Can I Tell My Story, Uncensored? Should I?

What is the importance of telling your story?  I mean really telling it, from beginning to end.  The last time I attempted to do that was in the last couple of years and it was only the highlights, if you will, of a life time of smaller hurts and also of ongoing effects of childhood sexual abuse which still affect me today.  The statement that counselor made to me was that any one of these events would be enough to cause PTSD in someone.  For two or three, one hour sessions I briefly ran down the list without too much detail.  From the confident woman I first met, this counselor changed before my eyes into someone who seemed to be afraid to hear the next thing that would come from my mouth.  My trauma was causing her pain in some way.  I didn't understand how she could feel my pain.  All I knew was that she was having serious problems with hearing my bare bones story.  I felt bad to be hurting her, so I didn't go back.  My story remained untold.

Lately I've been googling, trying to find out if telling it in story form is a good thing, necessary or just a nice sounding way of wallowing in the past.  When I think of NOT telling my story as a whole, instead of in disconnected pieces; then a whole host of statements made to me by my abuser start playing in a continuous loop, joined by all the other not-helpful things people("friends", counselors, pastors, police officers and lawyers and toss in one ignorant doctor) have said to me over the years.  I often feel as disconnected as the way in which I've told my story to my pastor/counselor.  In the beginning he told me I didn't have to tell him everything about the actual abuse, so I didn't.  Along the way I disclosed small snapshots of what happened when I was abused.  I tested him at every turn, waiting for the words, "I can't help you. You need to find another counselor."  Instead he keeps on telling me that he's in it for the long haul.  I believe him now.

In spite of a non linear telling of events and staying focused, more on the effects of the abuse in my life today than a upfront factual retelling of the abuse, my pastor/counselor has the basic gist of what happened.  There is a bit of a problem with adequately addressing guilt and shame, since I've only barely brushed on those immensely shaming aspects of the abuse, in all the many hours of counseling over the last 18 months.  I don't know how to go there, or if I should go there.  It's pretty explicit because that's part of the story, and to sanitize what happened so its a little more palatable seems like its minimizing what really happened.  I lived through it.  No one sanitized it for me.  No one dimmed the horror by skipping what I couldn't handle.  Not one person has heard it all.  In order to cushion the blows my words have become to my hearer, I always skip around as I speak of the sexual abuse in counseling.  Past counselors have either been deeply affected to the point that they can't help me or have done other odd things that moved the focus from my abuser like: attempting to convince me it was a different person who abused me; or that my "real" problem was something besides the sexual abuse.  To a point, it has been a necessary cushioning of it for me too, yet I'm also acutely aware of my edits and deliberate minimizing of the abuse in order to talk about it and not harm or scare off another counselor.  There are times I don't say things because I'm sitting there contemplating whether or not bringing up certain aspects of events would be too explicit; and therefore would bring down some sort of rebuke for a gratuitous recounting of things about the abuse or its long term effects that didn't need to be said.

This fear of rejection runs in me so strongly that I can't think reasonably about the chances of such a rebuke occurring.  Technically, rejection of me as a person, and not listening to the details of my story are not the same thing.  In my mind I know this, but the part of me which fear controls can't make that distinction.  Crawling under a rock and face hiding shame dominates my thinking and instinctive self protective behaviour.  I would contaminate another person by going into the shame filled details.  Why wouldn't anyone not look at me with disgust if they knew everything?  It's not like I want to put out all the details, or even any of them, to everyone who knows me.  I just want one person on earth to know everything and not turn away from me.  That hasn't happened yet.  No one yet knows everything.  I don't blame them for not being able to handle hearing it, but still, I had to live it.  Isn't there anyone who can listen to me say everything; from the sound of the stairs, the creaking open of the door, the smell of concrete, the taste of fear and helplessness, to the things I did to provoke him so he would just get it over with?  Or is it just too much to put on someone else?  When it's all put together it is horrendous and explicit in all the details of what he did to me and what I did, felt, saw, and thought at the time.  Is is wrong for me to tell my story, uncensored?