From Trigger to Hope: How Coloring Gave Me the Language to Heal
A note from Chelsea:
I feel so lucky and grateful to be able to share this story with you.
I've been working with this particular client since before I focused exclusively on Color Mending Therapy. She came to me when I was still guiding people through visualizations, helping to reframe traumatic events through IPT (Integrated Processing Technique) sessions. Over time, we gradually shifted our work together until we were primarily using coloring during our sessions.
She recently contacted me to tell me about the experience below, and gave me permission to share her story, said in her own words, to you all. She did request to remain anonymous.
It’s stories like these that show the true power of using Color Mending Therapy to build affective interoceptive skills. Or, more simply, learning your language of emotions.
I never expected a song at a holiday party to change everything.
It came on suddenly. That same song that was playing decades ago when I was a small child, and someone hurt me in ways no child should ever experience. The kind of trauma that leaves marks you can't see but carry everywhere.
My body knew before my mind caught up. Every cell screamed danger. My nervous system launched into full panic mode, convinced that what happened back then was about to happen again.
I left the party immediately. I went home, pulled out my coloring supplies, and started coloring as I was repeating to myself, “I am safe.”
Unlike when I’ve experienced intense emotions before, I didn't try to make the fear go away. I didn't tell myself that I was overreacting or that I needed to snap out of it. I just let everything I was feeling pour out onto the paper. The terror, the confusion, the rage, the grief. All of it went into the colors I chose and the way I moved my hands across the page.
I kept coloring.
And as I kept coloring, something started to shift. The emotions were still there, but I could see them more clearly. I could feel what was happening in my body without being completely overwhelmed by them.
A short time later, I was able to call my therapist.
Because I was able to move through the emotions and had a better sense of what they were trying to get me to see, I could tell her directly, "This is what's happening in my body. This is what I'm feeling. This is how I've been working through it. And I need your help understanding what's going on."
My therapist immediately recognized it: complex PTSD.
When my therapists asked how I could articulate to her where I currently was so clearly, I told her it was because of my colorings. She said that because I gave her such detailed, specific information, she could meet me exactly where I was and knew what tools, strategies, and resources would help me the most.
And the story only gets better.
The next day, when I woke up, it was like a fog I didn't know I'd been living in suddenly lifted. The grief, the resentment, the bitterness, the weight I'd been carrying and pushing down for years, it was finally released.
I have a lightness now, an optimism, a genuine hope that I haven't felt in longer than I can remember.
I know this sounds dramatic, but it's true:
Coloring helped me find hope again.
Not because coloring fixed everything on its own, but because it helped me stop suppressing what I was feeling and start understanding it instead.
It gave me the language to advocate for myself.
It helped me have a conversation with my therapist without having to retraumatize myself by recounting every painful moment from that specific experience from my childhood.
The most important thing Color Mending has taught me is that emotions are information. Emotions are not something to fear or push away. They're signals from my body telling me what I need.
Since using Color Mending, I have a better understanding of how I feel emotions. I understand my body better. And because of that, I know what kind of support I need, which professionals to work with, and what skills I can focus on developing to create my dream life.
I'm so grateful for this tool.
It really works.
