I'm surprised she would advise confronting your mother so early in the process. It's not likely she's had time to help you develop the tools to be able to do that.

I think the most common response to abuse is to think it wasn't that bad. It's a survival mechanism. I tell T about some of the things that happened (or didn't happen) when I was a kid and he looks at me and says "you don't know how awful that sounds, do you?"