I'm afraid I'm understanding why my t thinks I have anger problems from reading this thread. agh.

Anyway, Hankster's and Sally_Brown's posts were hard for me to read. If they were saying the same thing to me, I'd have felt like they were saying I was a bad person because I wasn't being considerate of my t and because Sally said "insist that he adopt my understanding" as if I was being unfairly pushy when I was just trying to keep from getting myself squashed by misinterpretations t was forcing on me. I don't think they meant to say you're not a good person though and I definitely think you're a good person .

It sounded to me like t misunderstood what you needed to hear when he said "surviving." Then you felt hurt and thought you should express it. Everyone always told me i should express myself more, and once I figured out how to do it, I thought I was supposed to express my anger in situations like this. You wrote "sticking up for myself, in this relationship, too energetically feels like I'm crossing some kind of line." I think you're right. I think we're supposed to feel the anger for a minute but express ourselves in a more rational, less "energetic," less emotional way in this situation.

It doesn't mean your t is right about you only surviving. And it doesn't mean you aren't doing a good job of asserting yourself if he doesn't agree.

IRL, sometimes these things happen and you have no chance to communicate with the person who hurt you- it's either fight or leave to protect yourself.

But in some situations, if you have a lot of patience with the person who hurt you, you can find out they did it by mistake. If you get mad at them, they will think it's not fair since they never intended to hurt you, but if you talk to them in a more patient way, they might apologize for accidentally hurting you.

I think your t wants to give you a chance to practice the second situation.