[Foomph]

This is my first time in therapy for sa that happened to me over 5 or 6 years as a child/teenager.

I know that I need to talk about it in therapy, but what's the point? Is it to bring up the emotions associated with it? And then deal with them? I'm not so sure I want to bring up all the messy details and relive all that pain. Is it really necessary?

If someone could giveme some insight on this it'd be much appreciated!

[Christina86]

((((((((((((Foomph))))))))))))))))

Bringing up the emotions is part of it, to deal with them... yes, you'd be right. Part of it is also to process and deal with the whole thinking about the incident (sometimes we've got a specific line of thinking on what happened, and we frequently wrongly blame ourselves) and then in therapy you also talk about how it's affected you NOW in the present.

Reliving the pain and stuff seems to be necessary as far as I'm aware, therapy is frequently painful and not really easy.

But I must say that therapy goes at your own pace and sometimes can take a long time... you take as long as you need to deal with things and to work through them

it helps to make it more real...because sometimes just because we think it might have happened doesn't mean we believe that it actually happened....and until it is believed it seems that you can't really heal from it.

or at least thats how it worked for me.

can't say that it's pleasant, or fun or easy...or that it will ever be done with...but over time it doesn't hurt nearly as much, and that you can make peace with it.

it's a journey...and like all road trip's..some time's there are traffic jams, some times there is construction and sometimes the rest area bathrooms are crowded and dirty...but other times the scenic rest areas are just so damn beautiful that they take your breath away.

once you are on that toll road, you make the best of it, because there is no other alternative.

stumpy

[chaotic13]

I have a similar notion as Christina. My abuse took place at an age where it really skewed my perspective on initmate relationships. Although I can't undo things. I'm hoping that by talking and understanding how it influenced other aspects of my life, that I might be able to challenge some of my old assumptions about people and the world around me.

[Foomph]

Okay, thanks you guys! This definitely has affected all of my relationships since then...intimate and sexual. That's actually what brought me to therapy in the first place-lack of initmacy with my husband and a near divorce...now it's all coming out. I just don't want to go through all this emotional crap if I don't have to.

But I love my t-he is awesome so whatever needs to be done, I guess.

[Christina86]

Originally Posted by Foomph

Okay, thanks you guys! This definitely has affected all of my relationships since then...intimate and sexual. That's actually what brought me to therapy in the first place-lack of initmacy with my husband and a near divorce...now it's all coming out. I just don't want to go through all this emotional crap if I don't have to.

But I love my t-he is awesome so whatever needs to be done, I guess.

This is just me, but I find it really brave that you're willing to discuss this with a male T when you're a woman. I admit, the first person who basically drew it out of me about my past abuse stuff was a male therapist, but I couldn't ever really talk about it with him because it scared the crud out of me!!

Emotional crap is unfortunately part of the territory of stuff one must deal with to get over/through the consequences that this past abuse stuff has had on your present and on your relationships with others.

[deliquesce]

can i offer a different point of view?

yes, my pdoc (who acts as my T) does know about my past abuse, but we don't go into it in detail. he knows the absolute basics - how old i was, whether the perp was male/female, and whether it was something i did to the perp and/or something the perp did to me. (eta: pdoc also wanted to know how old the perp was in relation to me). pdoc has said if i want to talk about it more then i am welcome to (and he would be honoured to listen), but he doesn't need to know any further details.

when i do need help with something that is related to my past experiences (e.g., recently someone asked me out and it threw me for a loop) i just share my thoughts with him and he helps challenge those. thoughts like - i am dirty, it was my fault, i encouraged it, no one will love me if they know, i am broken, i'm a bad person etc. my favourite - "no one will love me unless i give them sex".

it is still very difficult for me to share those thoughts (i believe them because i think they are true, and i worry that if i tell pdoc he will agree they are true also) but focussing on them saves me from having to "relive" those experiences, share all those details, all that pain. i lived through that crap once and that is more than enough.

i am by no means "cured" as yet, but i have made a heap of progress . and one day i might want to share all the details with pdoc, i'm not ruling it out. but (for me) there is something fundamentally wrong and gross with being told the only way to heal is to relive those experiences in minute detail. many people do find it helpful, and i understand that, but i just get upset when Ts say it is a necessary part of healing. kind of like when Ts assert that it's necessary to confront your perpetrator. that's another thing that gets my goat.

sorry - just realised i've turned this into a bit of a rant. i guess my point was that i do think it's important to deal with the abuse, but it's completely in your control how much you choose to divulge. you can still heal without sharing an iota of detail about what actually went on.

