Bu çalışmanın amacı, travmatik yaşam olaylarından kaynaklanan duygusal bastırmaya, bastırmanın travma mağdurlarına etkilerine, psikoterapi sürecinde izlenen tedavi yöntemlerine, ve psikoterapi sürecinde travma hikayelerini dinleyen ve bunlarla çalışan terapistlerin duygularına değinmektir. Bu makalede, Türkiye’de sıkça yaşanan ve uzun dönemde ruhsal problemlere yol açan travmaların başında gelen çocukluk dönemi cinsel istismarına odaklanılmıştır. Yazar, travma ve duygusal bastırma hakkındaki teorik bilgilerin psikoterapi süreciyle entegre edilerek sunulması amacıyla, çalışmakta olduğu bir vakasını da bu makalede ele almıştır. Travma ile başa çıkabilmek amacıyla, duygularını bastıran mağdurların olumsuz duygu durumlarının daha da arttığı göz önünde bulundurulduğunda, bu çalışmada ele alınan vaka, bu konuya bir örnek teşkil etmektedir. Ayrıca, bu vaka, duygusal bastırmanın mağdurlar üzerindeki olumsuz etkileri ile ilgili literatür bulgularını destekleyici ve açıklayıcı bir özelliğe sahiptir. Çocukluk yıllarında cinsel istismara maruz kalan yetişkinlerle yürütülen psikoterapi sürecinde amaç, mağdurun travmatik yaşantılarını anlatmasını, böylece, yaşadığı asıl duygularına ulaşmasını ve onları gözden geçirerek ifade etmesini sağlamaktır. Çocuklukta cinsel istismar mağduru olan yetişkinlerle sürdürülen psikoterapi sürecinde, terapistler de duygusal zorluklar yaşamaktadırlar. Bu zorluklar, temsili travmatizasyon ve travmatik karşıaktarım şeklinde iki ana grupta ele alınmıştır. Psikoterapi sürecinde, yaşadığı travma sonrasında duygusal bastırmaya başvuran mağdurların duygularını ele alan terapistin, aynı zamanda kendi zorluklarını da ele alarak yoluna devam etmesi sürecin en önemli yapı taşıdır. Bu çalışma, hem terapistin hem de hastanın duygularının üzerinde çalışılması gereken önemli bir alana işaret etmektedir

The purpose of the current article is to focus on emotional suppression in adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, which is one of the most frequent traumatic events in Turkey and the most important leading causes of long term psychological problems in adulthood. The effects of emotional suppression on trauma survivors, important aspects of therapy process and emotions of therapists while listening and working on traumatic stories, are the main focus of this article. The author illustrated one of her clinical cases by integrating the theoretical perspective and literature findings about trauma and emotional suppression with the psychotherapy process. In emotion perspective, as mental, physical, and behavioral reactions of individuals to traumatic experiences, their emotional reactions are crucial. Feelings of fear, sadness, anger, irritability, guilt, shame, loss of trust and self-esteem, and emotional distance from others are important aspects of survivors’ emotional state. Furthermore, as Herman (1997) reported, emotional blunting, emotional flooding, or change over these two extremes determined the emotional behavior of trauma survivors. In terms of emotional behaviors of survivors, the emotion suppression is one of the important coping strategies used to deal with negative impacts of the event. However, the maladaptiveness of this coping strategy was revealed in the literature (Gross, 2007). Accordingly, studies focusing on the mediation effect of emotional suppression, on the relationship between trait of negative affect intensity and psychological distress, showed that the use of suppression was related to higher intensity of negative emotions (Lynch, Robins, Morse, and Krause, 2001). The case of childhood sexual abuse covered in this article is a representative example of this condition. In the therapy processs of trauma survivors, avoiding emotion expression and its causes are important treatment target for this population (Kennedy-Moore and Watson, 1999; Rosenthall, et al., 2005). The main aim of the therapy process is to make survivors disclose their traumatic experiences, thus to process their original affective responses to trauma and memories of the event. By doing so, therapist helped survivors realize their symptoms of emotion inhibition and begin to appraise them (Kennedy-Moore and Watson, 1999). On behalf of therapists, it was revealed that interacting with individuals who were using expression suppression was rated as more stressful than interacting with individuals using reappraisal (Butler, Egloff, Wilhelm, Smith, Erickson, and Gross, 2003). However, in case of childhood sexual abuse, the difficulties therapists faced with while working with traumatic events and trauma related emotions, deserve more attention than difficulties while working with emotion suppression. Accordingly, working with trauma survivors is a challenging issue in terms of therapists’ emotions. To hear and to witness negative experiences of survivors leaves some marks on therapists who are attempting to care them (Wastell, 2005; Kaser-Boyd, n.d.). The difficulties they experience during therapy process of sexual abuse were covered under two titles including vicarious traumatization and traumatic countertransference. To conclude, this paper is a discussion about the emotional suppression of clients who were sexually abused in their childhood. The therapy process of these sexual abuse victims includes therapist’s difficulties in dealing with clients’ feelings, especially helplessness and horror and the treatment of survivors. In the literature, the emotional suppression was classified as a coping strategy in order to deal with negative emotions resulted from traumatic experiences. However, it was associated with poor psychological health. Trauma victims suppressing their feelings suffer from impaired memory of the event, physiological responsiveness, and high degree of negative emotions. Moreover, they could not resolve the conflict between their actual inner experience and outer expression of their emotions. Furthermore, the case of K. supported the empirical findings about emotional suppression. Therefore, the maladaptiveness of emotional suppression was justified by research findings and example of clinical experience of the author.