STRM thank you for that last post of yours. You said it so perfectly. I usually describe it to my T as opening the closet door to maybe get to one thing and instead all of this "stuff" falls out and I'm sitting there surrounded by awful things that I want to shove back into the closet but now that it has all fallen out I can't get it to fit back in again and close the door and lock it all away. He told me that there is a reason it all fell out and that we can look at all the stuff together and decide what to keep and what we can put back into the closet but in it's proper place, we can store it in a better way so that when I open the door again it will be okay and I won't be overwhelmed by an avalanche of "stuff".

But... I'm still trying to cram everything back in without looking at it too closely so that I shove the door closed and lock it. It just feels less scary to do that but I realize that I do need to look at the stuff/memories/experiences/pain and grief. Because that is the only way I can put it in it's place so that I can live my life without the anxiety and fear of what's in that closet.

Oh and... I love that your T says that the slower you go the faster you will get there. I think that this is really important and I do have trouble with it. I try to rush ahead too fast and then trigger myself with overwhelming emotions that I cannot handle and then I freak out and actually regress and then we have to work through that before we can move ahead. We are working on keeping me in the therapeutic window... meaning to work that fine balance of looking at things but not too many or too quickly.

TN