[seattleskies88]

So yesterday, my therapist (who is a wonderful, quirky sort of guy) told me that in order to forgive those who have hurt me, I need to know exactly what I'm forgiving. He said that since I tend to bury a lot of stuff from the past, it will be important to bring it back up, re-experience the traumas in a safe environment (ie, his office), re-feel the emotions as honestly as possible and from there, accept what has happened to me and work on forgiveness and acceptance.

I know that this is something I really need to do, but the thing is, I'm not sure how to get started. Every time I sit in his office, I think about how I'd love to just cry it all out but I've become so numb and detached over the past few years that it seems impossible. I am so emotionless in therapy, but when I'm alone, especially at night, those memories haunt me enough to cry.

I don't want to go through the process alone because I have a history of SI. I need to be able to do this with the guidance and support of my therapist, but I want to make sure I'm not faking anything. Does that make sense? So basically, how do I get these emotions to surface while in my therapy session?

Thanks for reading my long-winded post and for any advice you have!

This is a great question! I don't have any magic answers but I have a few suggestions:

1. talk to your T about what type of support he is willing to provide so if you go down the path of history and you get to feeling bad you will have a plan to fall back on ...like can you call him, email, will he call back, etc?

2. also I have had other people suggest to me, that it helps to talk about talking about it...if that makes sense... sometimes just talking about your fears and concerns about talking about the past reduces the anxiety...

I have the same issues that you do and I don't know how to access feelings or even some memories of the past but I imagine that if you share these concerns with your T he should be able to help you get there...

I've heard two philosophies on PC... one is to find the smallest thing about it that you can start with and build from there and others say take 20 seconds of courage and just blurt the horrible thing out and then you can talk about feelings....

let us know how it goes... I'm sure others will have thoughts to share as well

I had to feel REALLY safe with my therapist before I really was able to delve into the big, deep emotions from the past. I am talking YEARS of therapy before I could talk about/feel the hardest stuff.

For me, talking about talking about it always helped. Talking about why it was hard to talk about, what my fears were, etc.

And sometimes T would ask me what the "easiest" part of the hard thing was, and that at least gave me a tiny starting point.

I think we want to heal QUICKLY because we want to feel better...AND I think it just takes as long as it takes. We have to be patient with ourselves. We have all of these defenses in place for a reason, and even when we intellectually "get" that we don't need them anymore, it can take a lot longer before we believe it deep down.

[Syra]

As best I can tell, learning to access feelings is sort of like learning to meditate. You sort of head yourself in the right direction as best your mind can figure out, and then let your body teach itself. That probably sounds weird. Maybe It's like figuring out how to sing on key. I don't know what I do to figure it out, but something in my muscles have a sense and have taught themselves and me. Some of us have a harder time that others singing on key, but I suspect the process is the same.
I think that's the best I can describe how I learned, I think.
All I know is eventually I did get in touch with my feelings
I also think IFS (Internal Family Systems) is a technique that helps me get there faster

[unaluna]

For me, a big part of it was figuring out, why did the family treat me the way they did. And then accepting that, instead of fighting it or trying to change it or even say why it was wrong. It's pretty obvious why it was wrong - I mean, who does that?? Hmm. Maybe it IS important to say why it was wrong. Just thinking out loud here. I see therapy as you writing the story of your own life - YOU explaining why things happened. You might have very different reasons than your family but you're entitled to them.

[Perna]

I would start by recounting to T about what happens when you are alone versus the optimal of experiencing in his office. I would also maybe start journaling instead of just having things happen in your head, get some stuff out on paper (where perhaps it will illicit some of the original pain when re-read).

You have two "ends" of a continuum, figure out ways to move from one to the other. Tell your stories to T, dispassionately, if that's all you can do at first, but get his reactions to the stories (he'll hopefully display emotions about hearing them), etc.

[seattleskies88]

Thanks for the responses, guys. Good stuff to keep in mind.

One of the other things I'm nervous about it maintaining the momentum of these emotions FOR my time in therapy. If I sit on the couch having already hashed out my feelings in a journal (which I do keep, btw), then they wont carry the same momentum when I'm sharing with my T. And if they don't carry the same momentum, there's a chance that I won't fully heal from them because my T won't be able to respond to the WHOLE problem.

And like I said, I know that this HAS to happen during the sessions because I desperately need my T to be there so I don't cut or even fool myself into thinking it's okay to keep some things buried for good. I'm just really nervous about this whole prospect...

