I'm feeling the need to tell my story AGAIN!!

Yeah, in 1/2 hour I begin. I'm approaching it like an autopsy. Let me go back and examine it carefully, closely and slowly. I don't plan to 'feel' but I will let emotions surface as needed. Would you think the fact I didn't sleep well last night thinking about the session today could be an indication I really do need to revisit my past?

Acceptance IS important. I understand that. I just don't know how to do it.

I think it comes naturally once we find out what is stopping us from doing it.

You are at your session right now. Hope you feel the positive vibes I just sent you!

Yeah, there was a lot of positive there. I can't explain how deeply moved I am by how my T helps me through very painful memories. It ended up being more emotional than I expected but not horrible. It was good to talk about everything I brought up. We went very slowly and my story is being told in chronological order. T even suggested that we should go even slower. It may take many many sessions to get through it. I asked T if we could bury it when I'm done. She thought it will be possible. The funeral I've planned may happen after all. Although not usually a huge fan of ceremony, I plan on a very ceremonial session the day I can lay this story to rest.

As the re-telling entered its 2nd installment today, more and more stuff is coming to the surface. It's probably not really a retelling. My T knows the outline of the story but not many of the details and how emotionally devastating it all was. I had forgotten myself how much I suffered. And now I'm feeling it. I couldn't fully feel it before.

I had decided after last session that I wouldn't continue. So, I asked T if there was really a value in the telling. I am willing to go through it again if there's a point. She said it's important to revisit it and maybe it can be reframed. Right now I have my own interpretation but with her help I might be able to see it in another light. I hope so.

Ok - PC Hive Mind as Chopin calls us - I have a question for you. Do you think it's necessary to 'feel' one's story while telling it? Can't one be relieved of its power just by the telling of it? I begin the session feeling quite calm and collected and by the end of the session during my telling, I have traveled to the past emotionally.

I don't want to do that so I'm thinking of taking klonopin before the next session as I continue my installments of the telling.

What do you guys think? What has been your experience? Have you been relieved of the pressure of your story without having to relive it?

this is just my experience....

early on in the process, i told my therapist some hard stuff ... but there was minimal emotions in the telling of that part of my story.

right now i am at a place where I feel we need to go over it again ... so that i CAN feel the emotions attached to those events. not feeling those emotions are holding me back for achieving the goal that have been set forth in my therapy. that's one of the first things I want to do when this new year starts because i will never be who I'm striving to be unless I let these feeling be expressed... no matter how scary and no matter how painful. they will not kill me and i don't have to deal with them alone. my therapist will support me. she makes all the difference in this instance.

what I do know is that there is other emotional stuff that i have worked through... actually let the suppressed emotions out ... and it was not fun, but on the other side of it, i actually felt some peace about the situation that I had never felt before.

hope that made sense ... and if so... hope it helped in some way.

one question tho - if you're going to take klonopin, why go to your session at all? how will that help you learn and move forward?

I am just wondering if the healing can be in the 'telling' and it's maybe not necessary to relive the 'feeling'. I just don't know. I've left a message with T asking her to advise me.

that sounds like a good plan.

I know it has been said before, but there is no threshold in therapy for what deserves compassion. You can be any kind of person and with any kind of story and still deserve to have your story heard and validated. (I hope!!!!)

Telling this story will achieve something for you!!!! And by the way it is really interesting, this choice between feeling and not feeling. It might help to get some recommendations from T about what to do... but the choice is really yours! I really believe that however it turns out, some benefits will accrue for you skysblue

(Are we still doing these guys?? )

Yes, it is essential to feel the story while you are telling it. That's why you have to say it out loud.

Writing it down and handing it T is not enough, precisely because you get to tell the story without feeling it. That's why Ts are so sucpicious of email. The spoken word brings conscious and subconscious together. The written word doesn't always do that.

Why is it essential to 'feel' the story? I am not writing it down; I'm telling it to T. It IS using the spoken word. Can I not just be the detached observer of the story while telling it? Why do I have to re-experience the emotions?

I think being emotionless while you tell the story might be helpful for a first pass through the material. Just getting it out can be so hard. Then you could return later and tell again while allowing yourself to feel. If you are wanting there to be a chance that this is your last time through the material, then I think you should allow your feelings to come up. Otherwise, sometime in the future, I think you will "feel the need to tell your story again." Allowing yourself to feel while your T is there can be so healing. Your T will also help you contain and that can be helpful too. (By contain, I don't mean suppress but help keep your ego from disintegrating. I am including a link below on containment in therapy.) Your T can make it safe to reveal and feel. If you are not feeling safe, maybe you can discuss that with her and learn how she will help and she can learn better what you need in order to feel safe. I think it is a very good thing to discuss the klonopin question with her. What are you afraid will happen if you don't take klonopin while you tell? Maybe your T can help you with whatever you are afraid will happen if you don't take the drug. Maybe it will indeed be helpful for the first time through, then later return and tell the story drug-free with full feelings present.



Containment in psychotherapy:
http://www.myshrink.com/counseling-theory.php?t_id=32

Thanks for the link. The thing is - my story isn't that horrible. It may come across like that since I'm talking about it all the time. On a scale of 1 to 10 of traumatic experiences, it probably rates a -2.

The 'telling' though takes a lot out of me. Re-experiencing the story IS emotional. It's like I wasn't able to fully 'feel' the emotions while having the experiences initially and now they're coming forth.

