usernameistaken123, hugs to you and I'm sorry for your experiences.

My first time going for therapy was in my late teens and for a pitiful reason, I wanted my parents to realize how much pain I was in. I had no interest to change myself or learn anything. I just wanted people to leave me alone and let me be. It did not work.

The time I went for therapy that I really started to work through stuff and want to make changes, was when my sibling was suicidal and hospitalized and I got traumatized from the whole thing. Felt very helpless and powerless. Felt like there was nobody to help me, to help us, to help my sibling, that even doctors failed us, and there came an intense unspeakable anger in me that frightened me and I started to have panic attacks like 50 a day. It was one of the worst times in my life, if not THE worst.
Heh, already feel like maybe this is oversharing and also that made myself vulnerable by recalling the exact time but I want to relate that not everybody suddenly decides to go for therapy and work on themselves, on the very painful stuff that they had not dealt with. I personally think those people are ahead of me and they are the ones doing the smart thing. Because some people like me, kept delaying things and delaying things, until a terrible event happened, till trauma happened, and I simply could not manage without therapy. At that point I almost felt like I had no choice, that forces beyond my control were pushing me into therapy. I did not go to therapy and build trust and share, I just went in there and stuff just hurled out of me, like someone who had not spoken for years.

My advice, not that you ask or that I know you or am qualified to give it (but let's call it advice so I can make myself feel better, lol) is that if you are able to talk about Darrell, even a little bit, go for it. Take it a little at a time and before you know it you are half way there. Don't let things bottle up for too long and then something else comes along and you get overwhelmed and then have to deal with too many things.

I had not gone for therapy and kept repressing, but it cost me, losing friends, job, school, gaining a lot of weight...and then the other trauma was what broke me in half. And all the candy fell out of this piñata.