[Master Of Deceit]

The counselling service at my school has recently changed. Since all the counsellors are different, the new counsellor asked me about my hostory. For the first time, I mentioned the possible childhood sexual abuse (i'm still having trouble believeing what happened was abuse, for a specific reason I don't really want to bring up). Anyway, I was told I could be put in contact with a counselling center for sexual assault/abuse victims. I have just over a week until my next session and I really don't know what to do. For one thing, as I have mentioned, I still struggle with defining what happened as abuse, yet there are facts I can't ignore that definitely point that way. But my biggest trouble with making this decision is that I worry that I can't handle it in my current situation. I worry that opening up the issue will make my life hell, and mess up my school semester (which is pretty intense). But I also worry that the consequences are messing up my daily life anyway, and that it's getting worse every year. I worry that if I wait, my future job might be affected (I already lost a lame part time job because of panic attacks) and I might not be able to handle dealing with it then.

So, my question is: what is it like to begin counselling for sexual abuse? Is it really as bad as I imagine?