Not alone with this.

I often describe to T how I Google graphic images of deaths by trains, buses, drowning. I describe how the bodies look

T says that's how I feel inside. She has witnessed me in a ptsd state after having viewed a graphic image before a session.

I told her recently how I feel no one else wants to look at the images I do. But I am driven to. T says you feel as you did as a child when no one saw what was being done to you.

Last week I got into a conversation with someone about a case in the news where a body had been found weighed down in water. The fact that some one else had the same curiosity made me feel alive. It's all I wanted to talk about.

Last couple of sessions some stuff has begun coming back to my conscious re my csa. It ked to some difficult sessions with dissociation. T witnessed this, she understood I couldn't tell her at thst time what was going on for me.

I awoke in the middle of the night thinking about what was coming up for me and my also wanting to talk to T about it. So I emailed her, told her what I'd been afraid to and she wrote back ending with "you don't have to be alone with this".

I felt at first disappointed with that statement, I mean what does that even mean. How can she really be there.

But, therapy is about how we can use it, make use of it and fit it into our internal world. I begun to think about how I felt when I wasttalking about decomposing bodies with that person and I visualised T sitting with me and looking at graphic images (I guess, looking at the internal destruction, my csa had done to me) and it felt warming!! It worked this way for me.

I also saw what T had said about no one ever seeing what washhappening to me and that T will look and not turn away.

It looks like your t is showing you and telling you that she is there for you, that you can reach out to her and she will be there to help you.

Not having to be alone with it, I think she means she can share the burden of the memories? You can offload them in therapy instead of carrying them?

Yeah, I think one of the horrible things about CSA and trauma is that it is so isolating. I think the desire to look at and describe horrible images is actually normal. It's a way of re-living the horror of the trauma in a safer way.

...and you are not doing that alone. There is someone there with you this time. Someone willing to be with you.

I know for me that was one of the single biggest helpful things in my therapy.

Simply not being alone anymore with the thoughts, the fears, the images.

Not again. Not ever ever again.

I hope you continue to have a good experience with this.

"You don't have to be alone with it" is among my T's favorites. Sometimes I just can't stand to hear her say it because of how much I really do have to be alone with it. I have actually felt fairly rageful hearing her say it.

Your post is a really helpful and graphic illustration of what she means. Thanks!