My T tells me that talking about what happened helps me have power over it instead of it having power over me. And then I can put it where it belongs, as PART of my life story. I was raped, and I did (over the course of a year, in tiny bits and pieces) end up telling T all of the details - I wrote, I talked, I drew pictures, I FELT the feelings - but only in my time, when not telling hurt worse than telling. It worked - I don't have flashbacks anymore, I can admit that it happened, it's lost a lot of it's power. I never thought that would happen.

Now we are working on childhood stuff....but like deli said, I only tell him as much as I feel like I "need" to at any given time. It's hard work, really hard.

I have a male T too, and I love him. I'm glad you have a T that you like. You are very brave to bring the things that happened to you into the light so you can heal.

Personally, for me, it isn't that necessary to go into all the details. If we did that, it would be all we talked about because there was SO much. I think you can deal with the effects of it without talking about it constantly or even focusing on it that much. I'm more interested in dealing with the damage it has caused than focusing on the actual events. But that's just me and what works for me won't work for everyone.

[ErinBear]

Hi Foomph,

I am sorry you experienced abuse - my heart goes out to you. I also experienced long-term abuse during childhood. I remember having similar questions when I was beginning therapy, and wondering what was the point in walking through these past problems? It just seemed needlessly painful and upsetting. And a lot of other things too. Ugh! Everyone is different, but I realized....at least for me....there was a point in talking about it. Yes, part of it was talking about the issues themselves. For me, I'd tucked these issues away and sort of ignored them and made them unreal. So hard as it was, part of it was acknowledging them and bringing them back into reality. Like it or not, they happened and they were real. And yes, dealing with the emotions related to them, which turned out to be very important for me to deal better with emotions in general.

But I think for me, and probably a lot of other people who have survived abuse, one of the positive results of therapy is that it can help you deal with the after-effects - how it impacts your life later on. Whether you talk about the situations very specifically, or have a more generalized discussion as some of the respondents in this thread have described, therapy is a good place to sort these things out. I know it was really helpful in my life. I wish you all the best with it - I hope it will go well for you.

Take care,
ErinBear

[chaotic13]

I agree with what others have said. It is an individual thing and you disclose what you need to. I've been very resistant to discussing the specific details. My T has said I don't have to relive the details with her. I just need to appreciate what happened and how it affects me.

In my therapy I think I may need to tell more of the details in the end. Not because my T needs to know, but because for me the abuse took away my ability to communicate difficult things and to establish close enough relationships to comfortabily ask and seek support from others. IDK... Today I am just thinking maybe therapy for me at the moment is about learning how to seek support...not simply verbalizing ugly things.

[Foomph]

Oh wow, thanks people!

I have to admit, when I first found out I was going to have a male therapist, I was freaked out. I'm in a community-services sliding-scale counseling program and I was put on a wait list. After waiting for 2 months, if I chose not to go with the t I was assigned to, I would be put back on the waiting list again. SO, I talked to him over the phone the first time, was pretty sure he was gay () and decided to go for it-he seemed so nice. So once I met with him the first time, it was a done deal. He's probably a year or two younger than me (he's finishing his master's and has a supervisor), which makes it easier to discuss the sexual problems and lack of intimacy that I have with my husband (I couldn't imagine discussing that with someone who's like 60!? ) I can actually just talk to this t about mutual masturbation, and how to set boundaries around my sexuality with my husband, etc. Plus, it's actually nice to hear a male point of view about things. Since he's gay, there's absolutely no sexual anything between us but maybe in terms of "transference" I'll get my fix of having a male figure in my life that is caring and does NOT want sex. Maybe? Seeing as it was my older brother that abused me.

In our first session he took a history, and about 10 minutes to the end of the session when I was thinking "great, I didn't have to let the bomb drop the first time!" he told me that there was one last hing he needed to know about me and that was if I had experienced any trauma in my life. Bam. Tears, breakdown. And the way he reacted solidified the deal. He told me to take as much time as I needed, and when I did tell him, he said all the right things. *sigh*

Anyway, he always tells me, at the beginning of each session that if I don't want to go somewhere, to just say it, and that I can go at my own pace. So far he hasn't probed for all the details. There was one time where I said I had to stop, and he stopped immediately. I think i was a transference thing he was going for but I couldn't do it.

