SarahMichelle, my guy has never pushed me THAT hard. I started sweating just reading your post. So that is probably too much pushing for me, personally.

farmergirl, I think what you are describing, and growlycat, is more what my T does. It's more persuading me to TRY to put my horrible stuff out there. Persuading me not to stay with the avoidance and denial techniques that have clearly stopped working well for me.

earthmama, the thing about my never talking about this subject unless pushed was kind of echoing my words to him. I had said something along the lines of I had never planned to discuss this subject ever. ever. EVER. EVER. ****ING EVER. NEVER ****ING EVER. Sooooo, he may have gotten that idea from me. I may have actually used the F word a feeeew times about it.

stopdog, pushing is an odd thing for me. If I don't know you or love you, I absolutely don't tolerate it. I tend (somewhat) to let people I love push me around. The abuse and the total absence of affection may have affected my ability to stand up for myself and think I'm worthy of being treated well. And unfortunately, I've totally fallen for my T. [double ] Over the course of two times in therapy, however, I've gotten better about standing up for myself.

My T has pushed me pretty hard twice. Once, we were having a discussion about something with my family, and he was pleased about my implementation of a technique we had discussed, and he said, "that's great! That's you taking care of you." Then later, when he was pushing me to discuss something I really didn't want to, I said no. He asked me to try. I said, "NO. This is me taking care of me. I don't want to." He looked at me for quite a while and seemed speechless, and then said, "Wow. You're good. You should be an attorney or something." Then we laughed and went on.

The only other time he's pushed at me, it was about him expressing sympathy and sorrow for what happened to me growing up. At one point that annoyed me and told him to stop. He kept on until I shouted, "STOP!" at him. He then just asked me why and when I didn't have an answer, he repeated the stupid sympathy thing again.

So, really long way of saying I'm not sure how I'd respond to him pushing. I guess it depends on how he does it or how hard.