(((((SoFragile88))))

Is this therapist one that specializes in PTSD? Because that is a symptom of PTSD.
You are hypervigillant and that is why you are stuck right now. You ruminate about it because you have not found a way to resolve it yet.

I am not a therapist but I do understand what your saying SoFragile and one of the things your going to have to understand is that when we experience something sudden and something that makes us feel unsafe or threatened, like rape, we are designed to remember. It is just human nature to remember and we are designed to do that to survive. No matter what bad things happen we DO remember because we do NOT want to experience it again, that is a part of our learning what are brains are ment to do.

So you are not going to forget. But what you can do is realize that the remembering is not about punishment or for you to self blame or feel guilty. The guilt comes into play because your brain is wondering if you did something wrong to make this happen it is a question. And the answer is that NO you did not do something to make this happen, it just happened and you do have to learn how to be more careful.

Look, lets say you were a builder and you put in a door and then it started to squeek.
Well, what you would do is notice the squeeking and then examine the door to see why that happened so you could see if you could stop the squeeking or if you put the door in wrong. It is process in learning why the door is squeeking and how to see how it happened. And the next time you would put in a door if you did do something wrong you would not do it again.

Now, that is how wonderful our brains are, we CAN learn and figure things out and try to not do something wrong again. Our brains are pretty amazing.

So part of what you are turning around in your mind is the wonder of what went wrong and how you can fix it or prevent it in the future. And the dreams about different people attacking you is just like when the builder is looking at the door to find the squeek and then there is going to be a reminder every time he sees a door to examine it and say, does that door squeek too?

The problem is that with a tramatic event like rape, well the brain does do the same thing but because the experience was a lot more than just a door squeek and it was scary too, you are more upset while your brain is sorting it out. But it never means it was your fault or that you should feel guilty.

Trama is always harder to process because it is more emotional. But you CAN learn that NO your not going to keep experiencing this, NO not every door is going to squeek. It takes longer to process trama than it does regular problems, but it doesn't mean you should suffer the rest of your life or you are guilty or bad or a failure.

We are all designed TO BE MORE AWARE whenever we come across any problem. What you have to learn to do in trama work is learn how to lower the anxiety and physical reactions gradually to where the trama is more of a memory, PASSED, OVER and you LEARNED something and NOW you just have to be more careful.

That is why it is important to work with a therapist that truely understands how to work with trama patients and patients that are troubled by PTSD. You need to work on ways to slowly feel safe again, understand that this truely was not your fault and as you slowly self sooth, and find safe thoughts you WILL progress. It takes time and a supportive understanding knowledgable therapist to help you THROUGH this STUCK part which is called PTSD.

((((Hugs)))))
Open Eyes