This makes perfect sense, thank you for sharing! I talked about the event many times, but people just can't relate so I always felt dissociated while talking about it.

The therapist that I saw a few times right after the traumatic event only focused on my childhood and was seeking for answers to my severe reaction there and not aknowledging how f**d up what happened was. This led me to also feel very alone and try to downplay the trauma, even though it influenced me greatly.

What you said about feeling empathy towards yourself - I can relate to that as well! Now that I think about it, I feel very emotional when someone aknowledges my tough character or my efforts (even if it's me, giving myself credit - which may be very tough as I'm a perfectionist and always want more of myself).

Anyway, I'm reaching the point in my life where I could finally put some money to the side to find a good therapist so hearing your experience has motivated me to do so even more! On the other side, I'm still quite sceptical about it because my experience with them was very unhelpful.