Wow, the last two weeks have been completely insane! My H has had several different health crises at once (nothing life threatening, but very uncomfortable) which also necessitated him going off his AD's cold turkey. So you could say he has not been in a good mood, and I've been exhausted trying to take care of him and deal with his emotional dysregulation.

Couples T is going OK I guess. We have had two joint sessions so far, and this week I had to go alone because H wasn't feeling well enough. I feel like the T was being fairly challenging with me, pressing me to be precise about things and going straight to saying what he thought the issues were, without giving a huge ton of support or empathy. I felt very ashamed at times and called my own T and cried on her voicemail afterwards. Even so, I'd rather over-direct than useless and having no apparent plan. Anyway, H is supposed to see him alone on Friday, so I am curious to hear how that goes.

I saw my own T today, which was good because after everything I really needed support. We talked a little about my week and about my individual session with the couples T. When we finished with that, I was sitting next to her on the couch, quite close, but I was having these waves wash over me of wanting to be touching her. That was really hard to talk about. I started by asking her if she ever had an urge to touch her clients in some way, like hugging them, but felt she couldn't or shouldn't. She said yes, that it's not just about whether the client has asked for touch, but also about making sure it's not her own needs she is meeting with the touch, and realizing that some clients might say yes because they don't know how to say no.

After that I managed to spit out that I was feeling touch deprived and that even though I was only sitting literally an inch from her, that part of me felt it was still too far. She started to respond by saying there are many kinds of touch, and I started laughing both because what she said was completely obvious and because I was feeling very nervous and embarrassed. But she suggested we could try sitting next to each other, but letting our arms and legs touch on the edges. I agreed, so we did that. She asked what I noticed and I said it felt very good and calming, but at the same time it also felt like an adrenaline rush. She said to just sit and notice both of those things and see if they shifted. I observed for a while, and the andrenaline thing calmed a little but not totally. In actuality it felt kind of overwhelming as I was basically feeling waves of love and gratitude which was pretty moving. However I told her I didn't feel comfortable sharing yet how I was feeling and she said OK. She talked a little about how our nervous systems were interacting, and that is what happens between mothers and children and also why race horses have ponies to keep them company at the gates before a race. An interesting example of that happened when I talked about a conversation I had with my dad that was hard but turned out to be healing between us, and when I was done talking we both took a deep breath at exactly the same time. I asked if she noticed it and she said yes, we must have both felt relieved!

In any case, we continued sitting like that for the rest of the session. At one point I asked her if she felt like I was getting anywhere. She said yes, and this is evidence (gesturing to how we were sitting). When I started seeing her, I totally refused to touch her and barely even wanted her to look at me.

At the very end I said I wanted to say one more thing. Then it was very hard to get out but I said that although she has never said she loved me, that I felt she did. She looked at me lovingly and said, "I am glad you picked that up...I do care about you a lot."

Yep, so I still generally fail at going less often, but maybe I am still growing with it, and maybe it's ok...