[lunatic soul]

I've been in therapy for above 2 years but I have never talked about my traumatic childhood because even thinking about it makes me feel like I'm losing my mind.
Last month I had flashbacks at nights, memories haunt me, it's like radio or tv who you can turn off. When something reminds me of it, I want to kill myself to stop these memories or even worse- if it could happen again.

I told my T about it but couldn't tell about my childhood memories.
1) I don't believe that talking about it can make anything better because even thinking about it makes everything worse. I'm afraid what could happen to me after session.
2) It's almost impossible to talk about it, I could write and gave T to read it but I still worry what could happen after session if I need to think/talk about it.
3) I think it's stupid and any T couldn't understand how something like that could be so horrible for me.
4) i wanted to talk about it on drugs but my T doesn't accept it and told me that I would think that only drugs could help me which is not true, i just can't talk about it.

If therapy helped anyone with PTSD please share.

[healed84]

The reason why T wants me to talk about the abuse, is because it takes the power away from the memories. By talking about it with T, he is able to help me ground in the moment as well as learn to process the feelings and emotions of those flashback in an adult way. I was abused as a child too, and all of those feelings are stored in my brain with childlike feelings and I needed to learn (or still do) how to react now that I am an adult in a more rational, supported way.

I would say that don't start doing it, unless you know you have a support person in place to help you cope while all those memories are stirred up. T and I also visited the site of one particular traumatic event for me.. and they only way I got through the next two months w/o going inpatient was through the help of T and my bff... So, that is very important thing to have when starting to process the memories.

I am still with some disturbing flashbacks and T has asked me to consider EMDR to help with them. Maybe you can explore that as an option?

[Partless]

lunatic soul, I deal with PTSD, and therapy has helped (far from perfect). But in order for it to help any significant way, you need to open up more. I don't mean at this instant, but eventually.

Traumatic memories create a bad situation because the actual trauma is scary and then even thinking about them or talking about them is scary and triggers the person, so you keep the awful things that were damaging far away from consciousness. Naturally you would not want the therapist to bring them out. You've spent a lot of time trying to keep them away, feels counterintuitive.

But the very fact that you keep them away actually strengthens the fear you feel about them. And they gain power over you. Once you can talk about them and let the emotions express themselves, you can be free of them or at least reduce their power significantly. This is hard obviously but doable, and there are many PTSD patients who have gone through this.

However, in order for you to be able to do this, is that you need to be in control. You need to feel safe. You need to feel that you're sharing only how much you want, that you have a supportive therapist, and also maybe even some sort of support when you're not seeing therapist (because memories are related and sometimes one memory brings up another, so it's good to have someone to share this with or if you feel sad or anxious).

Soon you will start to see the positive effect of this, as the trauma starts to lose its power over you once exposed to light of day and seen for what it is, memory of things past.

[lunatic soul]

Thanks, at first I think I will try to talk about in a group because it's not traditional therapy group but Christian therapy group and they pray about each other so I hope it won't be that horrible but in group is very limited time.
I hope I could do this, I don;t sleep at nights because of these memories. I still think that best way out would be drugs like MDMA but I don;t want to get in trouble.

[lozza89]

I've just been diagnosed with PTSD with dissociative symptoms and delayed expression and it has strongly been advised that I do not even try to talk about all the abuse I have endured cuz to put it bluntly, I'm simply not strong enough even though I have been doing DBT for years.

I get and understand how hard it is to talk about the abuse stuff, I actually feel relieved that I am not allowed to talk about it right now and that probably wont be able to for a long time!

I just wanted to let you know that your not alone

I won't list my childhoods and adult traumas because it always appears like one upmanship. But needless to say I do have Ptsd.
But I have after many yrs of therapy spoken about them all.
Talking certainly does help.
They don't go away, but neither does my past eat me alive now.

[anilam]

Took me 6yr of therapy with my T to be able to start really talking about it... It takes time (Don't I know it). I don't believe ppl should be forced into it, you still can work on other things in therapy in the meantime while building the rapport/trust ect.
Talking about it helps, I still don't know exactly why/how- asked my T several times, didn't really get his answers- but it does- again slowly (again too slowly for my comfort but pushing myself gets me nowhere)

I was told I wouldn't be able to talk about the past in detail because it would affect me very negatively. I just try to deal with the day to day issues that it has caused. I think therapy can help with that too. Some people cannot go back and deal with it. It would be too destabilizing. If you have a decent therapist, try to let them guide you with what you can handle and what you cannot handle. Everyone is different. Talking about it does not help everyone.

It took many years of therapy, talking about the traumas in small bits at a time here and there. I never did actual "trauma" therapy; don't even really know what that is supposed to be. Rather, my therapists approached me history as it seemed to come up and impact my present, thus the small pieces a bit at a time. Approaching it that way took forever, but was manageable and relevant to my present which I think made more sense for me. It is very hard work and at time seemed overwhelming, but I'm still here and am in a really good place finally. I can look at that history now and see it as history rather than it invading my present uninvited all the time like it once did. I rarely have symptoms of PTSD now, not to the extent that it is at all problematic, but again, it took me many, many years to get to this point.

[lunatic soul]

Thanks.
I decided to take break from therapy, Im not ready to talk about it yet.