I'm seeing a new T. I've met with him four times - the first two times mainly as a psychiatrist, but now he's taken me on as a therapy client and Iäll hopefully get a weekly appointment with him after the summer.

So I'm thinking a lot about how to make this work, because I really want it to. I will have to learn to deal with a bunch of negative emotions, that's one of the things I must do to get better. And then one of the main issues becomes that of respect. How can I expect somebody to respect me if I display emotion in front of them at a regular basis? Not to mention when I tell him all the shameful stuff I think I will have to tell him? And if he doesn't respect me I don't see how I could tell him things. I'm not sure if that's another sign of weakness in me, but there it is at any rate. I don't expect that he'll like me, and by "respect" I don't mean that I expect him to think particularly highly of me, but I want to be seen as a potentially well-functioning adult, capable of making good decisions and able to deal with my emotions. Simply put, I don't want him to despise me.

Is this something that anybody else can recognise? How do you deal with it? Just jump in and trust blindly that the respect will be there, and if it isn't deal with it then?

Oh, and I know all about how you can't expect anybody else to respect you if you don't respect yourself, but if I have to start by getting self-respect there's no use in me even trying, because I've had none for 39 years - and still there are people around me who do, to some extent, respect me (I think).