Posted by Tamar on October 14, 2005, at 11:39:02
In reply to Re: i want a take back., posted by B2chica on October 14, 2005, at 9:22:05
I think your T’s suggestion to start on Monday is a good one.
And I really like the shield idea. I remember when I was thinking about how to talk about it I imagined my therapist picking weapons with me, as if we were going into battle side by side. I’m not sure he thought that was the most helpful metaphor, but it worked for me.
As for where to start… I journalled quite a bit before I started talking: I found that writing down some of it meant I had a chance to choose my words. I didn’t read what I’d written in therapy, but I had already started to give it all a vocabulary.
I started by talking about fear and shame. Just the feelings; not the events that went with them. And then when I talked a little about the events I went into rational mode and talked about it as if it had happened to someone else. It was a little while before I could describe what actually happened to me.
What you’re saying here at babble is that you’re afraid to talk about it. So maybe that’s the place to start. Maybe talk about the fear of talking, and the fear of giving your experiences a name: perhaps about the fear that saying it out loud makes it seem more real (if that’s how you feel).
One thing that helped me was trying to access my anger about it. I felt I could talk about it more easily if I felt angry about what they did to me. Of course, feeling angry means accepting that someone did something to you that was wrong, and you weren’t completely to blame. It’s difficult to believe that at first.
I started by feeling angry that even if they didn’t intend to hurt me, nevertheless they did hurt me. That even if they wouldn’t have called it an assault, nevertheless I felt assaulted. I felt angry that they could have been so careless about my feelings about what they did. And eventually I came to realise that in fact there was no way they could have thought it was consensual… but that took time.
I dunno… these are just a few ideas, and I don’t know if they’ll be helpful to you.
I hope your session on Monday goes as well as it possibly can.
Tamar
poster:Tamar
thread:566008
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20051008/msgs/566816.html