Tree - thanks zillions for what you just said :-) Food for thought!!

Kitten - thanks for your reply :-) It is so strange about the whole hug thing. It was something that first happened from him asking if it was ok to give me a hug at the end of a very hard session. I said "Yes" and it made the whole day better. Then as time went on, I was asking him for a hug. He would give me one. Then one day he did not give me a hug because of the paperwork he was doing but I figured out that was my trigger. I had to figure out the transference part of it and realized it was due to "daddy" issues resulting from the CSA. My mom would not "allow" my dad to hug me and would get mad at ME for my dad's inapropriate response to me as a child!

Anywho... the session after I did not get a hug, I asked T if I could give him a hug. He said "No. But I can give you a hug." That was wonderful and it was his way of showing positive parent/authority stuff that he is in charge and can provide for me. Not me trying to provide for T. And all that stems from the whole emotional incest junk I am dealing with. But then the last time he just stood there. It was one of the hardest sessions ever and I may well have been looking very unsafe or "DON'T TOUCH ME!" ... But what I saw in my heart was the no hug was a punishment because I told him the icky junk and now I was bad and bad girls don't get hugs from daddy (sic). That was yesterday.

I kept emailing T since last night because the flashback stuff was too much to handle. He wrote back twice yesterday to assure me that I did nothing to deserve what my ex-H did to me. So that was good. Anyway, no response at all today but I am totally exhausted from the trauma flashback junk last night and have been sleeping most of the day. But reading your post really did help me think about stuff today in a different way. And I realized that I was subconsciously thinking T was being "teaching" to me the bad way my ex-H was. Ex-H would be cruel and say he was doing it "to teach me how to be strong."

So after reading what you said, I really think I thought T was not hugging me in order to teach me a lesson. Of course that line of thinking makes me emotionally just back off and now I really don't want to ever talk with T again as long as I live. But I know it is transference. But then I think "what if it is not transference but the truth?"

So now I just decided to not care either way and just drop the whole hug issue and not even talk with him about it in session tommorow. I don't know. I should. But just not worth the effort right now.

I will be watching your post to see how you do with the punishment/reward topic!!

((((kitten))))