I am new here. I will try hard to follow all the rules but I have never participated in an online forum before. Please be gentle with me if I make a mistake or you don't like what I say. Also please recognize that I have a desperate need for attention . Just kidding. Mostly.

I'd like to bring something up with my T at next session about the previous one, but I feel nervous about it, as if I will be violating some boundary if I do. This is my third round in therapy, and my last one was 15 years ago. I had thought that I was "all done" with processing my traumatic past, have been mostly happily married with a fantastic kid in the intervening time, and my work is fulfilling to me (I'm a lawyer who works almost exclusively with traumatized people, and I have for about 20 years). So I have 5 years of therapy with two different therapists behind me and I've been seeing my current T for about 5 months.

I have attached easily to T (attachment is not one of my current issues, but PTSD symptoms are). I have recently told him about some of the flashbacks and intrusive memories that have revealed more of the details of my traumatic past. He has been wonderful, supportive, insightful, thoughtful, just fantastic. I really trust him and he has really skillfully guided me and I feel like I've made a lot of progress.

He has been very open about his traumatic past in a very appropriate and vague way. He uses it to let me know that he does have a personal, not just generic understanding, or he uses it to let me know how he experiences whatever I'm talking about or things that have helped him when he has felt whatever it is I'm feeling. I have never felt that he has made my therapy about him or has expected me to take care of him when he has disclosed something.

This last session wasn't really any different, with the except that I think I triggered him to disappear for a few minutes and I think I saw him struggling to return to the present. In the meantime, I was feeling confused about what was happening and wasn't feeling well understood by him, because I think he was having trouble being present with me.

What he told me was that he had watched his Dad get hauled out of the house in handcuffs after beating his Mom. Then his face got some look on it that I haven't ever seen before. At first I thought he was mad at me, but that wasn't really it. It looked like there were bits and pieces of different, maybe conflicting emotions, sort of like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't fit together right. It really seemed like he was pulled back into a memory of his traumatic past.

You know, it really makes sense to me that a T could be triggered in this kind of way. How awful and confusing that would be to a kid to witness domestic violence and see your father arrested. I don't think it matters how evolved you are as a person and how much you've worked on your stuff or how good your shrink training is and how much experience you have setting it aside in the therapy room, I would expect that you'd still get triggered sometimes.

Even though I was confused at the time that it happened, as I realized that we just didn't seem to be connecting-- in retrospect it seems to me that I was watching T's process for something I've done myself many, many times-- "falling" into that hole, that place of traumatic memories, but then coming out of it. It was like watching him swim towards the surface after jumping into a lake, where he bursts through the surface the then returns to me on land, the here and now. He really wasn't gone very long and it was kind of inspiring to witness it. I took some comfort from the fact that he still has an imprint from the trauma, and by watching him pull himself out of it helps me feel safe that he can help me when I fall into that hole.

If you're still reading this book (thank you!), you might be wondering what the heck my problem actually is, and here it is. I am afraid to raise this with him, because what if I'm actually wrong about what was going on with him? I don't want to imply that he did anything wrong . Also, one of the things that I am working on right now is figuring out whether something (or someone) is bothering me by what they are saying/doing in the present or whether it's triggering something from my past (or both). I really need to trust my perceptions in therapy or I am going to lose . . . my @#$%.

I don't know. I'd really love to hear some similar experiences, or any thoughts at all.

Anne