lol, sunny, i like your LI comment inserted there. it made me laugh .

i think you guys could be right - he meant it as a confrontation or something, trying to challenge me to do more. i guess it's the wrong 'style' for me, though - my old T used to do this too, but i would just end up crying. don't know new-T enough to cry in front of him yet, so i guess he had no clue how much it hurt. but this T did say that his style was quite confronting in the first session, so maybe i should have been prepared. the bastard .

thing is, i actually have been doing quite a lot of what we've been discussing. i have been challenging my thoughts (and the obsession-compulsion cycle - and successfully broken it a few times too!!). i have been doing activity schedules (not so great on following them through). i really have changed my sleep patterns, which was something we both agreed i needed to do as a priority.

given that i've only seen him for 4 sessions, and the first one was just an intake assessment, so it was only the 2nd when we started discussing techniques - it really only left 2 sessions for him to get this sort of feedback. but i guess i didnt mention it, and he never asked.

so i must say i was really surprised when he brought it up yesterday. shocked, more like it. i don't think 2 sessions is enough to get a clear view of whether someone is putting in effort, especially when you've never bothered to check if they have.

he actually said many more things which makes me wonder if there might be a bit of counter-transference going on. things like i'd lost faith in him as a therapist (where did this come from?!), telling me about his mother who was too depressed throughout his life to ever attend to him, stuff like that.

i spoke about it to pdoc today, and he was really surprised too. but he didnt say to stop going, i think it's something he wants me to work through.

probably 'selfish' was my interpretation, T probably didnt mean to be disparaging. i'd just been majorly triggered this past week about what a bad/selfish/lazy/soul-sucking sort of person that i am, so it was easy to see this as further confirmation.

pdoc did say he was happy to talk to T and tell him to maybe give me a bit of room, because i'm in a bad headspace right now, but i said it's ok - i'll try myself first. if this T needs feedback that i'm doing what he tells me, then i just need to know that. but my old T never followed up, i guess, or when he did follow up he wouldn't give me any positive feedback, so i guess it just didn't occur.

thanks for all your feedback, guys. i'll try with this T again. if he says "no, deli, i really did just mean that you're a selfish twat" then i'll know to take my money elsewhere.