Well, I am agreeing here that you should get a gold star for experiencing that, rather than for stopping it. If *I* were your T though, I would be giving you the star for reaching out for a connection even when you were in the middle of that. If I had to say just from reading your past account, I would conclude you got out of it so fast not because you were tired so much as because you suddenly realized you were being held, and you accepted that. So I don't know if that might have been more what your T was thinking, or whether he was praising you more for being able to bounce out of it when it got too much, before you got too fried. But he didn't say, and he would have had no reason to say, that you never should have gone there in the first place.

On a different level though, if I were your T, I would have been a bit concerned with having a client on the floor thrashing around and screaming, because it's actually a safety issue. You're not safe if you could thrash into some furniture at any second and physically injure yourself. So at that point, it would be good to come out of that place until you can find a way to contain or titrate that experience more. That's hardly your responsibility though; it's your T's. In a way, giving you a star could have been an apology for the fact that he let you go too far into something without enough support, such that you were in danger of injuring yourself physically.

Just a thought. I still think it sounds like you guys are doing great work together. I hope you get to talk about the gold stars next time around and he can clarify what he meant.

Thanks, Alpaca, I think he is not used to this INTENSITY of emotion exploding. Me neither, but more used to it than him.

When I listened to the recording I was only 8 yr old upset for 2 minutes, and then , he asks if this is the littlest me, and as soon as he says that, : out she comes in full fury, pain, terror but it only actually in real time last thirty explosive seconds. I cannot believe it was only thirty seconds!!! but in that 30 seconds, the chair goes over, the desk is nearly knocked over and all hell seems to break lose.

I agree with you, I reached OUT to HIM, that is what stopped it, I ended up in his arms. I did what I could not do at the time as I was trapped (and learnt that I could not turn to others as they did not come and help) and also I grew up learning more and more than reaching out to others was literally dangerous so learnt to go inward. But with this T, I am now reaching out to him literally and physically. And it is - it MUST be - changing things.