Please Help Me Sleep Without Revisiting Trauma.

[Brinsanity]

Hashi- I am seeing a therapist who specializes in child and sexual abuse, both victims and offenders. He is wonderful, and he is, by far, the easiest person in my world to talk to. My biggest fear with opening it all up, in the time constraint. When our 45 minute sessions is up, how do I go home to my children with all of that emotion running rapid?

He recently had me keep a journal of my nightmares for two weeks. I gave it to him at our last session. He noticed that when it got overwhelming, I would doodle in the notebook. So, he is going to start art therapy this week, which he hasn't used in adults, but uses often in children. He thinks that since I haven't dealt with my trauma since I was a child, it may actually be very useful. I am looking forward to seeing if it works for me.

 

[Charmedone]

I hope it does work for you. *hugs*

 

[Hashi]

I'm glad you have a good, experienced therapist. I use art with my therapist, it's really helpful so I hope it is for you too.

When our 45 minute sessions is up, how do I go home to my children with all of that emotion running rapid?.

I think you need to be talking a lot with your therapist about this, and keep reviewing your strategies for grounding towards the end of the session as well as things that you can do by yourself afterwards. A session seems such a short time to get started, talk about things, then do grounding. Therapy never seems long enough to me. But we have to work with the time we've got, and grounding is really important.

Could you make any arrangements to give yourself some time out after your therapy session? I know it can be difficult to ask this of people who are already supporting us, and maybe the practical arrangements are tricky, but if it's possible then it might really be of benefit.

My way of looking at this is that my subconscious mind is pushing me to work on things now because now's the right time. My subconscious knows that I have access to the people, knowledge and resources to deal with this, however scary and difficult it is. I have to trust that and I have to find and use every resource I can. Even though things get worse for some time, that's because I'm finally dealing with this and healing from it. And we heal not just for ourselves, but for the people around us too.

I know it's far from easy but I do believe it's possible, for all of us.