Those skills take lots of practice (LOTS and LOTS), so allow yourself to not get it "right" the first (or thirtieth) time. For me, the talking about the history and learning those skills had to happen at the same time. Learning the skills first wouldn't have made any sense to me because I really didn't quite know what to apply them to. And it took time even for my T's to figure out the best skills that would work for me under my particular circumstances and for my personal way of reacting to working on my history.

I do think you T has a very good idea what is going on in your head because whether you say the words or not, the end result of what happened to you screams loud and clear. Sometimes our silence speaks louder than words.