The Cost of Not Saying His Name: What Harry Potter Teaches Us About Trauma and Avoidance
If you have been a client of mine or are currently working with me, you’ve probably heard me reference Harry Potter at least once.
I tend to use metaphors a lot in therapy. Sometimes they help make heavy things feel more approachable. Sometimes they help us see patterns that are harder to notice when we’re inside them.
One of the metaphors I come back to often is this:
In the wizarding world, most people refuse to say Voldemort’s name. They call him “He Who Must Not Be Named.”
The belief is simple: If we don’t say it, we don’t have to face it.
As the series unfolds, we see that avoiding Voldemorts name doesn’t weaken him, it strengthens the fear around him. Trauma often works the same way. As Dumbledore reminds us, “Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”
Why We Avoid
Avoidance isn’t weakness, it’s protection. When someone experiences trauma, whether abuse, assault, neglect, betrayal, or grief, the nervous system adapts to survive, often by learning not to talk about it, think about it, or revisit it. In the short term, this reduces anxiety and teaches the brain that silence equals safety. But over time, that same silence can keep the nervous system stuck in survival mode.
What Happens When We Don’t Name It
When something remains unnamed, it rarely disappears, it resurfaces indirectly as irritability, panic, emotional shutdown, difficulty trusting others, or hard-to-explain shame. I often hear clients soften their stories with phrases like, “It wasn’t that bad,” or “It’s over now.” But the body doesn’t respond to minimization; it responds to unresolved threat. In Harry Potter, Dumbledore and Harry say Voldemort’s name not to dismiss the danger, but to acknowledge it directly, and there is power in that.
Naming Creates Structure
In trauma work, naming something isn’t about flooding the nervous system or reliving every detail, it’s about moving an experience from unspeakable to defined. There’s a meaningful difference between “I can’t talk about it” and “It happened.” When something is named, it becomes specific; when it’s specific, it becomes workable, and that’s where healing begins. Avoidance keeps fear vague and global, while naming creates boundaries, turning a shadow that follows someone everywhere into a contained, though still significant, chapter of their story.
Talking About Trauma Is Not Re-Traumatizing
This part matters: effective trauma therapy is paced and intentional. We build safety, strengthen coping skills, and support regulation first. Then, when appropriate, we gently approach the memory in a way that promotes integration rather than overwhelm. The goal isn’t repeated exposure to pain, it’s reducing the power unprocessed trauma holds.
What Is “He Who Must Not Be Named” in Your Life?
For some, it’s a specific event. For others, it’s a quiet but powerful belief, I felt unsafe. I felt invisible. I wasn’t protected. I’m not okay. Naming it doesn’t make it worse; it makes healing possible. Avoidance may begin as survival, but lasting healing requires acknowledgment. Refusing to say Voldemort’s name didn’t eliminate the threat, it allowed fear to grow around it.
In therapy, we see the same truth: when we say the name carefully and safely, we begin to take our power back.
Harry didn’t reclaim his power through silence or denial, but by choosing to face what others were afraid to name. The shift didn’t happen because the threat disappeared, it happened because he stopped shrinking around it. Healing works the same way: the past may not change, but our relationship to it can.