Therapist reluctant to discuss trauma
Have experienced several traumatic events. There's a couple that I cannot talk about without panicking, despite being well over a decade ago. I still occasionally get flashbacks at certain triggers. I can't say what happened without having a full blown panic attack/flashback. I've tried, repeatedly, I've tried slowly, with various ground skills etc and nothing helps... there's not really a hierarchy of fear possible because I can do everything except say what happened without panicking. I feel I'm managing and then suddenly I can't breathe, like there's no steady escalation where we can stop and say enough. I end up hyperventilating and completely out of it. I've vomited in session before.
It feels really important to me to talk about these events. I feel a lot of shame and it's important that my therapist knows what happened and doesn't judge me. I also just want to be able to choose whether or not to talk about it but right now, its not a choice, and that sucks and really silences me. I feel like I don't get to "process" what happened because it just overwhelms me.
My therapist keeps telling me I don't need to talk about it and the details aren't what matters and I feel like she doesn't want me to get into it. She says she just doesn't want me to flood myself for the wrong reasons. But there is never any way forward to find a way to discuss it safely because I really just don't believe there is one. I feel that PET would be a way forward because exposure has worked for me with another phobia, possibly with meds to support with the panic, but I don't even wanna suggest it as she really seems to think it's a bad idea to talk about it once, let alone repeatedly.
I like my therapist, and she's really experienced and "gets" me. I struggled to find any practitioner I liked. It's taken over a year to feel ready to try and talk about it so starting over would be a BIG decision. I generally like the psychodynamic approach and don't want to fully switch to a CBT based therapy and I definitely don't care for EMDR because all the finger wagging is pseudoscience and I don't want a practitioner who goes in for it (I know the exposure still works).