At my session yesterday, T’s laptop was sitting next to him again. It didn't have its back to me this time but was at an angle, so it wasn't as bad as before. I decided to raise the computer issue just as many people here had suggested in my recent thread: http://forums.psychcentral.com/showthread.php?t=177514

I told him having the laptop there bothered me. He was very interested. He said it is there to recharge and wasn't sure that would work if he moved it to his desk. I learned he has switched to doing his scheduling on his computer, so that is why he’s keeping it close by. I told him how it raised those old feelings from the marriage of being ignored--my XH would watch the computer preferentially while I was trying to talk to him. He clarified that I felt this way even though there was just a screensaver on the screen and he was not looking at it? I said yes, and apologized for that ("I know you're not my H", which of course he waved off). I told him it just made me feel that same way and also brought back the yucky memory of the adult content on the screen. He said he would move it. I stopped him and said, it would be fine if it just were closed. So he closed it and looked to me to see if it was OK. It was. He thanked me very sincerely for telling him all of this.

We came back to this issue later when I asked T about ways to deal with triggers (like the laptop). He said the old way (and laughed because he said it's only 10 years ago or so) is to keep coming back to the same issue again and going over it multiple times, exploring it, recalling the feelings, etc. (Kind of like exposure therapy, perhaps?) He said the more recent way is to use a technique like EMDR (or some others he also uses) to really focus on the problem and free it up quickly, and be done with it in 1-2 sessions. He said this is especially good for something one is really stuck on. He said we could do EMDR on this if I wanted (we’ve done EMDR in the past). I said well those are two ways, but the way we dealt with it today is neither of those. Instead, we took the trigger away, essentially being avoidant. (In general, I don't feel avoiding one's triggers helps one move forward.) T repeated that we could work on this if I wanted to. I didn't want to. Why? Because I felt like the marriage was behind me, and I didn't want to be working on things from the marriage. I should be over it. T said that was very logical and left-brained of me, but he wanted me to respect my entire brain, and realize that those neurobiochemical pathways were laid down, reinforced many times, and just don't disappear because I want to be over the marriage. They may persist for a long time. He said whether we choose to work on this or not may be a question of magnitude. How disturbing is this trigger for me? How "stuck" am I on this? How incapacitating is this for me? Is it a barrier to my healing? If this is not something I consider "important", then we can spend time on those things I consider more important, and let these smaller things be. Or we can deal with them by doing things like closing the laptop. The smaller things can always be returned to later if I want. This discussion, while kind of clinical (and left-brained!), helped me put things in perspective. I felt myself beginning to turn more willingly toward those bigger dragons I have yet to slay. I think T is a genius for helping me start turning.

The session felt really good. This surprised me, as I had thought it might not be that great since it was a short session, but we accomplished some good stuff! Last session was not so connected and close, but this time was. I told T how I wanted to get into some deeper material from my past that we had not worked on before, but I was reluctant because of how hard it was to schedule appointments with him—there is a 3-4 week lag since he is so booked up. He said we would just make several appointments at a time. So my next appointment is in a month, but the two after that are at shorter intervals. So he was very accommodating! And he is looking forward to working on this "new" issue. Whenever I'm ready, he said. (Are Ts infinitely patient? I've touched lightly on this issue before, and he never pressures me to return to it.)

When I was gathering myself to go, he asked if we could have a hug? I love that. (We didn't hug last time--we don't every time.) So we shared a very nice hug. When we hug, I am ALWAYS surprised (and pleased) by how tall he is.