Thanks, here today, amandalouise and Sarah Michelle for responding. I think this must be as weird as I feared, with so many views and only a couple of responses

I think the embarrassment about exploring this with T comes from shame. My life is ruled by shame. I am very good at compartmentalizing, and I am also very ashamed of it because I rarely feel like I am being real in life. The real world sees one part of me: a self-confident, successful professional in a long-term career, with a graduate degree, who has been married for 12 years with two awesome kids. I do public speaking for my job, for pete's sake, but I go to T and I become mute. I am ashamed of letting T see the real me, who hears voices and self-harms and spends so much time disconnected from myself. I guess I'm afraid he'll say out loud, the things that angry voice in my head says: that I'm crazy and stupid and pathetic and disgusting and weird and worthless and I deserve to be hurt.

When I was in college, I was also diagnosed as schizophrenic (and bipolar and cyclothymic and schizo-affective...they just kept going through the DSM until they found one that looked right that week, lol), but I feel respected and heard with current T and I don't want to lose the fragile connection I have with him. But I don't know where else to go from here.