Hello and Welcome to The Therapist Diaries,
Spoilers for House of the Dragon!!
Are you watching House of the Dragon? Have you seen previous episodes? There was one moment in this season that has stayed with me long after the credits rolled.
It wasn't Rhaenyra finally sitting on the Iron Throne.
It was everything that happened before she got there.
By this point, Rhaenyra has already endured more grief than most people could imagine. She's lost her father, the one person who truly believed she should inherit the throne. She's watched her birthright stolen from her. She's buried her heir. She's carried the weight of war, betrayal, and impossible decisions, all while trying to hold herself together.
And then she's faced with Otto Hightower.
To everyone else in that throne room, Otto is the man responsible for usurping the crown. The mastermind behind years of political manipulation. The enemy.
But to Rhaenyra...
He was also her father's closest friend.
The Hand who was always there.
Someone she'd known since she was a little girl.
Someone who belonged to the life she had before everything fell apart.
Emma D'Arcy described the moment as one that deeply disturbed Rhaenyra, that carrying out the execution herself was something that broke a part of her, rather than empowered her.
Watching that scene, I couldn't stop thinking about trauma.
Because trauma has a way of collapsing time.
Standing in front of Otto wasn't simply confronting the man who helped steal her kingdom.
It was standing in front of one of the last living connections to her father. To her childhood. To the Red Keep before it became a battlefield. To the little girl who still believed her world was safe.
Sometimes we don't just remember the past.
Sometimes our nervous system feels like we're living it all over again.
As a trauma therapist, I see this every day.
A client comes in wondering why they had such a big reaction to something that seems "small."
A partner didn't text back.
A boss offered constructive feedback.
A friend cancelled plans.
On the surface, those moments don't explain the intensity of the emotions.
But when we look a little deeper, we often find that the present has touched something much older.
That's one of the beautiful things about Schema Therapy.
It helps us understand that we all carry emotional templates that were created in childhood. If we grew up feeling abandoned, criticized, unseen, or like we had to earn love, those experiences don't simply disappear because we become adults. They stay with us until something in the present activates them.
When that happens, it isn't unusual to feel much younger than we actually are.
Because emotionally, part of us is.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) then helps us gently question the story our mind immediately tells us.
"I'm alone."
"I'm not enough."
"I'm going to lose everything."
"I have to do this all by myself."
Those thoughts can feel completely true when an old wound has been activated. CBT doesn't ask us to ignore our feelings; it helps us notice that the story our brain is telling may belong more to our past than our present.
What I loved about Rhaenyra's final scene wasn't that she took the throne.
It was that the writers didn't make it look powerful.
They made it look painful.
She wasn't celebrating.
She wasn't smiling.
She was grieving.
Because sometimes healing, leadership, and even survival require us to make decisions that break our hearts.
And sometimes the hardest part isn't facing the person in front of us.
It's facing the younger version of ourselves who suddenly believes they're back in the room where everything first changed.
Healing isn't about pretending those younger parts don't exist.
It's about helping them realize they don't have to carry today's burdens with yesterday's fears.
If this resonates with you, the first step isn't to judge yourself for having such a big reaction. Instead, get curious. Ask yourself, "What does this situation remind me of?" or "When have I felt this way before?" Often, the intensity of our emotions isn't just about what's happening today, it's connected to something our nervous system has experienced before. When we can recognize that, we create space to respond with compassion rather than criticism. Ground yourself in the present by noticing what is true right now, reminding yourself that you are no longer the child who had to survive those experiences, and giving yourself permission to feel without believing every emotion is a fact. Sometimes the most healing thing we can do is simply acknowledge that an old wound has been touched and offer ourselves the understanding we may not have received when it first happened.
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