Hi mcl6136 - I feel I want to respond to your post, but I am not sure what I want to say. I think there are alot of things in your post and maybe that is why I find it difficult to know how I want to respond.
What I do admire, is your willingness to be open and honest about how you feel - to take that risk - (that is something that I am hopeless at).
We all come to T as different people, with different experiences, different perceptions and therefore for all of us our journey is not going to map anyone elses.
I would love to be able to hug my T or even hold T's hand, that would for me mean real progress - it is not something I could contemplate now though, it would be too confusing for me.
I am sure I could find a more experienced T than the one I have and maybe that makes the T journey a little clumsy at times, but I came to the conclusion that life is just like that sometimes, we can't always have the most perfect of everything.
Above all I absolutely respect my T's professionalism and together with that goes my trust for T and therefore I have faith that T and I can figure it out together.
And I am imperfect too (could do a looooong list) - Soup