[lifelesstraveled]

Originally Posted by seattleskies88

So yesterday, my therapist (who is a wonderful, quirky sort of guy) told me that in order to forgive those who have hurt me, I need to know exactly what I'm forgiving. He said that since I tend to bury a lot of stuff from the past, it will be important to bring it back up, re-experience the traumas in a safe environment (ie, his office), re-feel the emotions as honestly as possible and from there, accept what has happened to me and work on forgiveness and acceptance.

I know that this is something I really need to do, but the thing is, I'm not sure how to get started. Every time I sit in his office, I think about how I'd love to just cry it all out but I've become so numb and detached over the past few years that it seems impossible. I am so emotionless in therapy, but when I'm alone, especially at night, those memories haunt me enough to cry.

I don't want to go through the process alone because I have a history of SI. I need to be able to do this with the guidance and support of my therapist, but I want to make sure I'm not faking anything. Does that make sense? So basically, how do I get these emotions to surface while in my therapy session?

Thanks for reading my long-winded post and for any advice you have!

I have no advice, I can't seem to get any emotions to come up in therapy. I think that maybe you should continue talk to your T about this..? Have you accepted your past? If you haven't accepted it, maybe that's what's keeping detached? I really have no idea, I am just grasping at straws.

I'm in a similar boat except for the fact that I don't know much about my childhood, so it's hard to accept anything if I don't know what happened to me. T mentioned that I definitely didnt get what I needed, but I continue to blow it off bc I dont think that it's fair to get upset that I didnt get the attention (love and affection, lack of attention to the fact that I was always very anxious and on edge, I was compulsively hurting myself and was depressed) that I needed or bc I didn't bond with my mother--people have come out of worse situations than that. I keep saying "so what". I think that's what's keeping me from feeling emotions about it--though I probably should.

I hope you talk to T about this. You won't be alone in dealing with this. T will be there. If you need T between sessions find out his policy. If you can't contact T, perhaps you can call a hotline so you don't feel alone. And you can always come here!

[seattleskies88]

Originally Posted by lifelesstraveled

I hope you talk to T about this. You won't be alone in dealing with this. T will be there. If you need T between sessions find out his policy. If you can't contact T, perhaps you can call a hotline so you don't feel alone. And you can always come here!

I think I will talk to him. He is a wonderfully empathetic therapist and I am so relieved to have found him. He does allow me to call in crisis situations and e-mail is limited to business-only type stuff, but I'm okay with that. I don't like using e-mail as a medium anyway, because, like I said earlier, I think it takes away the momentum of the emotions.

[sunrise]

For me, before going a lot into trauma, I learned to identify my feelings on a day to day basis. I tended to bury any feeling immediately and it was inaccessible. So I worked on identifying feelings I was having in the room with T, in the here and now, no matter what the topic we were talking about. They were there with us, so I practiced on those, and learning to detect and express them. They could be positive feelings or negative feelings. I was bad at everything! Then later when I had "basic feelings skills", we could do deeper work.

[healed84]

My T and I just talked about this yesterday. I am so detachted from my trauma emotionally, that even when reading the story that I wrote of one event I was just a one-toned emotionless voice. My T agrees so feeling those emotions in a safe enviroment will help get past some of my issues stemming from the trauma. My T's suggestion for doing this is.. Writing out what I would say to that 10 year old girl who was traumatized.. Writing to her like it was the time of the incident. Then, I am sure he will ask me to read it!

Just an aside, and really my opinion.. I do think it is healthy to heal and get past trauma.. but that does not mean you have to forgive. Which is weird for me to say, being a Christian and most of Christiany is based on the concept of Forgivness.

[seattleskies88]

Originally Posted by healed84

My T and I just talked about this yesterday. I am so detachted from my trauma emotionally, that even when reading the story that I wrote of one event I was just a one-toned emotionless voice. My T agrees so feeling those emotions in a safe enviroment will help get past some of my issues stemming from the trauma. My T's suggestion for doing this is.. Writing out what I would say to that 10 year old girl who was traumatized.. Writing to her like it was the time of the incident. Then, I am sure he will ask me to read it!

Just an aside, and really my opinion.. I do think it is healthy to heal and get past trauma.. but that does not mean you have to forgive. Which is weird for me to say, being a Christian and most of Christiany is based on the concept of Forgivness.

I really like your idea of writing as if you were speaking to your 10-year-old self. I think I may try that.

On the subject of forgiveness though, I too am Christian and find it absolutely essential to forgive. Not forgiving someone is equivalent to holding a grudge against them, and when you're holding a grudge, you're giving that person a lot of control over your emotions. And when you're not the one in control, healing those emotions will never happen.

Forgiveness is awfully difficult. But it absolutely needs to happen.