Wow how tragic. I’m so sorry that happened. I can’t imagine what things have been like for you. It’s such a testament to your strength as a woman and as a mother that you’ve been doing what needs to be done and have been so proactive about trying to provide the right conditions to survive this.

Your question is interesting. It presupposes that one needs a male role model to succeed. I don’t think that is necessarily the case, but I do understand why you would want that.

I’ll say this – one area that gets people into trouble is trying to force a male role model situation out of a scenario where it’s not the best idea. In other words, don’t let the desire for a positive male role model make you blind to negative qualities of the person or of the interaction. I used to work in a domestic violence center and I have definitely heard from women in abusive relationships that they tolerated a lot of abuse just so that their kids could have a man in their lives. I’m sure you can see how that would be counter productive.

Now all of that said, I think there are some good ways to go about this. One of the best ones would be to encourage and support them in their involvements. There’s a reason that sports coaches are stereotypically portrayed as being a second father or a wise advice-giver. It doesn’t necessarily have to be sports, but having some sort of organized activity with a responsible adult that can teach them a sense of discipline and responsibility can be very healthy.

Some of this will depend on your values, your community etc. For instance, some people are able to find this role model in a youth group leader at their church or something like that.  All of this said, please don’t undervalue what you have to offer as a parent. Teaching them how to be human is so much more important than teaching them how to be a man. You get to choose what things are emphasized, played down, or avoided. Your strength in this situation is already teaching them very important lessons.

As to the remarriage question – a lot of that will depend on the age that your remarry and the circumstances there. It will be important for you to try to encourage open communication, but also realize that behavior is communication and they may not be able to articular what they feel as much as they can show you in their actions.

At a younger age, they may feel initially like you are trying to replace their father. This doesn’t mean that you should avoid it. It just means that its a point that will need to be addressed and talked about over time. In some cases, there is no conflict at all and things go smoothly, so on the flip side, it’s also important not to overpathologize and try to find something wrong when in reality the kids are taking it really well. I think you’re already on such a good track. Keep those good intentions in your heart. Stay consistent with your love and support of them. Get help when you need it. You will be in good shape.

I am currently working with my therapist on starting to look at the childhood sexual abuse i encountered. I’ve kept that hidden for over 30 years. It is an intense source of shame and pain.

I’ve been trying to find a way to tell my therapist my story, with an appropriate level of detail. It’s hard! She has reassured me numerous times that I don’t need to tell her the details. In fact I don’t need to tell her anything as I find it extremely hard to say the words. They literally catch in my throat and I stammer and choke. I cannot read or write or speak the word R*pe.

She has spoken about solution focused therapy, where we don’t talk about what happened at all, just what life would like like if the therapy was completed and I was “over it”. She likens it to looking at the sun. It hurts to look directly at it. Maybe now again glance to make sure it’s there, but don’t look directly at it to save yourself from permanent damage. She says she worries that I will retraumatise myself by talking about it.

I fear that maybe she doesn’t want to hear it. That shes not ready for it. I think maybe this is because the one time I tried as a child to tell mum she wasn’t ready to hear it and it was dismissed. I don’t know if she is trying to protect me or herself. And while I am struggling hugely with the telling of my story, I feel a compulsion to tell it. I feel like I need to take back control by deciding who knows what and on what time scale.

My question is this… In your experience, when processing and dealing with this issue, is it best to leave the specifics out and just focus on the after effects rather than what happened. Can someone process and heal without talking about it? Or is it better to take it apart bit by bit and deal with it fully?

I really hope you will choose me as I have been desperate to find the courage to look at this for thirty years, and now I have I want to get it right, because I know I won’t have the strength to do this twice.

Glad you’re thinking about this. It’s scary, but it’s clearly important to you and I’m proud of you for honoring your instinct that is telling you that you maybe should pay attention to it.

I can’t fully comment on what your therapist is thinking, because I haven’t been the one treating you. There could be signs that it would be very very rough on you to talk about it and she is just being sensitive to that, but in general the idea of retraumatizing you is not as much of a risk as you might think. I couldn’t say if your therapist is afraid about your trauma, but I doubt it. That’s something that we should be trained to deal with. It could be outside of her main comfort zone and area of expertise, but I wouldn’t expect it to be something that she is worried about. So there is always a chance that she feels that clinically, you are in a place where it would be too intense to dive into the topic and is trying to help you understand that by whatever words she can come up with, but again I don’t know.

I think there is a ton of bravery in your desire to finally share and unpack your story.  You should think about this as a type of exposure activity. To reduce the trauma symptoms and anxiety that you feel from these memories, you need to be exposed to them. Our memories are very fluid. Every time we recall something, we store it back in our memories in a different way.

Right now, you trauma memories are stored in a very threatening way. It feels like they are happening all over again when you are triggered by something. By continually addressing them and not avoiding the unpleasantness involved, you can actually store them with new information and insight. You can store them in a way that feels more like a movie scene and less like a virtual reality simulation. In your case, it would probably be wise to not jump in head first, though. You would want to take a more systematic approach.

When you develop a hierarchy or a courage ladder in exposure treatment, you start with the lowest level than can cause you a moderate amount of anxiety. For instance, if someone has a phobia of driving, they might start with talking about cars in general or maybe looking at pictures of cars or people driving. If that creates a moderate level of anxiety, but it’s not going to drive them to full panic freak out, that’s a good starting point. Then you gain exposure to that level for extended periods of time until your body stops reacting and it becomes fairly easy to endure. After that you go up a notch and make it more intense. You continue working in this way until you are able to do the actual thing.

So for right now, you might not want to dive into specifics and tell the entire story, but maybe you want to start with talking about trust issues or trauma in general or describe how it makes you feel. Develop some ideas with your therapist as a starting point. You can build toward telling the actual story once you achieve some mastery over these other steps. You will want to pace yourself and make sure that you have built up some good skills and coping strategies so that you don’t completely unravel at each step. I know that you want to do this on your time, but there is no timeline for this. Push yourself, but don’t rush yourself.

If you feel like your therapist doesn’t know what she’s doing in this regard or can’t seem to move forward in a way that you are satisfied with, it may be worth looking into a therapist that works specifically with trauma clients. They would be very well equipped to guide you through this process.

The last thing I want to address is your last point – that you need to do this right because you won’t be able to handle it twice. You are engaging in some thinking traps here. Namely black and white thinking.  Anxiety wants you to think that you have one shot at everything and that if you mess it up, you are screwed forever. That is not the case.

You can tackle this bit by bit and if you attempt to tell your story to someone and aren’t able to, that does not mean that you cannot try again. In fact, you may need to take a few tries before the words actually come out. That’s normal.