“I can’t,” she whispered during one session, clutching the teddy bear I had given her. Her voice was barely audible, her eyes fixed on the floor. “If I close my eyes… they’ll come back.”
“The nightmares?” I asked gently.
She nodded, her grip on the teddy bear tightening. “Every time. They don’t go away. I can’t…” Her voice broke, and she shook her head, refusing to continue.
I leaned back in my chair, my heart aching for her. It was clear that the nightmares were deeply tied to her trauma, but any attempt to address the assault made her completely shut down. She would curl into herself, trembling and unresponsive, and I knew better than to push her.
The last thing I wanted was to force her to relive that incident and undo the progress we’d made.
Still, the nightmares weren’t the only
