Just getting back to this. Yes, forgiveness or letting go or whatever you feel comfortable calling it is a process. It takes time. Sometimes I have to revisit it if something comes up that stirs up old stuff, particularly because that's sort of the nature of PTSD. It took me a long time, and I like what corbie said about the ebb and flow and doing it in small pieces.

My therapist talked - for a long time - about wanting me to reach a place where I could metaphorically put my history in box and place it on a top shelf of a closet, in the back, behind other things, and sort of forget it's there. But I would know it is there, and if I needed to, I could pull down that box and look through it and then put it back on that shelf again. That history and those memories would be fully under my control to look at , or not, by my choice. Honestly, that concept was nuts to me for a long time. But for a person with pretty severe PTSD, gaining some control and choice over my memories and history and how they triggered me was SO important to my mental stability.

And oddly enough, as a walked through the small bits and pieces of my history in therapy, they started losing their power, and somewhere in that process I realized I was choosing to let the intense feelings about each little bit go. Over time, I had a collection of a lot of little bits, and had let go of each one, and that's when I started realizing I was ready and able to let go of the bigger history that was made up of all those little bits. (For some odd reason I have an image of Lego bricks that make up a larger construction in my head right now - or maybe the individual pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that make up a larger image).

I actually got there. My metaphorical box is sitting up on a shelf, and every now and then I peak in, but it isn't really painful anymore, and I've even chosen to throw out some of the items in that box because when I look in it, I realize certain old things just don't matter to me anymore.

I've literally been taking boxes down from high closet shelves in the last few months since my husband died. I found items he had saved or I had saved ages ago that we thought were somehow important to hold onto. It has been an interesting project as I have chosen to throw out quite a few things that I realize I had no need to hold onto. Some I had held onto because for some reason I thought I "should" or "must". So much baggage and clutter that I realize now - now that my priorities have come so tragically in view - are just not important. Other things I rediscovered that I had forgotten, and I can appreciate them more now that I don't have so much clutter to go through to find what is truly most important.

And I know I digress, my apologies that your thread has taken a detour, but sometimes threads do that. Much of what I am talking about in this metaphor has to do with really painful, traumatic, OLD stuff with very dysfunctional people. In your case, the relationship with your therapist seems to be pretty darned functional, and the problem appears to have been concretely resolved. Yes, the emotions lag behind, I just hope you won't let them stall you too long. Time is a valuable commodity and is often too easily taken for granted. Don't waste valuable relationship time with this therapist revisiting what has already been resolved in concrete ways. Breathe. Accept your feelings for what they are. You don't have to ignore them or brush them away or pick at them to keep them agitated. They'll resolve on their own in their own due time because the relationship is solid and supportive and healthy.