Thank you to all who gave me feedback in my other thread. I am now posting the entire session together so that it might make more sense. If you manage to read this entire post, thank you, thank you, thank you!! To those who respond, you do not know how much I appreciate it!!!!!!! I want to receive insight so that I can get to the root of my issues.

I sat down in the waiting room and she came around the corner and loudly *said my name. She didn't look at me as I entered her office and ignored me for a full minute fiddling with something at her desk before sitting down in her chair. This conversation commenced:

T: So?
Me: So...what?
T: *Silently glares at me.*
Me: Are you referring to my email?
T: Yes. How do you feel about it today?
Me: I don't care (she did not allow me to speak after these words).

She exploded: "Well fine then. That's your choice. If you don't care about it anymore, there's certainly nothing I can do about it." *She positioned herself in her chair somewhat sideways, crossed her arms, turned her head slightly toward me, narrowed her eyes, and glared at me breathing heavily.

She was angry. *While she was sitting there, her face turned red, a vein on her forehead popped out, and she began to break out in red splotches on her face and neck. *I had never seen her react this way and it frightened me. *I didn't know what to do. *I worried that the next thing that was going to come out of her mouth was going to be, "get out...I'm done with you."

Thankfully, she did not, but instead began to scold me like a child (speaking very quickly in a raised voice). *"You're just following your typical pattern. *Either I'm the best thing in the world or I don't mean anything to you. *When are you ever going to learn not to react that way? *Either things are wonderful or they're crap. *Well you know what, life sucks sometimes and that's never going to change!"

Woah. *In my email, I never said that she didn't mean anything to me. *I stated that I perceived her last session as aloof and distant. *I also said I knew it may not have been about me. *It was also not the reason why I said, "I don't care."

Finally, I said (calmly but firmly), "T, please let me finish my sentence. *'I don't care' wasn't the entirety of it. *I want to tell you why I don't care. *I think you've misunderstood me. *I don't care about the email anymore because I got past it. *I did have to numb my feelings somewhat to do so, but I moved on. *In fact, by yesterday, I was enjoying the change in my job. *I was working with my old clients again. *I've missed them. *I realized also that through this therapy process, I've learned confidence. *I was able to look my soon-to-be-employees in the eye and tell them what I expect and what they need to expect from me."

Thank you to all who have given me feedback.

In response to my explanation of how I moved past the email, T said (still sounding angry to me), "Well, this is just your pattern. Either I'm the greatest person in the world or you hate me. If I go back in your permanent file, where I've printed out all your emails and stored them, there are pages upon pages of this."

This surprised me. The only attributes I ascribed to her were that she appeared aloof and distant. I owned that as my perception. I did not ascribe love or hate, idealization or condemnation. I owned my own stuff in the email. While I realize she has every right to print out all my emails, she knows very well that I don't like it. I felt as if she were trying to throw that specifically in my face.

I said, "That's not true for this email, T. I simply said I perceived you as aloof and distant. The email stated that I realize that my perception could be untrue, or if it was true, there could be many reasons that have nothing to do with me. That is different than emails in the past. I also haven't sent you an emotionally-loaded email in months."

She was glaring at me the entire time.

I told her what bothered me the most was that in the email, I asked for an appointment and she did not respond. She said, "If you wanted an appointment so damn bad, why didn't you call the office? I don't handle appointments via email."

Once again, I was floored. T and I have been handling appointment requests and changes via email for a solid year. She told me that she liked doing it that way because the front office had screwed up her appointments (double bookings, not notifying her of cancellations, etc.). It never even occurred to me to call the office. The last time I did, they screwed stuff up.

So I told T that we had been changing and scheduling appointments for months via email so I never thought to call the office. I said I figured since she didn't reply, she was either booked or wanted me to process things myself. She calmed down some, but was still irate. She asked me if I realized she didn't always read emails when they are sent. I said I did, but she had always responded to any email requesting a session within 24 hours and usually much sooner than that. She said, "I try to read emails within 24-48 hours." I said, "Well, I wasn't assuming the worst this time." She said, "Most of the time you do. That's your pattern. You've lost 12 months worth of progress. I said, "I'm really working to break out of that pattern and I think I'm doing better." I was shocked she made the statement that out of one email, I'd lost a entire year's progress. It was at this point, I thought about leaving because I was so hurt.

I started to say something else and after the first couple of words, her phone went off audibly. That's only happened twice in my 20 months with her. Instead of jumping up apologizing for her phone not being on vibrate and switching it to vibrte, she just sat there. I completely lost my train of thought and said to myself, "Well, I feel stupid."

