At my recent therapy session, in which we were doing some trauma work, I felt like I was on the cusp of disintegration. By that I guess I mean emotional breakdown. Or decompensation. Instead of allowing that to happen, I was able to feel my strong feelings in a less disintegrating way, and we moved through (not around) this challenging work. I do feel healing took place. I didn't avoid the feelings, but expressed them in a way that let me hold myself together more.

Now I am thinking back on that moment, when I was on the brink of just losing it, and how I chose a less "showy" way of expression my feeling. I wasn't sitting there stone-faced or anything, I was crying and had tears streaming down my face for a period and I made no effort to stop them or wipe them away. But T asked me to tell the person who was part of this trauma scene what I needed to tell him, and I was unable to speak those words out loud. I knew I would just lose it. So I spoke what I wanted to tell him silently--still difficult but not having to say the words out loud helped me keep myself together.

My question is about taking that less showy route. Is that less therapeutic than disintegrating right there in front of my therapist? Is there something to be gained from doing that? T never said to me hey you have to speak the words out loud or you aren't doing it right. And at the moment when he asked me to talk to this person, I said, "I can't" and when he asked why, I said, "I can't feel that." T said I already was and that reassured me I was doing OK and indeed feeling what I was scared of and that was so strong. He didn't say you have to disintegrate right here in front of me or it doesn't count.

I don't know why I am thinking so much about this. I am curious if others disintegrate in therapy with their Ts or if they move through the super hard parts in a less showy way, like I did, with just tears or some other form of expression...