieved of herself. And so she regresses, slightly, into childlike language: nap time. But this, too, is revealing. The very term “nap time” is a request for comfort, not abandonment. For boundaries, not judgment. The child self returns again here – not with metaphors, but a plea. Let me rest. Don’t make me open the door just yet.

Conclusion: Honouring the Room Without Forcing It Open

What this memory shows is not therapeutic failure – but therapeutic pacing. The narrator brings the therapist to the threshold of the emotional heart. She lets them peek. That is enough. To ask for more would be violent.Trauma recovery is not about crashing into locked rooms. It is about waiting beside them until the survivor feels safe enough to invite you in. The bricks will be moved, or not. The door will open, or not. Healing, like architecture, takes time. And even half-hinged doors still hold stories worth listening to.  To call this avoidance misses the point. It is not fear – it is wisdom. It is the child choosing when to speak. It is the body saying “not yet.” And when we honour that voice, we stop forcing healing into timelines and instead learn how to sit gently, beside the doorway, until the client whispers: now.

References

Bell, K. M., & Naugle, A. E. (2008). Suicidal ideation and behavior in victims of intimate partner violence: A systematic review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 9(3), 189–198.

Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. Basic Books.Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Harvard University Press.Briere, J., & Scott, C. (2015). Principles of trauma therapy: A guide to symptoms, evaluation, and treatment. SAGE.

Gilligan, C. (2015). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Harvard University Press.

Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence—from domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books.

Levine, P. A. (2010). In an unspoken voice: How the body releases trauma and restores goodness. North Atlantic Books.

Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. Guilford Press.Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the body: A sensorimotor approach to psychotherapy. Norton.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. Norton.

Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford University Press.

van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma.

Viking.Winnicott, D. W. (1960). The maturational processes and the facilitating environment. International Universities Press.