Hi everyone,

I am really having a hard time with the T session I had yesterday. I started seeing this T about two months ago, and so far he's been quite good--very professional, clear, supportive, good at encouraging me toward my goals or to look at situations in new ways. But the boundaries are (at least for me) SO intense. His demeanor...how do I describe it? I wouldn't say he's cold, but he's...a bit formal. Reserved. It feels a bit cool to me. And I am a very warm, friendly, gregarious person by nature, and have always been with Ts who had real warmth about them, so that's feeling hard.

Plus the other policies: no calls between sessions except regarding appointments, no beverages in session, no self-disclosure on his part, definitely no touch (it actually feels like he backs away from me at the door, which makes me feel like a leper). All this, plus this kind of low-grade coolness throughout the session, is making the environment feel really impoverished to me. Like a desert. (I can see tumbleweeds rolling through the office.)

Part of this is that, even though my family was warm generally when I was growing up, there was very little actual empathy--no one really talked with me about how I felt until I was 13. I didn't even know how to describe feelings. So while he definitely gives empathic reflections to things I say, the overall environment is feeling increasingly painful.

I'm trying to sort out how much of this is just the sense of deprivation most of us probably feel because therapy inherently has limits, and how much is my genuinely needing an element of warmth and expressiveness from him that I'm not getting? And can I get over needing that if I do feel like I could do some good work with him (which I do)?

Sigh...I don't even know if I'm making sense. I'm sure what I need to do is talk about this with him, which I will do next week. I guess I just needed to vent a little. Thanks for listening/reading.