[athena.agathon]

I have only ever told one person IRL...I had a botched up one night stand (I'm 25, for social context) last year and I told a friend, who is a sex educator, because I was feeling guilty and I wanted advice. After that, I never talked about it with her again.

I never told my last therapist, even though I ostensibly liked and trusted her. I just didn't want to and didn't really see the point.

This new therapist I've only seen for a month. I don't know if or how I will tell him. I think he might suspect (I brought up sex as Kind of A Big Problem that I want to work on, and he has used the words, "because you don't trust men..." even though I'm pretty sure I never explicitly said so), but he wouldn't push me to say.

I know there's already a thread somewhere about "who did you tell?" but how do you tell? Can I just say, "oh yeah, I know I told you about the black eyes&etc. but there's this other thing, too...sorry, maybe I should have mentioned it when I told you I really don't like sex and think it is disgusting/not fun..."? I still feel like it's sort of pointless.

[shezbut]

I wasn't ever real comfortable in bringing up the issue in therapy, but it was haunting me, so I knew that it was time for me to speak up.

Like you, I had always talked in vague terms to my T's. I started off by talking about my self-hate and blame that I've carried for so many years. Then, I said that my brother and I had an incestuous relationship at times. I told my T how old I was at the time, how old my brother was, and the negative emotions associated with the memories. I left it at that for a while (probably about one year), and then as I grew more trusting of my T, I decided to describe a particular event that's haunted me for so many years.

My T was then able to understand my perspective on life and myself a lot better. My T has known for a long time about how I've carried shame towards sex, and that this created a lot of problems with relationships for me ~ as well as damaged my self-esteem by giving in to male desires. I think that my self-esteem issues are very obvious to others. But, admitting these dark thoughts and beliefs took some time for me.

Talking with my T about my perspective has helped. Being validated helped me immensely! I wish you the best...