I think in the past few months I've just started to get a handle on this.

Hard things are...HARD. When we haven't talked about them before, or dealt with them without dissociating, it seems like an insurmountable task. Or it did to me, anyway.

For me, the feelings are SO BIG, and that's why I want to/need to "leave". T's good about sensing how much I can handle, so he doesn't push me too far too fast, and that helps.

The topic we're talking about now used to make me dissociate before ANY words were said about it. T would say something like "this thing that's pushing at you seems so hard" and whoosh - i would be GONE.

T has spent a lot of time helping me learn to ground myself. A LOT. And so he has seen what helps, what doesn't help, what works, what doesn't work, and he can guide me back to a more grounded place when I can't do it myself. Some things that work for me are putting my feet on the floor, standing up and moving around the room, listening to the cars outside and trying to identify what they are (dump truck? bus? van?). He reminds me to breathe, and that helps. There are lots of things that we've found over the years, and those tools are the only thing that make it possible for me to be present enough to process this stuff. And it's still crazy hard.

I needed to tell him something hard a few weeks ago and I knew I had to get it out, so I would tell him a tiny bit (like "there's something I need to tell you") and then I would ask him a question (like "what did you eat for breakfast?"). I don't even know why I did it like that, but it helped bring me back to reality over and over again at pretty short intervals and I never really lost my groundedness, which was huge.

I think the main thing that it requires is a TON of patience...from T and from yourself. It can be a slow, slow process, and that is so okay. Our brains have learned to protect us for a reason, and it takes time for us to understand, DEEP down, that we're safe now and we can do this.

Be gentle with you