It DOES feel like too much. But it's not too much. T sometimes reminds me that I already survived all of this stuff, and that it's NOT HAPPENING NOW. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around sometimes, but of course, he's right. And somehow knowing that I survived it already makes it a *little* easier sometimes. It at least makes me feel like I'm not going to just die, which is honestly something I'm scared of a lot of the time, because the feelings are just so overwhelming.

I think to work on it, we need a really safe place, and we need time. It's really important to try to work at a pace where we don't get overwhelmed, and for me, the only way to do that, is knowing that there's no "time limit"..it can take as long as it takes to get through everything. For a REALLY long time in therapy - like over a year - when we talked about anything trauma related, it was SO overwhelming to me. So we could talk about one detail (like "he had a red shirt") in a session and that was IT - the feelings were so, so, so big, and that's all I could handle. The rest of the session would just be feelings, and containing the feelings so I wouldn't be overwhelmed in real life.

For me, when I look at everything at once - I have to work on ALL THIS STUFF! - it seems impossible and overwhelming. But when I can be gentle with myself, and trust the process, and believe that T will be there for me for as long as I need him, and just look at the step in front of me instead of the whole marathon that lies before me, it feels a little less overwhelming.

to you