Christine, if your throat is closing up, then you are not ready to talk. How well do you know your T? It may take a while to build up a trusting enough relationship to be able to share your memories of trauma. It's OK to go slow. I do remember one session I had when I was trying to share some traumatic events and I just couldn't. I think we sat there for almost the whole hour, with me trying to talk and not being able to, starting and stopping, opening my mouth and nothing coming out. My T said at the end, "I respect your ambivalence," and that's exactly what it was. I did want to share with him and tell him, but I wasn't ready and something held me back. We had to take some sessions off from the trauma efforts and just work on building the relationship, increasing trust, developing safety, etc.

That's how mine is too. It comes and goes and we will work on other things for weeks and then here comes a piece of trauma again, and we work on it when it comes up. It's hard work when it happens and then we buckle down for a few weeks and let all this stuff come up and process it. Then we back off and work on other things. Even though PTSD is my primary diagnosis, resolving trauma is not my sole reason for going to therapy. Christine, I can see it would be hard if you went session after session really focused on the trauma but weren't ready to work on it. Maybe just look off to the side.

Can you ask your T for ideas on how to work towards being able to talk about the trauma?