Revealing the details...

This is kind of inspired by the "do you tell your t everything" thread. I can't bring myself to tell my t the details of my sa. It's been a struggle I've revisited several times. I literally can't though, it's like I have a lock on my voice. I don't want to be alone with it... Any suggestions? He kind of knows, he says he can piece it together from what I have told him, but that kind of feels worse.

Can you write it down to either read to him or give to him to read? I was not able to speak about my sa for a long time, and still have a lot of trouble saying it... I write stuff down sometimes and give it to t. Once I was able to read it, but mostly I just hand her what I wrote.

@thiswayout thanks- i feel kind of just as likely, maybe even less to do that compared to saying it. I also really kind of want to say it out loud. But if I get really frustrated that's definitely a good idea.

I'm the same way! I just want to tell my therapist everything he did to me, in details. I don't know why, maybe just because no one else knows. Or maybe I need someone to hear it, so I'm not alone with it...

Generally, I start by writing things down for him, and then talking about it. Knowing he knows, and I walk in there and he is just the same as he always is, makes it easier for me to talk about it. That said, I have been in therapy 4 years and still have not told him everything.

Good luck with this. It is horrible to have suffered that way, and then the recovery process is horrible too.

I posted before I laid out my suggestions. I thinking writing it down would help, it's helped me. Also art journaling, or just letting my therapist know to push me.

He may be trying to get you in a stable place with good coping skills before he brings up trauma work. Can you say you want to talk about it soon, and start preparing for it?

Writing worked good for me either. Sessions were difficult because I couldn't find the words to express myself. One day I started emailing my T and things got easier from there. Gradually I started emailing less and talking more.

Do you guys remember things in pieces or fragments, instead of chronological order? I'm having trouble with that. I think I remember everything....but I can't put it all together when telling T...or even thinking about it, sometimes.

yeah. I had just mentioned this to t maybe 2 sessions ago. she said it made sense that most things were fragmented and mixed-up... I just try to write what I remember, as I remember it. Then, maybe later I try to put it in order with T, but not always. sometimes I just dump it as it, fragmented and confused, and let T make sense of it.

i remember fragmented things. it helps me to talk about it instead of write about it, although this varies person to person. prompting from your therapist helps.

The details were very hard for me at first. Then as I started to open up and even though some things came out in pieces and not making a lot of sense, it got easier. Trusting my T was a huge factor in it too. If I didn't trust...no details would be revealed. I'm not much for writing stuff down but my T knows me well enough to know when I really need to talk about the details so she asks questions. Answering the questions makes it a lot easier on me and then I can just elaborate from there.

I know with PTSD, part of the effects of the trauma, and one of the diagnostic criterion, actually, is an inability to communicate about the trauma. This one is hard to overcome, and I approached it sideways, in fits and starts. I used allusion, poetry, songs by others, etc.

One way that helped when I really needed a jump start on one of the harder parts dealing with the effects of the trauma was to ask my therapist if she would initiate the conversation by asking me some questions. She found some gentle ones and helped me open up just a bit that way.

I wrote narratives and rarely spoke much about the details after that. For me the importance was that he know and "hold" those memories for me. It wasn't important to either of us to delve into lengthy expositions of details.

It may be worth thinking and talking about your feelings and purposes in sharing those details in whatever form. It sounds like you feel a need to share, but some ambiguity about making those details "real" by speaking them. Why not explore those conflicted feelings first and see how it goes?