Hi, 

So I've been working really hard on my mental health for a few months now, I've gotten sober, go to therapy weekly, have made goals for myself that im excited about and have been trying my best to stay present in my feelings while not letting them consume me. It's been tough but I've made a lot of progress in how I handle stress and feel generally more clear headed and...more stable and hopeful than I have in a long while. But I've run into kind of a problem that I wasn't expecting and am not entirely sure how to handle. Lately I've been having really vivid dreams where I feel like I'm reliving certain traumatic experiences in my life. Some are related to loss, such as the loss of my grandma, the death of a pet, my friend who unalived himself around this time a few years ago...but the most troubling by far has been dreams where I feel like I'm reliving all different moments of sexual trauma that I've faced during my life. 

My dreams whether good or bad are often so vivid and physically feel real, so I definitely wake up pretty distraught. I've even woken up in tears sometimes. I try to use grounding techniques to try and bring myself back to the present and remind myself that I'm okay now but still, it's obviously a pretty troubling note to start the day on and sometimes I end up thinking about it for the rest of the day. 

I plan to bring this up in my next session but I wanted to ask here if anyone else suffers similarly, and if so how do you bring yourself out of that? Many things I'm already working through with my therapist but there are some traumas in my life that I just never feel ready to work on..to even say the actual word of what's happened to me starts to send me into a panic and my voice starts shaking and I start stuttering and dissociating. My therapist is aware of these events but I've never gone into detail. Is there really no way to heal without diving deeply into these things that I've tried so hard to forget? 

Thanks for listening, and if anyone has any input I'd be glad to hear it.