Posted by Tamar on August 29, 2005, at 14:34:31
In reply to Afraid of what he'll find out about me **trigger**, posted by fairywings on August 29, 2005, at 10:01:57
Hi fairywings,
Yeah, I know what you mean about not wanting to get into the messy stuff. I decided before my first meeting with my ex-T that I wasn’t going to talk to him about being raped, or my past SI. After a few weeks, though, I changed my mind. I don’t think it’s possible to know right at the beginning how you’re going to be able to talk about the messy stuff. But in time perhaps it will come.
What helped me a lot was that we talked a bit about *how* we would talk about it *before* we talked about it, if that makes sense. I told my ex-therapist that I wanted to talk about some sexual violence in my past. He said that some women find it hard to talk to a man about that kind of thing. I said it didn’t make any difference to me whether I talked to a man or a woman, and he asked me to go away and think about how I might talk about it. So I thought about it and I realised that in fact I pretty much only talked to men about it, on a need-to-know basis (i.e. men I was sexually involved with). And after talking of course there was comfort, including sexual comfort. So I had to think about what it would be like for me to talk to a man about it without physical comfort and without having sex afterwards. And at the next session we talked about that a bit. And after a few sessions of talking around it we finally talked about it directly. But I really needed that preparation.
Of course, if you don’t want your therapist to talk about it with your p-doc you can ask him not to. I’m pretty sure there’s no reason why your p-doc has to know any of it if you would prefer it were kept confidential.
I don’t know if that’s any help. But I think I can understand why you’re reluctant to talk about it, particularly after your not-so-good experience with your recent ex-T.
I hope it’ll get easier for you.
Tamar
poster:Tamar
thread:548080
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050824/msgs/548197.html