Despite the intense nature of her role on Law & Order: SVU, Mariska Hargitay is nothing if not funny and full of joy.
And so, the actress opened her remarks at the 18th annual Hope For Depression Research Foundation seminarby cracking a joke.
"Thank God I got an honorary doctorate at John Jay University because otherwise I'd be really super insecure right now with all the doctors in this room," she quipped as she was honored with the organization's Hope Award for Depression Advocacy.
The luncheon, which took place at The Plaza Hotel in New York City on Nov. 12, gathered top scientists and psychiatrists to discuss the latest research into trauma and depression as they examined "how the brain heals."
Hargitay, who advocates for survivors of sexual violence with her Joyful Heart Foundation, is all too familiar with the discussion around complex trauma — and the necessary healing that comes after.
"Joyful Heart was my response to reading the letters that I received from survivors when I started on SVU 852 years ago," she said, nodding to the show's record-breaking run on TV (it's currently in its 26th season).
"Joyful Heart is my response to learning the statistics of sexual violence and having them rock me back on my heels and just being slack-jawed that everybody wasn't talking about these statistics and talking about these issues because they're so pervasive and it is an epidemic in our country in our world," she added. "And I now know that Joyful Heart was also a response to my own internal need for healing."
When Hargitay was just three years old, she and her two older brothers were in a car accident that killed their mother, Hollywood icon Jayne Mansfield.
"On a personal note, I've also gone through my own journey of learning how to respond to the various traumas that I've experienced in my life. I lost my mother when I was three years old and I grew up in a house of people dealing with the tragedy in their own way. And because there was so much grief, there wasn't room to prioritize anyone," Hargitay said in her speech.
"We didn't have the tools that we have now to metabolize and understand trauma, understand all the levels, understand that it goes in on the cellular level," she explained. "So it wasn't until much later in my life when I was able to do that for myself."
In January, Hargitay penned a first person essay for PEOPLE in which she shared that she is also a survivor of sexual trauma, which she experienced in her thirties.
"It wasn't until much later that I found the language to acknowledge it for what it was," Hargitay said. "And as I said in the beginning, Joyful Heart was part of my response to my own experience where I built a whole foundation that responded to trauma and survivors the way that I wanted to be responded to."
Hargitay was also moved by how the Hope For Depression Research Foundation dovetails with her own foundation, now in its 20th year.
"I had the good fortune to find extraordinary therapists who introduced me to many different healing modalities, to somatic reprocessing, somatic experiencing, which is a way of treating the way trauma lives in the body," she said. "EMDR, structured therapy for reprocessing trauma. And internal family systems, people call it IFS or parts work. These modalities gave me my life back, and they re-organized my nervous system and they gave me back a whole lot of space, which I learned is sort of synonymous for healing. It's getting space back."
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"I don't know if I'll ever find the words to express my gratitude for those who have accompanied me in my journey, for those who mirrored my trauma back to me, who helped me integrate different parts of myself and metabolize my own trauma, complex trauma that so many of us carry. We all have a story," she said.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.
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