It would be good to ask her exactly what behaviors you are doing that are pushing her buttons. Do you think it was the calling her for reassurance about whether she is giving up on you? I know you haven't called her much, but I think you've emailed her a number of times with a similar concern? There is a certain type of person who likes to discover people's "buttons" and then push them to get a reaction, even if it's negative. I think sometimes that is an attention-getting behavior. Like how a child whines or misbehaves to get a parent to pay attention to them--even negative attention is better than no attention! I haven't got the sense this is a pattern of behavior with you, rainbow, so maybe you just pushed your T's button accidentally this time. If you find out what you did that bugged her, you can avoid that in the future, if possible, unless it would impede therapy. As SoupDragon wrote, it is your T's issue how she reacts when someone pushes her buttons. But yet I feel it is a reciprocal relationship, and it is considerate to not do a certain thing that really bugs your T, if you know what that thing is. Like when my T leaves his laptop open right next to him in my session, that is pushing my button. I ask him to close it so that will not stand between us in the session. I have other more important stuff to work on so I don't want the laptop to interfere and either does he, so he complies with my request. It's a bit of give and take, and a way to be real in the relationship. I think your T was being real by telling you that you had pushed her button. Now you just need to find out what that is.

I do think there are certain types of clients who push a therapist's buttons very strongly. I don't mean necessarily deliberately, but just by being the type of person they are with the type of issues they have. So a certain type of client can be very triggering for a T. Different Ts will have different types of clients they react to this way. What may be one T's trigger is another T's cup of tea. It is up to the T to work on that countertransference. They may also decide that they simply are not going to work with clients with that type of presentation and refer them early in therapy to another T rather than have the relationship be a struggle because of their own problem.

I think it is also helpful to a client to learn when they are pushing buttons because they may be doing something similar in other relationships and driving people away from them. My T has told me something I do that bugs him, and I think it is very reasonable what he said. It helps me to know this because there are times I do it with other people too. So this gives me something to work on out in my every day life.

So I encourage you to ask your T what you did that bugged her, rainbow. It could point you in a direction for growth.