I don't know if this will help at all, but it might, so I want to share with you. I don't talk much, especially not in situations that are difficult, such as therapy. I have been with my current therapist a year now and still have sessions where I do not utter a word. But, we have found ways of working around this. A huge part of me is living in a huge amount of fear too, so I know it can be a terrible, terrible world.

In the first instance, I took in some writings and showed them to my T, so she knew some of what I was dealing with as a client. So she knew what I was looking for in a
therapist (patient, quiet, calm, understanding, use of nurturing touch when ready, etc etc).

After that first session, I know we spent several in a lot of silence, and it is important to find a therapist that is comfortable with this, because a lot, A LOT, are not. She tried to find ways of interacting with me, and it worked, slowly but surely. She is used to working with children, so I think that helped, and we just sat and looked at flashcards or passed a ball between us, played hunt the thimble, played a game where I had to guess what I was holding without looking at it (that took some trust that she didn't have anything horrible in her bag!!), played a game where we drew shapes and the other had to make a picture out of it. Basically, just interacting, and through this there was a need for a few innocuous words to be spoken. It helped.

After a while, we found that I find writing things down much easier and so now, I bring in things that I have written, and will either read them or give them to her to read, aloud mostly. I also write instead of talking, so some sessions she will be the only one using her voice, as I write replies or comments.

It is very, very, very slow going, so you really need a patient therapist, but it is possible.

I had a therapist when I was 14, but the only thing they kept saying was "I cant help you if you wont talk". I took that to mean that I had to talk to be helped but I know differently now. There is a way around this. Any therapist who says that is, in my opinion, substandard. It is their problem, their inability, their uselessness as a therapist because it is they who cannot find a way to access this client, to reach them, to help them.

Hope that helps in some way, and please feel free to PM me if you would like any more info. I don't know if I have selective mutism, but I do choose not to talk, an awful lot of the time, when most probably would, so I guess it would fit.