I really liked our session today and felt like I made a lot of progress, and I got my usual warm buzz from being with T. It's nice being the first appointment of the new week. We can help each other launch into a new week.

We ended up talking a lot about communication between me and my H. (This is the first appt with my T since our couples session a couple of weeks ago.) I told T that H and I had gotten into this typical pattern of communication when we were with him. T said he knew and that's why he intervened. It had felt so good to have him halt the pattern. I had felt relieved and today got to tell T "THANK YOU." The communication pattern is that my H doesn't like to let me talk about anything meaningful without interrupting. Especially if I am expressing any feeling, my H gets angry. I have always been bewildered by that so learned not to express emotion around him so as to keep him from getting angry. But at T's office, I was sad, and grieving (because I have learned that T's office is a safe place to do that), and H began to interrupt by starting to get defensive and angry (I don't know why he is like this, he just is), and T told him to hold off, to let sunny be sad and grieve. That was just so wonderful to have T do that for me, and I had suddenly realized on a really deep level how much I had missed that in my marriage--being allowed to express my feelings without being criticized or shut down or the target of anger. That always bewildered me and so I withdrew to avoid his anger. So we would get in this cycle that went round and round. T thought it was very positive that I was recognizing these patterns. He explained that for some reason, my being sad or expressing feeling was a trigger for my H and so he would react in anger. Unfortunately, someone being angry at me is a complete trigger for me. I can't stand it and withdraw to avoid their anger. T says this is left over from my childhood when the only choice I had was to withdraw from parental anger, since I wasn't allowed to talk back or complain or cry or whatever. So here are me and my H--our behaviors are complete triggers for each other. It's like we're a horrible, "perfect" fit. Somehow I chose the worst possible person to marry--one who aroused all my dysfunctionality about anger, among other things. (T has said before that is probably the reason I chose my H--it was an unconscious effort to work out enduring problems from childhood.) T says this horrible, perfect fit is something he sees all the time with couples who come to his office (each couple has a different way of being locked--they don't have my particular problem). They are completely stuck, locked together, and he works with them to release that and learn new patterns and understand better what is triggering the other person and how not to be triggered by it. He said with a couple like me and my H, he would work with my H to quit shutting me down when I was expressing myself and to let me keep talking and feeling until it was all out. And he would work with me on how not to be triggered by my H's anger and to not take it personally, but to stay present and ask my H questions about it in a curious way, and to not get hurt and scared and withdraw. (And he would also work with my H to help him understand why he gets angry in those situations--it is probably something from his childhood or from his own parents' interactions.)

Anyway, it's too late now for me and my H to fix things (and neither of us wants to), but I am learning more about myself through recognizing my communication and behavior patterns, and I hope to learn how to not be so dysfunctional in the future, and if confronted with dysfunctionality from the other person, how to handle it. (Sometimes the only way to handle it is to leave the relationship, but sometimes, you can successfully work through it if you're savvy enough. I think T will try to teach me how to be more savvy.)

One of the best parts of the session was that at the end, T asked if I wanted to come in next week at the same time! This will be the first time we have met 2 weeks in a row this year. Maybe he is feeling like we are making good progress too.

We left together to go exchange parking spots, and T was in a hurry to do this before the next client came, so I walked briskly, as we continued to talk. But then by the men's restroom, he said, stop. Look at me. So I stopped and turned to face him and we had this rather long conversation. I was wondering, why aren't we continuing on to the cars? I thought he was in a hurry. I kept thinking that he must want to go into the restroom before we went outside, so I was having a hard time focusing on whatever it was he was saying. I didn't want to make him late. Finally we continued on our way. Out-of-the-room interactions can be challenging sometimes! I got to ride in his car again. As he drove, we kept talking, and for some reason being outside the office made it easier for me to tell him something quite painful. He looked kind of dismayed at what I told him. And I said, "I know, OUCH!" In his office, I think I would have cried. I don't know why but there just seemed something really functional about this--I could tell him something painful and just say ouch instead of feeling re-traumatized by the whole thing. Interestingly, as T stopped to let me out to go to my parked car, this woman was in an oncoming car and it turned out we were stopped near where she wanted to pull her car in. She looked super annoyed. I said to T, as he backed up a few feet, "she looks so pissed off at us." He said, "I know. What is her problem?!" I actually loved this little exchange, LOL.