I had a severely abused horse that I was rehabbing. She had huge fear issues being tied up. After a lot of work, as long as I was right there with her, she was really calm even when tied. If I moved away, she became very anxious. If I got out of sight, she would actually start rearing and freaking out. I had to carefully begin to go away for only a few seconds at a time. A few days later, I would go a bit further. Later, I would go to the other side of the trailer where she couldn't see me. Eventually, she was fine with me going into the garage or just wandering around the yard. However, after a year of work, at our first overnight camping trip, she STILL kept untying herself and coming to find me in the campground. The new place just made her so anxious, she couldn't stand there tied, even with her best horse friend beside her.

My point (and I do have one ) in that long story is that changing behaviors and the emotions associated with them is a PROCESS. It involves one party being able to tolerate uncomfortable feelings and the person helping being able to assess how much is too much discomfort. If I let my horse get too uncomfortable, she would blow up and potentially hurt herself and others. So, rainbow, good job working on this, and maybe just consider that your T was, figuratively speaking, out of sight too long for your current ability to tolerate the distress, and maybe work on more slowly increasing your emotional space while working on your skills in handling the distress.