And I can handle it. It's not like I become hysterical or out of control. Anybody looking at me would not notice a thing. It's all internal.

But, I still wonder why the necessity of having to 'feel' the story again. Why can't I just tell it and let myself be heard- without all the emotions? Can't just the fact that someone knows my story be therapeutic enough? Can't I tell it as would a witness tell it - not as a participant?

Can anyone explain the reason why it might be beneficial to re-experience the story instead of just a detached re-telling?

What T told me (she did this in her own therapy experience so she LIVED it) is that feeling the emotions when telling the story is the essential piece. You must process it, grieve it, and learn to move beyond it. This may entail many repetitions of the story or not. A person knows they have healed when they can talk about the situation or trauma like he/she might talk about going out to lunch for a sandwich. In her experience it was the hardest thing she had to do.

The way I see it, we have wounds from our past. They scabbed over and healed at the time the injury occurred, but since we ineffectively processed these emotional wounds, infection remains within. I view the therapy process as:
1. Reopening the wounds (talking about the situation or trauma),
2. Getting the infection out (processing the emotions related to the situation or trauma),
3. Allowing the wound to heal correctly (move beyond the situation or trauma).

This process may have to be repeated and possibly more than once for us to move beyond the trauma. Good luck, it takes much courage to do this. That's why this "hive mind" of ours is full of brave, intelligent people!

Thanks Chopin - I had referred to my last session as picking off a scab and how it hurt. But I now see that possibly there's still a scab because there's an infection that hasn't healed. So, maybe the cleansing (painful as it is) is required for a true healing and moving on.

My T told me that I could tell my story as often as needed. I haven't done that yet and I feel stupid doing it because it's all in the past. Why regurgitate what happened long ago? But I'm seeing that I can 'forget' about it for months at a time and then it jumps out and grabs me.

I see what you mean about grieving it. I don't think I ever gave myself a chance to do that in its fullest. I squelched the memory and didn't ever process it.

Thanks so much for the explanation.

You can do that. You are allowed to do that. But it won't help you as much as if you feel it.

I have some stories that seem like this too. Kind of like....irrelevant and not "important enough" to bring up in therapy or have any emotion over anymore. Like, there are SO MANY other more horrible things a person could discuss that would rate a 12 on that 0-10 scale. Who would care about my wallowing about my -2 problem.

But the thing I have to keep telling myself is that if it's making me feel like crap, and it's a hindrance on my life (even if it "only" pops up every couple of months) then the fact that it scores low on the level-of-importance scale matters nill. If I hurt from it, then THAT fact alone is worth something, no?

That one I see has said I sound detached and monotone when I talk about some things. She has never been able to explain how to do it differently.

How would it help you to be a detached observer?

I'm not even sure how telling my story is helping at all. What are the psychological elements here? Does verbalizing it do enough to be free of the story's power? So, how does it help me to be a detached observer? Well, for one, to be spared the reliving of the emotional pain. That's not fun nor pleasant. I'll do it if necessary but I want to feel convinced that it's necessary.

The t I see seems to think it is the emotional part that is important, but I cannot tell you why. The lack of emotion when I tell my story is something the t sees as a hurdle.

(hope i'm not being annoying w/my questions ... just trying to be devil's advocate and just want to understand no requirement to answer these questions.)

Why is the 'why' important?

What do you feel might happen if you took the risk to feel those emotions and trust that the process will work in your favor and that your therapist is there to support you?

There are pieces of my story that feel like this...and sometimes I judge myself...like why does THIS part have such a hold on me? But you know what? They just do. And they're hard to talk about, and after I DO talk about them, I feel better.

It's easy to judge ourselves and our stories, but judging makes everything so much harder. I know for me, when I can just accept "this is still affecting me", and do the work with T around it, I get to feel better.

There were pieces of my story that I was embarrassed to tell T BECAUSE they seemed so "unimportant". But he treats them with the same care he treats everything else.

Whatever has a hold on us is important. It's important to find a way to release it, so that we can live as our authentic, not-scared selves.

For me, it was (and is) necessary.

When I was little, I dissociated and felt no feelings. I had the memories, but not the feelings to go with them. And when I started telling things to T, it was in a very detached way. Once, I even wrote down some of the hardest parts of my story and had HIM read it out loud....I needed the words to be out there, but I couldn't deal with the feelings yet.

Feeling the feelings is part of how we connect all of the disconnected parts of ourselves. We are humans, and we have feelings. When we push them away, we're not being 100% present with our experience.

The feelings that are connected to my story feel almost unbearably painful sometimes. I hate feeling them. I don't feel like I'll survive it, I don't feel like I'll ever feel better.

But what really happens is this: I feel them, and it's almost unbearable, and I do survive. And something softens and opens up inside, and I notice that my children are funny, or the sky is a really pretty shade of blue. I feel grateful for my friends, and I love my husband. Allowing the hard feelings to be there puts little spaces in my walls that allow the GOOD feelings to be there. It turns out I can't pick and choose. For me, the good comes WITH the bad. When I harden myself to not feel the hard things, I really don't get to feel anything.

It's worth it.

When you feel, you don't sound as detached and monotone. At least to some extent, how to feel doesn't have an "explanation," it just happens. But if I was going to try to explain how to feel to someone, I'd suggest trying to give a lot of attention and thought to any wisps of feelings you are aware of having.