I think there is value in telling our stories over and over again...and like Sunny said, I think when we are feeling compelled to to something (like tell our story), there is a wisdom there that we should listen to. Following those instincts, even when they don't make sense or I don't want to, has been hugely healing for me.
When I first started telling my story, it was snippets, moments, flashes of sound, smell, sound, little pieces of pictures. It was scary and it overwhelmed me.
The more I allow myself to tell it, the less it is like a series of terrifying sensory flashes, and the more it's...a STORY. Not something that will overwhelm me. Part of the bigger story that is my life.
Somehow, I think telling it again and again makes it smaller. I think it's part of how we gain power over it.
Having said all of that, there is honestly nothing I hate more than telling my story. I don't want to rehash the same thing over and over again, I don't want to remember it, I don't want anyone else to know it. It makes my legs weak to even write this (which I guess tells me that I'm not done telling either).
But when I first started therapy, I had two stories that I told...having a sexual relationship with the minister at my church when I was in high school, and a violent SA when I was in college. Both had haunted me for their own reasons for so many years. I told both stories in the first year of therapy, and they really did turn into narratives, and they don't have the same power over me any more...not even the SA, that I thought would haunt me forever. The triggers associated with it are almost all gone, I can hear the world r*pe without coming apart. They became a PART of my life, right-sized, as they should be. Not the whole story, and not even CLOSE.
The story I'm telling now is so much harder, but I know from what happened in that first year, that we *can* get from here to there.
Trust yourself. If something is pushing you to tell, it's time to tell. Whether it's the first time or the 100th time.
This is how we heal.
