Granite,

I'm so sorry you have been feeling like therapy is too painful to continue. It can be really hard, I know! I'm sure it has been hard for you to develop trust, and it's scary to let yourself be vulnerable enough to share your feelings and fears. I've seen you make a lot of progress in the past few months. I remember when you couldn't talk at all. You've come a long way since then.

Did you and your t start getting into the painful stuff too quickly, and too deeply? I seem to remember that recently, you started opening up about some of the really painful stuff. That can be incredibly scary!! It can make you want to run and hide.

Granite, the only way I can talk about and process my traumas is in SMALL pieces/bites. There have been several times when I've gotten too overwhelmed with the work in therapy, and it has affected me in a bad way because we didn't know where my limits were. I've had to tell my t a few times over the years that we're covering too much too soon -- that we need to slow down the work. Otherwise I have to quit therapy because i simply can't tolerate the pain.

Part of the problem is that I'm an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person). Maybe you are too? It doesn't take much for us to get sensory overload, either from chaos around us, or chaos inside us.

Can you tell your t how overwhelmed you feel and ask her to slow down the work? Another thing that has helped me is to NOT talk about painful issues at every session. If we talk about really painful stuff for a couple of sessions, then I need to have sessions where we just work on learning coping skills or doing relaxation exercises.

My t doesn't do expressive arts therapy, but I agree with the others that a creative type therapy that doesn't require you to always express yourself verbally could help tremendously. If your t can't adjust her methods to make the pain of therapy tolerable for you, you might want to consider looking for a better t fit.

I just hope you don't give up! Like i said, I've seen you make progress in the last few months! I believe you can keep healing! You are probably just feeling super overwhelmed right now. It's OK to step back and regain your sense of calm and take care of you right now. We are here to support you too!