T wants me to try desensitization, and I'm not at all clear what it involves. I thought I understood it, but now I don't think so. I had thought for years that it just meant forcing yourself to stay in places and/or with people that freaked you out, hoping that somehow exposure to them would just grind away the anxiety or discomfort. From some comments of T's, I think I may have had that wrong. "Desensitization" may be a little more complicated, but I'm not sure how.

Over the past thirty years I've forced myself (sometimes for years and years) to be in the kinds of situations to which I'm allergic, without the slightest decrease in anxiety or dissociation. I guess you could say that was using brute force. Are there any more sophisticated desensitization techniques that you folks have learned about that go beyond brute force? I'd love to hear about them and hear about your experiences, if you'd share them. Take care.