Just a quick update, before i get to making individual replies. . .

I went to my session yesterday, and was determined to act like my reasonable adult self. My t and i usually do a mindfulness exercise first, and she asks me if it's OK to move up closer. This time, she asked me and i said yes, and she said "Are you sure?" and I said "Yes," and she told me i looked skeptical. I told her "No, it really is OK" (and it was). We did the mindfulness exercise.

I had pretty much decided i didn't want to even talk about my disappointment over her not having time to reply to my email. I felt ashamed and was just going to gloss over it. In fact, i'd made a list of questions to ask her, none of them even related to the t-patient relationship. I was going to keep the focus on me and my insecurities, since i knew that was where my immature reactions were coming from.

But t brought it up anyway. She said she had a new boss who expected them to do more paperwork, and that lately, she's had to work later to get it done. She also told me that she had not ignored my email on purpose, and that even the best mother cannot always be responsive at every single moment the child needs them. They need to learn to wait sometimes, and then their need would be attended to.

I told her that i understood that she was just busy, but it still hurt. ALOT. In fact, i told her that it hurts so much to need something, and not get it, that i would rather not need it at all in the first place. I talked about how in my day to day life, when i'm in my normal adult mode, i don't feel needy, don't feel a need for connection, don't feel any hurt emotions about my childhood, etc. I act normal. But when i allow the hurt part of me to come forward, then i am needy, hurting, empty, in pain, etc.

I talked to her about how hard it is for me to believe that she, or anyone, could care about those messed up child parts of me. And that, whenever i start to believe it, then something happens that seems to prove that i am **once again, as i have always been** an unimportant nobody. I said it's really hard to believe i'm important and worthwhile when i've had experiences all my life that prove otherwise. I told her I'm afraid that i am *incapable* of believing that she or anybody cares -- and how can a few acts of kindness ever counteract a lifetime of feeling invisible? By thta time i was really crying.

At some point, she asked if she could come sit next to me, which she has only done once before. I said Yes. She kept asking me what else was going on -- was there something else that happened this week -- besides the email thing -- to make me feel this way? I told her No. But i said it had been building. It started about 3 weeks ago when i brought my husband in, and because he was feeling so bad, they talked the whole time and i was left out. Then, after she made a comment a week or so later about how i make grammatical and spelling mistakes when i email her in my child state, I felt nervous and ashamed, like there was something really wrong with me and i shouldn't allow that part of me to communicate with t anymore. In fact, that's what i'd emailed her about. So when she replied that she didn't have time to address my concerns, it just triggered that hurt part of me, and i fell apart.

I told my t i don't want to have these hurting needy parts of me. I'm fine as long as I'm not aware of them. But they keep wanting to bring all the old pain from childhood into me. It's like all the painful crap from my childhood that i'd stashed away, and forgotten about, keeps trying to come forward, and i can't deal with it. By then, i was really crying hard. I told my t that i know she wants me to listen to those parts of myself, to let them have voice, and learn to acknowledge their pain and heal. But i said it's too hard. i don't want to have parts of myself like that. i don't want to listen to them, don't want to hear what they have to say. It hurts too much, i just want to be rid of them, i want them to die.

Well, I was just a mess. I had cried all my makeup off. And i had red blotches all over my neck and chest (which always happens when i get "worked up.")

Then my t told me that she thinks we need to take a break from doing "parts work." She said that i was clearly communicating to her that i was overwhelmed and it was getting to be "too much" again. She thought we should go back to working together in my DBT book (which is usually what happens when i crash too hard). I agreed.

But after having thought about it overnight -- I feel that we should keep going forward. There have been several times in therapy where i've gotten to the point where i can't handle the pain, and then we slow down or even change what we're doing. And it feels like a repetition. I'm starting to feel that I'll never going to get where i need to go if we keep stopping because i can't handle the pain. We keep thinking that if i could just develop better coping skills, then i will be able to handle trauma work better. But we've already covered coping skills again and again. It doesn't make things any easier, not when i get triggered about my past or the pain of it breaks through my awareness. I'm starting to think that maybe it is just not going to get any easier. Maybe the pain is just going to be that bad -- and the only way through it is to keep going.

So today, i emailed t and told her i want to continue working with the parts of me that hold my trauma. despite the pain. if she agrees. i feel like we've come to far now to keep stopping. i told her i don't need a reply and hope we can talk about it next week.

And now I'm just. . .worn out. Every time something happens to trigger my past and i have an "episode" like this, i am physically exhausted the next day.

i feel sorry for my t. i really do. I'm sure she feels like she can't do anything right for me. so often, what starts out as something she says or does that probably seems insignificant (commenting on mistakes i make while dissociated, or not responding to my email) triggers me and causes a cascade of traumatic and overwhelming feelings. . .just one more *problem* that we have to work through.

i don't know what else to do. i really don't. i'm doing my best. but this is so hard. and sometimes i worry that i might be too screwed up to ever heal.