I haven't been writing about my sessions lately because, well basically, they have been all over the place. My T was wonderful and supportive while I was away on vacation. We exchanged about 4 email those 3 weeks and had a ten minute conversation a few days before I left for home. When I got home (finally) I was SO happy to see him again. So absolutely joyous to be in his office with him and we had a few very good sessions until the "picture" session. I had a bad reaction to him seeing my vacation pictures... which I wrote about on here.

We explored what happened and he was really good about it. It took a few sessions for me to bring the pictures back but I did and it was okay. I explained that I was fearful that he would "see" something in those pictures of me that would change his opinion of me , or destroy our relationship. I could not control what he saw there and what he thought and I would not know what he was thinking unless he told me. He was also seeing me in other circumsances, outside of the office.

That day I left his office so upset over the pictures I wrote how I ran into a woman coming in who I thought (again) was his wife. If you have read my old posts you know how skittish I am about running into her (okay skittish is putting it mildly. I'm terrified). It's kind of hard to write about this on OF but when I questioned him the next week he said it was a client not his wife. I tried to accept it but I swore I saw her get out of a car which I later found out belonged to his wife and so I was afraid that I caught him lying to me. So last Thursday I asked him again and he said I could not have seen her get out of the car and he described her ... even to the point of telling what she was wearing. So then I began to wonder how he knew with such certainty what she was wearing a week later and did he remember what all his clients wore? That made me vaguely uncomfortable for some reason.

I think I then began to really dissociate. It was hard to hear anything else but I saw him move in closer and he looked so kind so concerned. He told me that he would not lie to me because once, a long time ago when he began his career he told someone something that was not entirely true and he hurt them and he swore he would never do it again.

I was also a mess because my sister had ripped into me just minutes earlier about how bad a mother I am and that there is a field of anxiety around me that causes my son to be anxious as well. And then she told me I should look at myself to see if I'm narcissistic I was so hurt by this unprovoked and surprising attack. T reassured me but it was just a terrible session. I ended up calling him that night to ask him if I ruined our relationship because of my lack of trust in him and he said no and we were fine and that I was doing what I'm supposed to do. He told me it's my inner child that is sabotoging me and us. He told me to talk to her and when I sobbed that I didn't know what to say he told me some things to try and it really helped me get through that day and the next. Then I lost the connection again.

Today we spend the session working on re-establishing the trust. This is probably being complicated by the upcoming anniversaries of being abandoned by my oldT and my surgery and the complications and having to deal with all of this alone because I suddenly had no T. My T feels that I am unconsciously expecting him to do the same things to me, even though I tell him I know he is not oldT. He said that me, the adult, knows this but the child does not and she was the one most hurt by the abandonment of oldT.

The hardest part of all of this is that I truly do care for my T. And I know he cares for me. The legacy of what happened with oldT is coming between us and our relationship. Part of me believes that because I worked hard to make oldT care for me and when he did he abandoned me out of fear of his feelings for me... that the same thing will happen with my T now. If he cares for me then it's like a death sentence. He will leave me too.

This is so messy and I can't go on with doing therapy if I can't get to some level of trust. As for his wife sharing the office suite, that has been an unsettled issue that comes and goes in my head but it feels like instead of truly putting it to rest, I'm making believe that she does not exist and is not there.

I know T and I have been through a lot. He reminds me how traumatized I was when he first began to see him. He KNOWS the damage oldT did because he went through part of it with me. I have moments of real connection and trust with him but it does not last. I swing from missing him terribly to feeling numb and disconnected from him. He tells me that it's my fear of being abandoned that is disrupting our attachment and when I shove him away then it is "I" who is abandoning him and our relationship. He said he is not afraid of the attachment and it is the attachment that will help to heal me. I know he is right.

I know this is a bit rambly but I felt that I had to get this out there because it is churning around inside of me and I'm hoping others can relate in some way that will make me feel less alone.

Right now... right now I'm really missing him.

thanks
TN