I often hear my T's empathy as aversive. My first thought to "that must be hard, confusing, disappointing, etc" is "why are you making fun of me?" My second thought is, "well, that was a real conversation stopper!" Over the years, though, I've come to appreciate the invitation to actually stop and think about how I'm feeling about whatever I'm saying. Not always. But pretty often.

I think that my mother defined how I should feel all of the time--as an extension of her. So, I'm pretty defended any time I feel like someone is telling me how I should or would feel about something. I don't believe that's what T is doing, but some childhood defenses are activated nonetheless.