Hey. Yeah, I agree with Sunrise that it is a really good idea to have good coping strategies worked out before talking too much about traumas.

When you start working with someone it also takes a bit of time for you to get to know each other. Part of that is about them figuring out how to read you too. So they know when to push and when to back off. It also takes time for trust to develop.

There are lots of different things you can do and it takes a bit of time to build up a list of things that tend to work for you. There are things like distraction, self soothing, acting different from ones emotion, mindfulness exercises, etc.

Sounds like you are really keen to make the most of your sessions :-) That is terrific :-) It is important not to move too fast with respect to really getting into past events, though. Typically there are problems in the present that can be dealt with instead and the skills you use to deal with them are the same skills that can be applied back to the trauma work.