your post is so real to me. not just because you write similar to the way I write (long, flowery, etc etc ) but because I relate on an intensely personal level to both the feelings/needs you expressed and the hurt of T's boundary emphasis - both the original extension of them and then the tightening of them....because this happened with my 1st T.
she didn't usually hug her clients very often and we hadn't even discussed that at the beginning of my therapy, but it began to matter to me after about 3 months, so she began to hug me after session was over.....it was nearly every week, though I didn't always ask or feel the need. but she said later it was something she did because she felt it was important for me to learn to ask for what I needed - but then after she took away the hugs after 3 months (which was really the advice of her supervisor, the woman I never met but felt this toward because a few times my therapy took an abrupt course change after T talked to her) she told me that if she had realized the extent of my thoughts regarding touch (like equating touch/tears/comfort, feeling like I needed to be held to cry, because no one ever held me like that as a child really, and I felt like I could only let go of the tears if I was held by someone who knew all my inmost darkness/pain/shame and still loved me.....and I thought T did) or the intensity of my attachment or the sexual feelings/fantasies I struggled with regarding her (I am also bi, but really didn't want sex with her, just emotional intimacy/affection), she never would have hugged me at all. she had never done anything like that with anyone before......she really did have firm, strict boundaries which for some reason she let slip for me and then tightened them strictly. it was intensely painful....the session she told me there would be never be physical contact again was really one of the worst moments of emotional pain I remember in my life (there's a whole big fat long thread from a year ago where I worked through that pain and people on PC were SO helpful and loving)......so, talk about feeling untouchable/unlovable after that - especially when T's message had just the week before been, even though I expressed honestly the thoughts/feelings I was having that I was still lovable/touchable and she wouldn't stop hugging me. it hurt (well, still sorta does.....sigh). anyway, all this blabber of my story just to tell you that this >>>>>>It still hurts on a lot of levels. It triggers Mom's physical rejection, which made me feel unwanted, unloved, and unsafe. It triggers being untouchable, which made me feel unworthy, unwanted, and unloved. It triggers fears of homophobia, which made me feel like something was wrong with me.
I feel shame, rejection, fear, anger, anxiety, loneliness, and doubt.<<<< < resonates on a very deep deep level with me. I know that pain......and my heart aches for you.
I do like what Perna wrote though......it's not a shameful desire; now we need to learn to love/soothe/nurture ourselves. T told me this quite often after our rupture at that time.....she tried to help me learn how to do that....but I'd have to say T2 did a better job of it all, because her boundaries were clear and firm, she never touched anyone at all, from the beginning.....yet her nurturing was very real, her positive regard for me as a person worthy of nurturing was very real, and sunk into me and helped me learn somehow to begin to love/nurture myself more now......even if I still feel that old longing, which may never leave me, but feels more bearable to me at least....