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She had this really open accepting smiling demeanour.

She said that actually she works with transference and countertransference and projection - but she’s not an analyst. Spent some time explaining to me how she works (we’re in this together, we do it together), that she makes sure that I am safe - in between sessions, that the sessions contain the feelings, that it’s important to establish the relationship first before plunging into dealing with the feelings, that I’m more than cognitive enough that it’s time to look at the emotional stuff. That CBT type therapy would only reinforce the cognitive stuff at the expense of dealing with the real emotional experiential stuff.

Today was a really good session - or at least was, in terms of how a good therapist should be - she’s really so amazingly kind and sympathetic and gentle and understanding. None of this pissing about with lengthening silence at beginning of session, and when she talks it’s in direct relation to what I’m talking about.

She said hi when we sat down - yay a normal human beginning, and I said hi - slight pause said I don’t really know what to say and my god she actually said it ‘how are you feeling’. The question I’ve waited fucking years to be asked and when I get asked it I don’t bloody know what to say!

She seems to think that the anger isn’t really the issue so much as the pain and that we will work to getting to the pain, to letting me stay with the tears. She said she felt very sad about the life I’d had as a kid - it just doesn’t get in does it? I hear the words I know she means it I even know it’s true, but it doesn’t mean anything to me. I’m not letting any of it in. Said it was so much harder for me to go with the ‘softer’ feelings, the pain, than the anger, which is defensive and protective.

She heard me. Well at least I’m coming away with the impression that she really hears me.

She said a few times that we will see if I can’t stay longer with the feeling - the tears, the pain. She’s saying and doing all the right things.

My confidence and hope in her not misplaced. She’s exactly the sort of T that I’ve only read about and never believed I would ever find.

Amazingly enough it is so much scarier with her than with any other T I’ve seen - she’s going right to the core of things.

At one point she said I’m going to suggest something risky and you don’t have to do it. Would you touch my hand? Me - total freak out hell no that makes my hair stand on end (laughing always laughing). Then I said well I could make myself but it wouldn’t be real. She was soothing and encouraging and I talked about that being something that really scares me therefore it’s something I ought to do. Then I said oh hell yes I will (something in me spontaneously made me decide) and lol she then said I didn’t have to but I did anyway and wow blow me down but if I didn’t burst into tears. And she said, I thought that might happen. That touch is a really important thing for me to learn, to take, whatever.

I felt really crap - I hated myself for those childish tears, for I don’t know what just a real self loathing and contempt - it’s not serious. And that now scares me that there’s nothing wrong with me nothing bad in my life, no trauma nothing anywhere near as bad as others, and that it’s all trivial and unimportant - can’t explain it but I feel - ashamed? I don’t know the word. It really is only about bloody crying, pathetic. Nothing to do with external reality nothing to do with anything anyone has done or not done to me, all to do with pathetic trivial unimportant petty boo hoo hoo crap.

I fear that she sees it’s not serious, not compared to others who have real problems, who have real things that happened to them to screw them up.

She is like a text book T a la forum come to life - it’s uncanny - the things she says the way she is. She mentioned neuroscience and cumulative trauma - because I told her about my sense that I’m making a fuss about nothing that there’s nothing bad enough in my past to warrant the tears etc - and yes she’s heard that before...

I can accept this because that’s part of my problem - not taking my own feelings seriously. Also, she is on my side, SHE takes it seriously, where I can’t. But it all makes me squirm, I feel REALLY uncomfortable about it all, about her kindness and pushing me to - take - really. All the gooey sentimental weak pathetic dependent no mind of ones own shit. And that makes it scarier and I’m infinitely more defended about it than any amount of anger or resentment or petty jealousy stuff that I was prepared to go into with psychoT.

Oh she said that too, repeated in fact, about my cognitive abilities already very well developed and that this stuff is on a non verbal level and that’s what we will be trying to get to - setting aside the rationalizing thinking me to get to the feelings.

Boy do I so not want to go to tears, to touch, to getting on that mummy level - it really makes me feel so ick even thinking about those kinds of exposed revealed weak and pathetic feelings - the total exposure of the core badness that is me...

Well. Wow. Phew. This is going to be SO hard. It’s the second time now with her that I’ve sat there towards end of session and just wanted to go - feeling like ok good I’ve finished now I just want to go home. I don’t think I’m even aware of how much is going on in me with all this touchy feely lovey dovey stuff. There’s so much fucking pressure - she’s pretty full on focused on getting me to go to tears, to experiencing the needy wanting/not wanting stuff. Giving me so much kindness and caring and gentleness so openly and it’s just too fucking much. Part of me knows it’s genuine and right and it’s what I need, part of me is really backing off from it - seeing it as insincere, manipulative, part of some game plan that has nothing to do with my actually getting.

But there’s so much more and I haven’t a clue what’s going on. It’s addressing a part of me of which I’m really not aware at all - or at least only obscurely.

I only shed a couple of tears today - I’m well and truly shut down, batting off what she says. She really pushed the giving to me bit (and for the life of me I can’t remember the words she used) I’m really batting it away - it’s like I’m sitting inside somewhere and presenting this mask - which moves its mouth and talks but which isn’t really what I think or feel or say - keeping me well protected or rather well hidden away. Not disconnected today, but like I’d got a short circuit in my brain, in my thinking - I sat there for quite a long time at times just not knowing what to say what to think - just feeling ‘I don’t know I don’t know’.

I don’t feel good at all - I feel quite freaked and really want to shut down and not do this - (but of course I DO want to do this - I have enough rational understanding of what it’s all about to know that it’s right.) It’s an internal thing - I don’t have any intellectual understanding or rational knowledge about myself as far as this stuff goes - so my reactions are entirely subconscious automatic not aware up here at all. I don’t already KNOW this stuff I can’t anticipate how I will react.

I can’t just make myself let stuff in - I talked about that to her today - not letting good in. But I can’t just make myself take it in. It actually is a negative to me not a positive. All sorts of things - getting past the fear and the automatic withdrawal, making the hideous mistake of believing it’s meant for me only to be fucked about with, to have it shown NOT to be for me at all. Fuck. And here she is offering all this good stuff to me and all I can do is bat it away. Baby steps, she used that phrase, even though it’s a cliché, but it makes sense. She is patient...