Safe hugs to you!! Yes, trust is a hard thing to build once a person lives in abuse. I learned from my first round of therapy many years ago that I do look for the smallest thing that may sound harsh from T - something I can say "SEE! T will harm me too!"
I know now that I do this, so I try to just accept that it is the way I see the world through a shattered soul.

Now though I can at least try to ignore those things that hurt me internally that I pick up on. But yeah, still I do hold onto the small details and try to use them to keep myself emotionally distant from T. For example, as I was going through the post about the cute things T has done, and I was enjoying reading others post about their own T, I was thinking about the things my T has done that are starting to endear him to me.

Well wouldn't you know that as soon as I started reading stuff about gifts to T in that thread that I was highly triggered! I had to sign off for a while and go take a shower. It is all because a few sessions ago he mentioned some small gifts other clients gave him and I had already given him a few small things - music CD and books related to DID that I thought would help him understand my DID since it is not his area - but I don't want a different T. Anyway, I brought in a small stress ball that I bought the day before thinking he would like one - it was on sale and just a couple dollars. But he responded with a sharp sudden "no gift" statement that caught me off guard emotionally. He let me "give" it to him indirectly by adding it to the therapy box for all clients to use for tactile stuff. But for some reason, it stuck in me as a rejection - a very deep one at that. In fact, I don't think I would ever be able to tell him about it. And it kinda did put a thin wall emotionally up.

But I know it is me trying to avoid getting close. It was just something to use as a tool to accomplish that protection I thought I needed.

So yes, I do it too. Thank you for the post!