In some ways, I feel like I want to tell at least some of it, to get it out of my system, but I don't feel like I could possibly express 5-6 years of almost daily abuse. My homework this time was to figure out what emotions I'm hiding from, and that's where a lot of work will take place, I think, since that's the problem between myself and my hubby-I'm ice cold. He did warn me that we'll have a few more ugly sessions, and told me that if I go too deep in searching for these emotions, I need to call him ASAP.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, but thanks so much you guys-you really helped clear things up for me.

[sunrise]

With trauma, part of the problem is that our brains get "stuck" on the trauma and prevent us from moving forward. Trauma work can involve getting your brain unstuck and processing what happened. It is not essential to go into a lot of detail by talking if you don't want to. You can still get unstuck. For example, a common therapy for trauma is EMDR, and although you can give a lot of details with this technique, you don't have to. You can just think them if you want and share a few words here and there with the T as you are doing the EMDR. In EMDR they often have you focus on an image or a trigger, but the verbalization need not accompany it (although it can). There are other trauma therapies that similarly don't require talking a lot about what happened. But I think you do need to at least think about things even if you don't share out loud.

So far, your T sounds promising! When I first went in therapy, I thought I needed a woman because I couldn't share certain stuff with a man, but we didn't do that much deep, healing work together and I left her after a while. My next T was a man and I was able to do the trauma work with him, and it didn't seem to matter he was male. In fact, it has been healing. I have a female PNP now too, and I do tell her different things than I do my male T (although not trauma stuff). It amuses me, actually. You will know what is "right" to tell your T and how much detail. It sounds like he is patient and not trying to force you to do anything you don't want to.

It's really nice your T told you to call him if you need to if the homework is too much to handle.

Originally Posted by Foomph

SO, I talked to him over the phone the first time, was pretty sure he was gay ()

LOLOL - I have to share that when I chose my T, part of why I chose him was because I thought he was gay. When I saw his wedding ring, I thought "well, maybe he's in a committed relationship with someone" - anyhow, I figured out early on he was married (to a woman) and I told him I was disappointed he wasn't gay

I've been SA by more than one man and my mom physically and emotionally abused me growing up, so a straight man or a woman both seemed really threatening. But a gay man, with no sexual threat, seemed perfect. Oh well!

I thought it was funny that I wasn't the only one looking for that in a therapist

[Foomph]

^ lol Treehouse! It's so funny how that makes us feel safe I know my gaydar isn't that great, but I'm 99.99% sure he is gay. Especially since this therapist is in Vancouver and on the eastside-we have a huge gay communiy here. He has to be. Not straight guy could dress that well, nor wear a soul patch quite so convincingly.

Man, I'm afraid for next session and presenting this "homework." I've already done a lot of work on it and it makes me feel anxious and queasy just thinking about it.

And yes, it *is* really nice of him to allow me to contact him between sessions. His rule, which he told me on day 1, was one phone call between sessions. I won't ever use it, but it's nice to know

[Brightheart]

I haven't read any of the replies you received yet, but I'll answer this question from my perspective.

I think that in order to deal with something one must first acknowledge it. Discussing your feelings about it may allow you to face the pain of it, the anger, the sadness, the grief of lost innocence...and hopefully eventually to find some peace with what happened as a painful part of your past...but not one that has to define your future.

Hearing someone say out loud that it wasn't your fault, that you didn't deserve to be treated in this way, that it's okay to feel angry...all of this can be helpful.

I hope it is helpful for you to talk about it and to express the many feelings you've had about it.

[peaches100]

I think reasons for talking about the abuse include (1) getting it off of our chest, (2) eliminating the secrecy of it, (2) being able to obtain help for any guilt or shame we may feel because of the abuse, (4) learning about any damaging patterns we may be carrying out in our life now that stem from the abuse, and (5) being able to heal the pain.

However, the trauma work itself is painful, and there have been times I've wanted to just throw in the towel and stuff it all back inside. Unfortunately, that's not an option for me anymore. Since I had my breakdown a few years back, stuffing doesn't work for me anymore like it used to.

[Yoda]

I have had years of therapy for domestic violence abuse but never talked to my therapist about when my uncle abused me at ages seven-nine or when I was assaulted by four people when I was twelve. I don't have any long term effects from the earlier assaults but I still have plenty of anger about the assault when I was twelve. But anger seems quite appropriate in light of what happened and while I do think of it occasionally I don't dwell on it and the only other problem is severe claustrophobia because I had a plastic bag put over my head to keep me quiet. I don't know if I should talk to my therapist or not.

I think it is more important to talk about how you are affected now and understand why you could feel this and more importantly how to deal with the feelings and the impact on your life now. I don't think it is necessary to rehash all the details.