Bless you all. Just knowing that you understand how huge this felt has been so helpful. A massive welcome antidote to what she said.

T and I texted last night. I wasn't able to explain I'd been triggered, but she explained a bit about why she said that. She said for her it was about managing time at the end, when the other wretched T had already tried to come in, and she wanted us to focus on me being ok, not on another upsetting issue (her daughter). Of course to me it wasn't an abrupt change of subject, it was expressing the sadness of the thread that ran through the whole session, that my mother didn't protect or help me, and it was natural that it should overflow at the end when I came face to face with the fact that T wasn't my mother, and was leaving.

She also told me that her reaction to the story was 'a very intense feeling that is hard to find the words for', and that she felt awful for me. I think maybe the whole session was quite tough on her too, and perhaps she panicked a bit when she realised it was nearing the end and I was practically naked and very distressed, and she just wanted to get the lid back on it all. Perhaps she was anxious that the other T would see that she'd let things get 'out of control'? I also wonder whether- a bit like my mother?- the fact that T loves me makes it harder to do work like this, because she doesn't want to see me in pain. And that was just a misguided phrase reflecting how much she wants me to be ok.

T had no way of knowing what a triggering phrase that is for me. I guess we're in an unusual position because we've been working together for two years, but doing DBT, which deliberately does not allow you to talk about the past. And here we are suddenly doing this fairly formal 'history taking' for schema therapy, which feels like telling the whole story all in one breath. I guess it's more usual for the story to emerge organically over the course of therapy. I need to be more forgiving- it's so easy to forget that T- who knows me inside out- does not know so many basic facts about my past.

Ugh, I don't know. I can see that all of these factors contributed, and I need to put it to one side- with all the anger and SHAME and rejection and distance it created- and just stay close to T right now. Yesterday was huge, and I need T. We can't address it immediately as our phonecall is on Mondays. But I hope I can address it on Monday, because it is too damaging a message to take away from therapy.