You're welcome and I promise it will be better for you some day.

Once you get on that bike of being in the co-consciousness area of dissociating - daydreaming and relaxing, just enough to be able to hear and see your therapist at the same time be able to tell her what memory is replaying in your head that you have an urge to act out, you will no longer be acting that memory out uncontrolably because it will now be stored as a normal piece of memory.

You may still feel like you want to cut and or harm yourself but you will not act on that urge anymore unless you, while completely aware, are making that choice to do so.

The memory will not die, be gone and so on. It will still be there you just won't have to be upset and floating off in order to think about it and so on.

Kind of like meat in the freezer. Its in there until you are ready to look at it and decide what to do with it. theYou move it out of the freezer and use tools - cold water the fridge the counter to unthaw it. precook it and then place it in the fridge to be able to use it anytime for anything meetloaf, spegetti, tacos,

The memory has been plced in the freezer (unconsciousness level of thinking. co consciousness is the tool (unthawing and precooking) and normal conscious memory (the fridge to open and take out a bit at a time as you see the need and want for it without having to unthaw and precook again.)

You will always have that piece of memory. You are just moving it from the freezer to the fridge for easy access and use.

The harmful memory has been separated and stored in the freezer.

You havve started the thawing out process when your therapist was talking to you when you were acting out that piece of memory. so now you have enopugh control to recognize wher its going to happen.

But there is still some ice to remove, so it needs to go through the process of thawing out again - you remaining aware enough again to be able to see hear and talk to your therapist while that memory is replaying, just like you did before.

This time its not going to be so scarey because you have already done it once with your therapist. with this harmful piece of memory.

Im not saying the memory itself is not going to be scarey. But the process itself is not going to be so scarey because you know what to expect.

I can also tell you that most likely until you finish the thawing out and precooking of that memory you will keep going through getting hurt while experiencing a memory.

I did everything possible for over 20 years to stop cutting while rerunning of memorys - threw out all my knives, stayed with friends, called my therapists, volluntarily hospitalized myself, got involluntarily hospitalized too many times to count, have been on just about every antidepressant, antipsychotic medications out there that my medical file looks and reads like the PDR (Physicians Desk Reference - book that has every prescription drug available on the market) But still I would end up cut.

Then working with a therapist I remembered while remaining aware that one time when I was raped I was tied up and after my abusers left I had to cut off the binding on one of my arms.

Once I remembered that I still had the flashbacks - the feeling of the binding on my arm, the feeling and urges to cut, the pictures and sounds in my head and so on but I could now begin to start controling it by desensitizing myself from it.

Now I no longer act out that piece of memory, and I no longer cut because of the flashbacks from that memory either.

Jenifer I know what your therapist is asking you to do is scarey but I promise the actually doing it is not as scarey as the imagination can come up with fighting the idea. please give it another try with your therapist. I think you will feel better afterwards.