Okay, bias alert: I spent over 18 months taking a class/doing a program in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and still work with it. But what I'm reading in this letter sounds a lot like the LW is more or less on a pretty good track: she's accepted what happened to her, that she will always have feelings about it, and that she can't make those feelings go away. What she needs to do is learn to cope with them in the moment, and other people diminishing them won't help that.
Sadly, I don't think telling them more will necessarily fix that. I've seen people tell everyone from rape victims to Holocaust survivors that they just need to buck up, forget about it, stop living in the past! The only real suggestion I have is just to look at them completely seriously and say, "I know you mean well, but it really doesn't help me when you say things like that. In fact, it makes things worse."
no subject
Okay, bias alert: I spent over 18 months taking a class/doing a program in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and still work with it. But what I'm reading in this letter sounds a lot like the LW is more or less on a pretty good track: she's accepted what happened to her, that she will always have feelings about it, and that she can't make those feelings go away. What she needs to do is learn to cope with them in the moment, and other people diminishing them won't help that.
Sadly, I don't think telling them more will necessarily fix that. I've seen people tell everyone from rape victims to Holocaust survivors that they just need to buck up, forget about it, stop living in the past! The only real suggestion I have is just to look at them completely seriously and say, "I know you mean well, but it really doesn't help me when you say things like that. In fact, it makes things worse."