Trouble With Disclosure

[maryel42]

Last week in session I was getting so close to telling my therapist the whole thingthat I'm currently struggling with. So close... until my throat closed up and I couldn't do it.

I'm still beating myself up over it.

I replay the conversation up to that moment, over and over, and I'm second guessing my answer to one thing he said. Wondering if I gave the wrong answer.

I kind of know that there isn't a wrong answer. Still.

He asked me if this thing, the event, was I molested. I said no.

I wasn't molested, I was raped, because those are different things. But didn't the 'no' mean that what happened was less?

I'm overthinking it. Way overthinking this.

I cant write it out and tell him. I cant say it. I can hint all the way around it and I can tell him if he guesses right, but I can't come out. And part of me needs him to pull it out because I wont get over this part of the healing without that.

I hate that about me. Did I give the wrong answer? Normal to still be obsessed over whether there is a wrong answer right now for this? Totally nuts for even stressing over this at all?

 

[Introspective]

You're not nuts. I would say it's pretty normal to go over this in your head. However, what's done is done, and you will get a new chance. You did a great job of trying to tell him. It was too much this time, but you will get there. Now he knows there is something, and you have taken a step forward.

The answer wasn't wrong, there is no wrong answer in this. You felt that was something different. I think I would have said no too, and I wouldn't be able to say anything more. I would shut down.

Give yourself credit for trying. It is so hard to let this be seen and heard, but you deserve to heal. And your T can carry this burden with you.

You will get a new chance. Just because you said no, doesn't mean you can't undo it and say yes later. I hope you find a way to share, whether it is hinting more, telling him that you need him to guess right, or by saying the word.

Warm thoughts to you.

 

[Echo]

Oh, gosh, @maryel42, I've just done exactly the same thing. I realised after the session that I gave a partial answer to the question, why do you feel guilty about being raped? I gave an answer which was correct, but it circumnavagated the deeper reason. I feel too guilty to voice it. It made me realise that I still expect the whole world to collapse in on itself and to get very much blamed and castigated if I so much as mention what I feel guilty about. I know my adult, rational self thinks it is nothing to feel guilty about, but that makes no difference.

I too wonder how to deal with it. I have thought about writing it down, but I also can't bring myself to do it. I don't think I am ready to come out and say it in a session yet. As things stand right now, the day before seeing my therapist, I think I am going to say to her that when she asked that question, there was something that I found too difficult to talk about yet and I still do. And to ask if we can come back to it at a later stage, because it fills me with terror. I know she wants to continue to work on stabilising me and making me feel safe, so my adult side thinks she won't insist on knowing, but it will be a massive thing just to do that.

I doubt there are right or wrong answers, unless we are out-and-out lying. There are just the answers we can cope with at any given time.

Would it be possible to refer to the question asked and say you can't speak about it now, but you wouldn't see it as being molested, but that it was more complicated than that. That you would like to be able to talk about it another time when you are ready. At least then he knows to be careful about what he says and how he deals with you. It doesn't matter if he guesses. What matters is whether he respects your feelings. If he is a good therapist, I think he would do so. I hope so anyway for you (and for me!). Don't beat yourself up - I'm trying not to - we are doing our best and we are facing the biggest fears of our lives, aren't we? Rape hurts us so deeply and we end up with such dreadful thoughts about ourselves, so baby steps seem in order, don't you agree?

 

[scout86]

I'm going to try to put this in a different perspective. Awhile back, it seemed like I was using horse related examples a lot. I'm going to do that again.

Think of your T as a "trainer". I used to train horses for a living, so I can see this stuff, a lot of times, from the perspective I had, working with horses who had problems. You have a response that you're working towards. You have the response that you get today. They may not be the same, and probably aren't. That's ok. That's why it's a PROCESS. If I ask a horse for a response today, especially if I know he has trouble with this, and he goes half way to where I want him, maybe that's the best he can do today. It's my job to recognize that. I scratch his withers, tell him he's awesome and I really appreciate his efforts, and move on. Tomorrow, we'll probably get closer. Maybe we won't. Eventually, we'll get where we're going. He does NOT have to get there TODAY. And, I'm making a HUGE mistake (and a common horse related mistake) if I TRY to get all the way in one day. Unless it's easy for him and if it was easy, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Your therapist asked you for something. You gave all you could in the moment. That was good. It was right and acceptable and it meant something. You DO NOT have to go all the way to the end of the road in one trip. Give yourself the time to make the journey.

BTW, I get that it's hard. The past month or more we've mostly been talking about how to talk about stuff I don't want to talk about in my sessions. It's annoying and frustrating, but it's also part of the process. :)

 

[joeylittle]

You're not nuts. It took me a very, very long time to even be able to say I was raped. I understand.

