Although your mental health is very important, I recognize you also need to meet those financial responsibilities.
It is important that you are starting to recognize how the trauma from the past has been affecting you as an adult. You have already started one part of the therapy, which we often call “gaining insight” into how come we react to certain things the way we do and think of things the way we do.
Sharing your story with a friend can have it’s benefits and drawbacks. One of the concerns that often comes up for people is that talking about the trauma can make some people feel very worse. Your mind is purposely trying to suppress these memories for survival purposes. The mind focuses on survival during a traumatic event so it will suppress the information instead of allowing you to process what happened. Therefore, once you begin talking more about the trauma, you may begin to notice a lot of strong emotions increase. This can happen even when you are talking about the trauma in therapy. That is why we work so hard to build a trusting relationship in therapy before trying to talk more about traumatic events. If you really do feel close to this friend and believe they are someone who will not judge you, then it may be ok to talk more with them about your story. However, keep in mind that you may experience very strong emotions at the time. Basically, you can feel more vulnerable when expressing what happened so be sure this person is someone you can trust and they will support you.
I usually don’t recommend anyone with a serious substance use issue to begin processing their trauma if they have not addressed their substance use. Why? Because their substance use may start increasing to cope with talking about what happened to them.
Thus, my focus would be on developing new ways to manage difficult emotions during this time period. I recommend taking the time to review things that are easy to access. I recommend starting off with listening to Mindfulness Meditation videos on Youtube. I usually practice these videos with my patients during session, but you can also try to follow along on your own, the idea here is that you are developing new ways to manage difficult emotions before starting to talk in-depth about the abuse you experienced.
The next step you can do is focus on reading and better understanding how trauma works. I recommend reading the book The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. It is not an overly expensive book and can be found in different formats on amazon. By understanding trauma more especially something like childhood abuse, you are gaining a better understanding about yourself.
Ultimately, you are already doing the first part of the therapy processing. You are taking time to learn more about yourself and trauma by doing some reading and you are practicing new ways to manage strong emotions. I would typically start therapy off with an approach similar to this.
Therapy is a great space to talk about these things and overcome trauma. I encourage you to still look into therapy once your financial situation is a bit more stable. I encourage you to continue to recognize your strengths and not be hard on yourself during this process.
Best of luck
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