I am working with a T I have been with almost three years and just recently an art T too. Before that I worked with a lot of T’s that were useless or even harmful. Current T did a genogram with me early on and we started doing a timeline but never finished. He is trained in lots of things and we tried EMDR but stopped because I couldn’t figure out a safe place and hold onto it. T has always said that it doesn’t matter what we do, they are just tools to get to know myself… the real healing is in the relationship between T and I. Which is starting to make sense. He knows maybe 50% of my trauma if that much and not in detail but most of that isn’t what is important to me in therapy right now. A few months ago I had a big shift and started relaxing more with him… then slowly started feeling a kind of safe I have never felt before… then I get stressed after session because it feels scary to feel safe. Right now we are just getting comfortable with feeling safe. I see him tomorrow and have asked him to have my stuffed animal out (comfort object). I will go in, maybe have the courage to ask him to sit with me on the couch. I usually start out sitting all curled up with my blanket or my stuffy and then slowly I uncurl and then start to relax and usually end up just laying quietly on the couch. Right now, for me that is trauma therapy.
I am also working with an art T that has significantly less experience than T but who is really good and nurturing… she also pushes me more than T does. T is her supervisor and I get the impression they talk a LOT about me which I am OK with. Art T and I do a lot of collage work and then we talk through them. She offers a lot of understanding and acceptance. In the collages I am able to show what the trauma looks like to me and how it is impacting me. My stuff is super emotionally packed but is all symbolic, no real representation of what happened (but she would be OK if there was as long as I wasn’t upsetting myself with it).

I am doing better… a lot better. It isn’t nearly as painful as working with the other Ts. Mostly it is a lot of getting used to being loved and accepted no matter where I am when I am with them. I’ve even made two new friends in the past few months which hasn’t happened in over 20 years.