I think you are not feeling 100% comfortable/trusting yet. So the question is, do you think you can push yourself a little bit harder to meet your therapist more in the middle? Or do you just need more time? Either one of those things is absolutely OK to do, I just think you will feel better if you pick and share one of those two paths with your therapist.

Meeting in the middle would be, next session, correct your statement to "Molested isn't the right word for what happened to me, and that's why I said "no" when you asked. I'm not comfortable saying the word, can you help me?" Needing more time can be, "Molested isn't the right word for what happened to me, but I cannot say what happened yet. I know I will need to, but I'm not able to. Can we work on other aspects of my trauma for the next few sessions?"

From your post, it sounds like you do want to push yourself a little harder. And sometimes, that's what we need to do; at least I believe that. Don't be afraid to tell your T what you need help with.

 

[maryel42]

I think the hardest thing is that I dealt with this before. At length. I did years of working just on this and I could talk about it freely for fifteen years without a tremor. Its just since the emotional flashbakcs started that I suddenly cant deal. The shift from viewing it as something that happened to me, past tense, looking on, to happening to me as a realtime in body experience.

Since I started being that kid again and feeling those emotions again I can't deal with it.

I know I'm impatient with myself because I want to go back to having dealt with it. I want to get back to not thinking about it without hurting. There will always be something about it, but I want the immediacy gone again.

 

[desiderata310]

Yes, I flat out lied. " was it just what your estranged did to you? Was there anything that happened to you when you were a kid?" Long pause. I thought for some reason during the pause that I could get away with just dealing with the recent stuff. "No. nothing."

I came back the next week, took a long deep breath, focused my gaze at the corner on the floor and told him that I had lied. That there was other 'stuff' and proceeded to tell him a little about it.

After my conversation with my therapist yesterday, I think they kind of get it when we say no when the answer is yes. You have to be ready to heal. Go back and talk to him again. He's not going to be judgmental that you didn't tell him everything. *shrug* even now, with me thinking I am ready, he doesn't seem to think I am. I'm not sure I know what being ready means anymore.

 

[maryel42]

After I closed up he offered that the thing I was looking for was "bad". It was a bad thing and hurt me a lot and very deeply.

That was a good thing to hear. So while he may know perfectly well already, he wont put the words into my mouth before I'm ready.

I still want to get it over with.

 

[Echo]

Same here, @maryel42. It took me ten years to name it to myself. Then I told my then boyfriend, he refused to have sex with me anymore, I suppressed it again for ten years. Then I started mentioning it to friends and complementary therapists, as I did lots of personal development work. I thought it was fine, thought I had resolved it (tra-la-la), then 33 years since it happened, wham - PTSD suddenly. I had thought I could help other rape survivors in a campaigning sense, and got massively triggered after two weeks - pathetic and so disappointing. And then the memories of child abuse started to emerge, and now everything is in a different league.

The thing that scared me most at first for many months was my capacity to suppress everything to the point of not remembering. Now I understand this is normal, so I have let myself off the hook a bit. But my therapist says I am my own worst enemy because my coping, face-to-the-world side is so pronounced only a trauma therapist can see behind the facade. Great, what an achievement! And I am battling with myself, it seems. I suppose this capacity we have is the thing that meant we would survive, to be fair to us, but it is a real shock, isn't it?

 

[Echo]

@maryel42 - if you want to get it over with, would it work, as @joeylittle suggests, to ask your therapist to suggest some alternatives and you just get to nod, or do you actually want to be able in your next session or very soon to be able to say the word itself? Kudos to you for wanting to face it.

 

[maryel42]

I want to just go in and DO. I don't want to be awake in the middle of the night replaying this over and over again until next session.

I want to erase it altogether.

As bad as the emotional waves is that for the first time I'm also acknowledging that it didn't happen when I was three. Almost three is not the same as three. And my traitor brain keeps bringing up, what difference does a month or two matter anyway? But I know it does. Especially that young. As an adult perhaps not...

The act matters. That's the important thing. But as kids our age gets so tangled up in events.

Does it matter more or less? Either way its wrong. But was it somehow more wrong to admit it happened earlier?

 

[Echo]

@maryel42 - how on earth is a 3-year old or younger than 3-year old expected to know what date it was, let alone even know how old she was? Please stop being mean to yourself. What matters is that it happened at all. You wouldn't be in this state if it hadn't.

I must have been only a few weeks old when it first happened to me. The sister I eventually told wanted facts and dates. I could only give her sensations and bits of memories. My parents both rang me as those memories were emerging - apparently coincidentally - wanting to know what my earliest memory was. Why for goodness sake, other than that they must know on some level what is going on for me?! They had to admit I could remember things going back to when I was younger than 1-year old.

My therapist does say that memories can get a bit tangled especially when things have happened more than once or happened many times. Gosh that would happen now when we are fully adult if we were attacked regularly. Please stop saying you were wrong or what you said was wrong. You are doing your best. You were just a tiny little person when this happened.