It felt like a long session today. We talked about a lot.

It was hard to ease in. I talked about a recent trip to visit my adult daughter, my stepdaughter, and how I came away from the visit feeling reassured that no matter what happens with her dad, she and I will be okay, that I probably won't lose her. She is precious to me.

I talked about feeling stuck.

I found myself talking about all of the values I am trying to hold side-by-side, to balance:
Compassion and caring and valuing the people around me/Having good clear boundaries
What the family around me needs from me/ What I need and want for myself
Living and creating a stable peaceful daily life/Coping with flashbacks and trauma processing, or not processing

Then just talking about one small piece of one flashback experience overwhelmed me. I couldn't breathe. This time instead of nodding and pretending to listen and waiting for it to pass, I asked t to stop. Well, gestured, since I couldn't talk. She walked me through a grounding exercise, which was soothing.

Then we talked a bit about trauma processing. I can't seem to tell if trying to block it out right now is functional, since I am choosing to focus my energies on stability for my family, or not functional. Next time, we'll talk about that and how to deal with it.