(((((((MUE))))))))))

It's so hard. Lately, I've just been disappearing in my head and then having to work for SO long with T to get grounded again. I can take maybe a sentence a lot of the time before - whoosh - I'm gone.

The one or two times that I've REALLY been able to successfully talk lately, we took a lot of breaks. I would say one tiny thing and then ask a question (like "what did you have for breakfast?"). Hearing T talk about everyday life would ground me enough that I could say one more thing and then ask another question. I didn't plan it, but it worked that day, and it helped to be able to at least talk a little bit.

I do a lot of writing and drawing when something is too scary to talk about. T has a little white board, and he sits with me and I write on there.

I looked back at some old e-mails and T and I have been dancing around the current topic in therapy for a YEAR. It came up last July and I got REALLY angry at T for pushing me on it at all (which is very clear in the e-mails!) and we dropped it. A month or two ago, we started trying to talk about it again, but wow, it's slow. I'm not sure I've said much of anything. T says I get lost in the "silent darkness" in my head, and I do.

I think progress doesn't necessarily look like what we expect it to look like. For me, progress would be telling the story - saying all of the words all at once. But I CAN'T. For T, progress looks like me being willing to approach it in any way, to feel any of the feelings, to talk about talking about it, to say a word about it here or there...and then being able to ground myself back into my real life afterward. It's helping me change my expectations. I WANT it to be over with, but it can only happen how it happens. Maybe it will take a year. Or more! But when we've been holding such painful things for so long, it just has to be able to take as long as it takes.

Be gentle with you, MUE. You are doing really good work.