Thank you for your replies.
Okay. I don't post much about me or my therapy...

This is how it was: ("This is how it was" is from a humorous book I'm reading, "My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner" by Meir Shalev.)
It is long, but I tend to just delete when I try to edit, so I will leave it be.


She was irritate with me, and yes that is absolutely true that we are separate and she can feel what she feels. Still, she is the person that I look to be my safe haven.

I do this dance around things. I say to her that something is important to me, then deny it.
I say to her that I can't stand to be alone, wail (privately) that I'm all alone, then tell her I don't want or need people, I just want to learn how to be alone with myself and feel good and content.
I say *this* is important to me, then we explore that, then afterwards I say she doesn't get me.

This time I realized that I hadn't told her everything about what we had talked about on Thursday. Over the weekend, I was in and out of meltdown. I emailed and she sent a nice reply, "It sounds so hard and discouraging,and I want very much to hear you as much as I can."
The meltdown was because I "heard" her as saying that all I need to do was go out and make friends. This is what I heard repeatedly growing up, and it was about my mother not about me. I had friends but not enough for her; basically I was still there underfoot and she wanted me to have someplace else to be.

So, I was thinking over that weekend "Gosh, here I am finishing up 5 years of therapy and I'm hearing what I heard all my life! By the time I got in there on Monday, I knew what I had done that previous session. I'd told her about seeing a former neighbor on fb who I wasn't very close with, and from her posts I see now I thought that we might have been friends had things been a little different. So, we explored the idea of friendships.

What I hadn't told her, though, was that initially when I saw the fb posts by this person, I was in awe of the fact that she goes out and does what she wants to do. She enjoys the parks and goes there often, and some other local things there. (BTW, I very, very much regret leaving that area and moving here 9 years ago.)

So when I went to see T on Monday, after my initial "I don't know what to talk about" and an "I don't know" answer to a question about the email, I told her what my weekend meltdown was about. After 5 years of therapy, it felt like I was hearing what I'd always heard growing up. I also told her that I realized after session that I hadn't told her about feeling in awe of the former neighbor being able to do what she wants to do, by herself or with others.

T said something about working on the obstacles that stand in the way of what I want. THAT felt like someone else's therapy, like CBT or something - we have never talked in those kinds of terms. I told her then that it felt like she was saying 'pick something to work on, or get out'. It was then that I asked if she was irriatated because I definitely was hearing a 'tone' I don't usually hear with her.

She said she was irritated. That I hadn't told her everything, that I decided she was saying something - that she wasn't at all saying. She was basically defending herself, and understandably so. I was projecting and I was accusing her of something, when all she was doing in that previous session was responding to what I brought in to talk about.

I emailed twice again. Email is fine with her. Replies are brief acknowledgements and encouragements and I appreciate them. The first reply was that my email was beautifully poetic
and that " I worried about the efforts of my irritation on you, but glad to hear you survived."
No I didn't mis-type. She replies from her phone and I trust that "efforts" was meant to be "effects".
Regardless, see that sure didn't help.
I emailed her back that I survived but it's still effecting me. Some of what I told her is that it was hard to take, frightening and she already intimdates me. And that I don't like when I am inconsistent and say something is important, then deny that it is. I told her how I've accepted what I thought was inevitable, and turned that into a decision that I made for myself. Like being so lonely, then deciding it is the way it is, then declaring it is my choice.
She replied that we'll talk Monday and she's glad I had the courage to bring it up.

This just feels really uncomfortable at the moment because I already have trouble expressing myself and now I've irritated her with it. When will it pop up again?