Mention of medical issue and one dynamic (not act or incident) of CSA. Also, like most of my posts, it’s way longer than it really needs to be for what I have to say, but writing is sort of my processing, you’ve been warned.









It has been a tough week. I had two medical appointments to work on my now chronic nerve pain issues, both invasive exams, one was physical therapy and even though the therapist was really amazing and very emotionally supportive, it was just draining and triggering. And I had a bad flashback during s*x that really freaked me out. I have felt that body memories and flashbacks and just a low level feeling-triggered-all-the-time sense (does anyone else have this?) have ruled my life.

So I spent some time at the beginning of my session talking about this stuff and how I felt like I was regressing because of feeling like my PTSD symptoms were flaring and at the forefront of my life. My T said it didn’t look like regression to him, it looked like progress from where he sat, and maybe for the first time I didn’t try to correct him and make him see it from my perspective. I cried a lot, off and on, and when it was near time to stop, I asked him for help in putting my “stuff” away. I told him that I had tried to put it in my usual “container”, which is some kind of heating or cooling unit box that is on the roof outside his window, but it wasn’t working. He got out of his chair and leaned over to see what I was talking about, which really pleased me in some kind of inexplicable way, as if he was making some extra effort to see things from my perspective (literally).

He said that he didn’t have anyone coming in the next hour and that we had time to work on putting it away. Then he asked me if I wanted to see if I could tune into it (the thing I’m trying to put away) as a way to understand better how to put it away. He asked me what might help me do that and then he added what he did (which makes that “what helps you” question not aggravating, I also discovered); he said he puts both feet flat on the floor and does his yoga breathing; I said I didn’t want to do that but I did want to change positions. I got into my meditative position on the couch and closed my eyes and said that I felt it pressing in on me, not in an aggressive way, but sort of like waves in the ocean, like I was in the ocean (I love water and swimming). I said it was hard to tell where I ended and the ocean and waves began.

He asked me if I wanted to let it come to me rather than put it away, if I thought that I could tolerate that. I love his “can you tolerate this” questions, also for reasons that I can’t really explain except that I know that whatever my answer is, it is truly okay with him and he isn’t trying to control me. What kind of rocked about this in retrospect is that I didn’t come to T thinking I needed to say something about my CSA. On any previous time that I have disclosed something, it’s because it has been dogging me for days, weeks, I’ve been thinking about it, journaling about it, feeling I wanted to say it but couldn’t in previous sessions, etc. The previous disclosures, at least with this T, have been about catharsis and sort of letting it out into the universe to disperse, and there haven’t been all that many of them.

I realized what “it” was that was trying to get me to pay attention to it. And then I started talking about talking about it to him. I asked him something like, “what do you do with knowing something new about what happened to you, when there is already so much known about it, maybe this thing is true and maybe it’s not, but the thing is not exactly earth shattering but it does shift the corners of the story?” He said some very T like thing about how it becomes part of what you work with and explore and you start where you’re at. I asked if I could tell him where I’m at and he said, very believably, “always.”

So I told him that I had always thought that my perpetrator had taken me out, away in the car, and abused me during the day. But now I think that he also abused me at home, in my own room, at night or in the middle of the night. In my story about where things happened I felt protected in a way, because I thought that it had never happened at home. For some reason, I now feel that I was more vulnerable then, and I feel more vulnerable now. And I know that I need to talk to my H now about what I need him to do to help me feel safer.

Now I realize that he had some sense that there was something I needed to deal with rather than the issue was really something I needed to put away. And that’s the part of the T process that has left me in awe, because I don’t understand how he knew that—and of course maybe it was a lucky guess or there was just something about having more time (I only stayed 20 minutes past the hour so it wasn’t even that much longer) that allowed him to guide me towards it. And it was his ability to transform the thing from my inability to put something away to my insight, I guess, about the puzzle shifting piece of what I learned about my CSA experience, that I find most astonishing. Like, how did that happen? Was there some clue in the flashback symptoms I was describing to him, was it because I am usually capable of putting something away, was it that he just gave me what I needed emotionally to be able to look at it rather than avoid it? I dunno. But it was definitely the most healing T experience that I have ever had and I have a new appreciation for how the relationship helped to get me here.

I wound down pretty quickly after the disclosure, I was wiped out and ready to leave. We talked some about how to put it away and he asked me how long I needed to put it away for, I said until next week. He also remembered that there was maybe something historical going on around this time of the year for me; he said that he remembered that last year he took time off and I was having some trouble working with something (his very nice way of saying that I called him five days in a row when he was on staycation and he came in during my regular appointment time on Friday (of his vacation) just to see me). That helped me put this in context as well.

Thank you for reading.