How to know whether you are ready to approach a certain trauma/exile(s)?
Hi friends. I’m writing this in hopes to get some wisdom from all of you and your kind Selves.
Context: My usual (IFS-trained) therapist is on leave so I’ve been working with another therapist for the past month, and probably for the next two months. I worked with her for three years in the past, so she’s not a total stranger, but it’s been a while.
This week, I tried to bring up a major trauma in therapy and just begin working towards working on it, since it affects me a lot. I’ve been avoiding it for a while. We didn’t even talk about the event. I just talked about why i wanted to work on it, how it affects me today, my cycle of breakdowns around it.
But in the middle of the session I really shut down: I felt really, really sleepy, and kind of nonverbal, like I didn’t care about what my therapist was saying and totally disengaged from her. We tried regrounding stuff, but I just couldn’t come back.
It’s two days later and I’ve spent the past two days feeling really bad. A lot of crying, sleepiness, depressive symptoms. Which happens to be the same stuff I experienced in the months right after the trauma.
I guess I’m wondering, does this all mean I’m not ready to work on it? Maybe my system wants more time. Or maybe this is a normal part of the process and I can work with the shutdown-y parts.
Or maybe, I’m not connected enough to my interim therapist like I am to my actual one (who is coming back in two months). Maybe I should take a step back and wait for my more trusted therapist to return. But I’m starting law school in 6 weeks and I think my capacity/space for deep processing will be lower. which also worries me, navigating this trauma while in school🤕
I’m feeling lost and could use your guys’s perspective. There’s a part of me that really doesn’t want to look at the trauma again and retrigger myself and stuff. But I don’t know. What does readiness look like?