Without a year of *some* use of CBT, I would not be able to face trauma work. If we had jumped right into revisiting the past last year, nothing good would have come out of it. I would have probably been hospitalized more than once or worse- in a hospital after making a dumb decision or possibly being. . . not alive.
I'm not kidding. CBT was the best thing possible for me because I gained so many coping skills and I feel like I can handle trauma work now. It's going to be hard as hell still, but thanks to CBT, it is now safe for me to "go there".