All we have in therapy is words and conversation with this other person, our T. English was not my T's first language either. It is easy to misunderstand or just plain miss meanings.

How do you know the T meant the feelings instead of the actual events?

One cannot wall off feelings as you have tried, as you see, your wall is crumbling. The feelings must be looked at and processed, the event has to be approached from a different viewpoint; its pastness is very important to that viewpoint. There has to be a disconnect between the past event and how it made you feel and the present.

My car was rear-ended and totaled. Fortunately I was not in it; a car hit it when it was dead/stopped at a red light and forced it through the intersection and beyond. The emergency people did not know I was not in it were searching the side of the road for me! I had gone to the gas station down the road to call for help for it being dead, before it was hit. The people in the car that hit it were taken to the hospital in ambulances.

It happened as I was driving home from seeing my therapist and the session and evening were already stressful. The battery was dead when I came out of the session and I had to force myself to go back into the clinic and ask to use their phone to call for someone to jump the battery! That was very very difficult for me to do, go back and talk to people when I wasn't "supposed" to be there, to ask for help too!

Then there was the fact I was also late from having to stop and get the battery jumped and it was the night I was supposed to get home right away, my husband's office Christmas party was that night and I had to change into more formal clothes to go to a hotel downtown. Now the car had been hit and totaled and there was the mess of getting it towed, dealing with police and calling my husband and getting him to come way over where I was to pick me up. No time to go home to change, we'd have to go straight to the party, and even then, be late. Luckily, I was in my work clothes, had not gone home between work and the therapist and changed into jeans as I often did, and the work outfit was "okay" for the party, it would do. But you can imagine the stress going on?

I was unprepared for the next weeks though; driving to/from therapy by the site of the accident, seeing parts of my car (tail lights, grille, etc.) still by the side of the road. I got a new (used) car right away but there was also the terror, when I'd stop at that light, that the car would stall. Or, coming out of therapy, that the car wouldn't start and I'd have to ask for help, to use someone else's phone (I was afraid to talk on the phone, too).

I was amazed at how much worse I felt after the accident than I did while it was happening! My therapist clued me in that that was how we are hard wired; we take care of the situation, the emergency while it is happening and then can "collapse" afterwards, when it is "safe" to.

It is a good thing that your wall is breaking now! It would not break if it were not safe for it to yet! Your Self will only give you what you can deal with; the wall will not wholly crumble in one-fell-swoop, it will maintain its integrity as long as you "need" it. Not want it, need it.

If you do not feel able to change therapists, I would figure out how to explore your world for yourself in her presence, with her comments. Imagine what it would be like to forget the feelings or forget the events. Which would you prefer? Neither will happen; the feelings will be worked through in the sense that you will realize that you are safe now and that feeling afraid something bad will happen is no more "real" than the nightmares your mind/unconscious is using to work through its difficulties with your experience. If you embrace the nightmares, write them down, pay attention to them, "care" about them, they will reward you, your mind will know you are working with it instead of against it and won't have to try so hard to get your attention, to get you to really look at the situation instead of trying to "forget" it.

Remember the old adage about turning to face and confront the monster in your dreams being the only way to get it to go away? It works with the actual monsters in our lives from the past, also. Dream monsters are figurative of the real ones. Face the dream ones, either while dreaming or while conscious, or face the conscious ones, and both will reward you by becoming less of a scary monster. I have a cartoon I love, that makes me smile and reminds me that I can deal with my issues: