rough time

I am making veggie soup later today - just watching a bit of football now and resting still with the little Toblerone asleep again next to me - don't think I'll be moving for a while lol

I was getting cold so I have pulled the doona around me and Toby has spread himself out on the rest of the couch

Had pain meds for my headache so waiting for them to kick in also before I think about going outside again @outlander

We have had a couple of days in the high teens but mostly they are in the mid-lower end of the teens @outlander

Sure - ask away

It is about finding the balance @outlander just as everything in life.

I don't talk about the trauma at all with my pdoc - we mainly talk about how I am doing and how my week has been - and within that we discuss why I may have been feeling the way I have - that sometimes brings up trauma-related issues but we then tslk more about how I can move forward.

I 'talked' a lot about trauma with the psychologist I saw but my gp and pdoc stopped that because it was causing me to be more suicidal and I was not able to cope with it all.

In saying all that though - it has been a long time since a lot happened to me and dredging it all up was not good for me at the time. It has been proven in many studies that the sooner after the trauma that you can talk about it the mre likely one is to be able to live with it. With that however I think the person you talk to has to feel right for you in order to feel safe to open up and once they know what holds you back they can work on helping you to put positive processes in place to help you move forward - you don't necessarily have to keep talking about the trauma then but how you are making changes to deal with what is happening for you now.

Hope that makes sense (it does in my head lol)

You aren't being negative Hon - you had a legitimate question and one that I am sure many others here often ask themselves - me being one of them @outlander

I do think it makes so much difference to have a counsellor that you click with - it often means you feel safe, heard and supported - and those three things are essential to be able to work through some of the stuff you are dealing with. Sometimes also we are just not ready to deal with the trauma and that is ok - you may never be able to talk about it openly but what is imoirtant is you find someone that can help you work through the consequences for you of suffering that trauma and find ways to move forward. Just like our emotions @outlander - sometimes it is about just sitting with hiw we are feeling, letting ourselves feel that way and then putting it back in the box to get on with things - I am still working on that too and it is not easy!

A logical ramble though @outlander These are the tyo of things you can talk about with a counsellor just as you are talking here - it doesn't have to always be about the negatives but positive ways you are making changes in your life. Try talking to you online counsellor just as you do to me - they may have a different perspective that you would also benefit from hearing. I do get what you mean though about not going back to go forward - often it is more about learning from the past to influence our future decisions and the difficult thing when our past has been defined in some regard by trauma is that we find it hard to think positively about moving forward. It is not that we want to think about the trauma but the trauma has affected the way we think! ...and sometimes we need to deal with our patterns of thinking in order to move forward.

I think you have begun to do this yourself in some respects but I also know from my own personal viewpoint that you can't do it alone. You need help to find ways to deal with these things when they come up for you as they are not simply going to go away - whether that means reframing the narrative in your own mind or confronting it head-on is something that only you and a counsellor can decide.