(((((((((Improving))))))))) You are doing GREAT with your T ! Keep posting these emotions and processing through them.

I want to share something with you from my therapy experience last year with the trauma work. I hope this helps you a bit maybe to put together the pieces.

I brought in my childhood video tape (converted to dvd) from the 1970s and some reel-to-reel footage of when I was little with my brothers. Naturally the only thing the video showed was us swimming and playing in the pool and going to the park.
Of course I saw in MY eyes the pain and I remembered what it felt like to have to walk around trying to be happy and forget what was going on when the camera stopped rolling.

After my T watched the video for the first time with me, he said "It looks like a perfectly normal family."

OMG! I felt my heart being crushed as though an elephant had stomped on it!!!
Thankfully he is a wonderful T and asked me to share my emotions at that comment. I told him how it felt like he was dismissing my entire childhood and telling me my family was normal - so why was I there in his office "complaining" about it. UGGG!!!

He got very silent and looked me in the eye and said "What I am wanting to share with you is that the video and pictures didn't capture the pain."

He went on to tell me that he has the same response when he looks at his own pictures - he has a CSA history as well. He said it was amazing how families only want to remember and document the good parts. They tend to toss out the pictures of us looking distressed in any way. Also, as we were growing up, we were told to keep smiling through the pain.

The world saw us the way those pictures your mom kept display. They are not the truth in any real way. They are "snapshots" of us too often pretending to be a "normal happy family" without any issues at all.

Sometimes we did have happy times and life continued inspite of the fact that we were hurting inside. And that was fine. It was what it was for the time. So there are many pictures of those times when we were just living inside the reality that was there.

But remember that it doesn't mean the pain was any less real. Just because you don't have photo "evidence" that you had chickenpox or some other illness as a child does not mean it didn't happen.

Big hugs to you!