I wanted to tell about this conversation I had in therapy yesterday.

It was hard for me to explain to T what I was feeling. I said that because T meant a lot to me, part of me wished she could mean more to me than she actually did. T found this confusing, so I tried telling her that I was feeling a sense of loss, but she started asking what it was a loss of. I said it was a loss of something that never existed in the first place, except in my own fantasy world. Finally I managed to tell her about an exercise at a therapy-related talk I'd gone to where we were asked to visualize being three and waking up to a loving mother asking what we wanted for breakfast, and how when I thought about feeling safe and nurtured in that way, I didn't tend to think about my mom.

T said "because she's not that kind of mother." I nodded and said "but sometimes I think of you." T said "because you think I would be that kind of mother." I said yes and then said "that is so cliche."

T said it was the opposite of cliche and that she was touched. She said that in people who haven't had that kind of mothering, it's a kind of wound and you will end up looking for mothering elsewhere. She said that is also an amazing thing about therapy, that people who start out as strangers can build that kind of connection, but that most clients can't or don't want to go there.

I still wasn't sure what she actually felt when I said that though, so I asked her. She said she had felt some "pricklies of potential tears" and felt warm and good and that this was the reason she did this work. So I guess I am glad I managed to spit that out and that I actually asked how she felt about it instead of assuming it might have made her feel uncomfortable or something.