We are different of course, but I think I understand. First of all I do get that medications are particularly helpful at times when your best efforts just don't seem to work out the way you had hoped. I've been doing meditation and other things for a long time, but when I am overwhelmed, these things do not always work. I still use anti-anxiety medication. I don't believe that people should suffer if there is a medicine designed to relieve the pain.

I also relate to the issues of emotional abuse and neglect. I had a lot of that very early on. Though I have focused more on event-based trauma when doing what people would call "trauma work," my entire relationship with my shrink is really addressing the profound emotional and neglectful abuse that occurred almost at birth. And though this may sound like a downer, actually it is healing in the end. I found that the more I explored these "non-event specific" traumatic experiences, the more deeply I saw their long term effects on me and the course of my life. It is very difficult work; there should be another category of PTSD that accounts for this kind of problem and not the traditional life-threatening event type of trauma. It is so impactful yet so hard to deal with since there are often only certain things that point to what was an ongoing pattern.

So you are brave to take on this work. I believe that writing helps in many ways. I believe in its power for oneself to release and organize experience. I believe that it is a way to convey experiences to others. And finally it becomes a shared experience that is in some way different from the face to face interaction. Some things can be said in writing that are not readily available with talking. I believe therapists are sensitive to language, word choice, and sentence structure, both in speech which they have to catch on the fly, and also with written language, which they can stop and ponder. You are helping her help you. That helps her. And it shows you want to help you as well. All are great things. Feel proud that you are taking very strong and brave steps toward something that is naturally aversive.