Hey. I think one possibility is that she is trying to get you to hook into some good coping strategies in order to prepare you for the work. I think there are some other possibilities too, however.

1) She might not be able to cope with hearing about it.

I don't mean to promote paranoia... But... Does she seem uncomfortable in herself when you talk about stuff that you remember?

2) She might be concerned that you aren't progressing with your remembering.

There is this little thing called 'the carthartic method'. The theory is that in order to get better from trauma one needs to recollect the trauma in a way that connects it with intense feeling and that if you do this enough... The trauma will be processed... And then the patient will be cured.

Some therapists continue to hold this.

Some therapists question this slightly on a number of grounds.

One way in which it has been questioned is that some theorists have said that cartharsis alone doesn't help. What helps is reprocessing of the traumatic memory which involves reinterpreting the intentions, beliefs, desires etc of the actors involved. Your therapist might be thinking that while you are doing the carthartic thing you might not have the skills in place that enable you to reinterpret the trauma. This would make sense of her trying to get you into the cognitive restructuring strategies.

Of course it might be that she is trying to get you into that because she is feeling uncomfortable with the content of the memories and / or your state of distress. I guess she would be more concerned about the state of your distress if you are withdrawing from activities outside therapy etc.

> She doesn't want to "ruminate" with me about the past. Jeez, thanks for the support doc.

Sounds like her concern is that while venting can be good... It can also get things refiring. Some people suggest that when you feel angry then you should vent the anger. Punch a punching bag or something. That if you do that you will feel better. That the anger will alleviate if you find some appropriate way of expressing the anger. Other people have found that *sometimes* expressing the emotion actually keeps the emotion around and more intense than it would be if one didn't vent it. That expressing the emotion can actually make things worse.

Of course there is a balance / trade off. It can be terrific to have both strategies in ones tool kit:

One needs to be able to think about the memory and feel the feelings of rage and fear and so on... And have the skill to sit with the distress and feel it without doing something rash...

One also needs to be able to put the memory away and engage with daily activities and so on... And have the skill to be able to shift the focus of ones attention onto other things so one can function in ones daily life...

Balance.

Seems like she is trying to get you doing the latter strategy because you seem to have mastered the former ;-)

But... I'm not sure that cognitive restructuring is the most helpful way of preventing / distracting from emotional cartharsis...

Does she do any mindfulness stuff do you know?

(my thought here is that there is all the difference in the world between 'restructuring' the judgement and 'lifting' the judgement. the last is typically experienced as less invalidating and seems to be enough to help with reprocessing trauma)