Thanks everybody for responding. I don't feel so alone now! I guess it's just par for the course to have a disconnected session every now and then. But yuck! I just hate it!

Rainbow, Yes, we did talk about the letter from my former friend. But this had to do with the other former friend. You probably recall from me talking about that horrible situation that it involved two of my friends. Well anyway, I ran into the other one at a convention over the weekend.

It was ironic to come face to face with her in a crowd of 4,500 people. (Talk about ironic!) I had actually cut contact with her a few years ago because she had gotten way overinvolved in my life and problems, trying to talk me into leaving my husband, and being very unsympathetic about my clinical depression, which she felt i should just "get over" and that i was wallowing in self-pity and just had a negative attitude. It was the lowest time in my life, for once i needed support and help, and instead of doing that, she blamed my situation on me. It felt every bit like she had kicked me while i was already down. After getting a number of emails from her, trying to correct my attitude. . .i told her i didn't want to keep in touch anymore and why.

Six years have gone by, and at the last two shared events we've been at, I've heard that she was looking for me. She told my mother-in-law, "I'm going to give her a big hug whether she wants one or not." I successfully avoided her at one of the events. But at this one, she walked up to me and said, "You're not going to get away from me this time." I was glad, in a way, to know that she must still care about me. But i had this weird kind of "resignation" feeling. . .like i might as well hug her because she was going to track me down until i did. It kind of scared small parts of me that remember my SA, when my neighbor made me feel obligated to have unwanted physical contact with him. Not that my friend would ever try to touch me in that way. . .no. . .but it was the same feeling of being closed in and anxious, of not "not having a choice." A boundary thing.

Also, i had not wanted to hug her because i did not want small parts of me that had looked to her as a mother figure to start getting hopes up that we could have a mother-daughter type of relationship again. Because she had hurt me so much in the past, when our contact ended, i had to put up an emotional guard to protect my feelings. And having her force a hug on me was kind of like pushing past that emotional barrier into my vulnerability. Like a boundary violation. I had not wanted that.

So i had really wanted to talk about this at my session Wednesday.

Oh well.