T became worked up/angry-sounding again. She said, "Because you lost your train of thought? How many times have I lost my train of thought and you told me you understood that. Do you actually think I'm stupid when I do that? Have you been lying to me" I said, "No T, you know full well I am harder on myself than anyone else in this world." I began to cry a little. It was all becoming too much.

She stayed silent for a minute alternately glaring at me and looking away. She calmed down a bit and asked, "How did you really manage to get past the email?" I said, "Like I told you before, I numbed out a bit which I didn't like, but honestly working with my clients again Monday got me out of the numbness."

I continued, "I didn't like the fact that last week, it felt like I was going backwards. Not a year's worth of backwards, but slipping a bit." She asked me, "Okay, so how does it all make you feel?"

I built up my "20 seconds of courage" and said, "I feel hurt." She asked me what feeling hurt meant. I said it makes me feel unworthy again, like I'm nothing and nobody. I went on to say, "I feel like a child again with my mother. I made a single solitary mistake (the email), and I get blamed again for things I've done in my past. It reminds me of my mother, overreacting and scolding me. I made one mistake and your behavior causes me to react thinking it's not safe to make a mistake or I'm going to make you angry. I don't like you being angry at me."

She reacted defensively/irately, "I'm not angry at you. I don't feel anything regarding your email. Your email doesn't hurt me. Clients can't hurt me."

That shut me down. I started crying. I was probably silent for 3-5 minutes. I managed to look around the room once while I was crying and T was looking up at the ceiling. Her face looked irritated. Her neck was still broken out in splotches. I just sat and cried silently, taking tissues from the box and blowing and wiping my nose. Which was fine until I realized the 3rd tissue I took was the last one in the box. I actually picked up the box and looked inside. T said, "Is it empty?" I nodded. She ran out of the room to the supply closet, shutting the door, but it didn't latch, so it opened itself all the way. There we're people in the hallway. I felt humiliated. I turned away from the door. T came back with a fresh box of tissues. She had opened the box for me. She took the other box from me and told me to place my used tissues in the empty box. She threw it away and sat down. I looked at her face. She was looking at me sadly.

So I looked back at her. We looked at each other for a few moments. She asked, "Why did you say you felt stupid when you lost your train of thought?" I said it was because I didn't want to appear weak to her. She asked why. I said, "If I appear weak, you have the upper hand in the argument. I wanted to appear strong because it would give me a sense of control over the situation." She replied, "Well for one, we weren't arguing. I was not angry. I was just telling you the truth. Two, you know you can't control anything. Control just doesn't exist. We're not in control of anything, God is." I said, "But we can control ourselves. We can choose how we react to things." She replied, "Well, I wouldn't call it control. I'd call it...oh, I don't know what I'd call it, but it's not control. Control doesn't exist."

My head was spinning because she was making no sense to me. She was presenting her opinion as truth and telling me that self-control doesn't exist. I felt a bit gaslighted. T has a pattern too. She owns every positive emotion she feels regarding and/or about me. She has never owned up to feeling negative emotions regarding and/or about me. She becomes defensive, then denies she feels anything. She's fine. She doesn't feel negative emotions about clients. We can't affect her that way.

So I asked if what happened at the beginning of session was a technique. She said it was not. She "knew better" than to use techniques on me because I recognize and thwart them because of my education and experience in the MH field.

By this point, I felt fragile, defenseless, and defeated. I said, "I feel like I am no longer allowed to need you; to send an email requesting help is wrong." She said, "There was nothing wrong with your email..."

My thought: Then WTF was the first 30 minutes of session?

"...there's nothing wrong with asking for help. You just have to realize that people may not be available all the time to help."

Fair enough. That's the truth. She again became agitated, "Why can't you learn how to manage your own emotions? You have tons of skills to use; make sure they are readily available. Don't you realize that life sucks and it's always gonna suck and you're not going to be in therapy forever?"

I said, "Just FYI, I don't like it when you talk about the end of therapy. I'm not there yet, and I haven't dealt with the worst stuff yet. I still need your support for that time." She responded, "The end of therapy upsets you? Why the heck would you get upset over the truth? I should be able to speak truth without upsetting you. And why do you need my support to talk about the hardest stuff? Why can't you just talk about it because you know you'll be better once you do."

I was speechless. My mind actually went to a couple of my own clients I'd helped Monday. One has OCD and being a former extreme sufferer of OCD and a mild sufferer now, my heart ached for her Monday evening. I tried to talk to her, give her strategies and help, but realized there was nothing I could do to help her. The OCD had taken over. I started crying again, harder this time. I looked up at T, chuckled and said, "I guess I'm thawing out." She smiled a little and replied, "Well, don't get my couch wet." I gave her a look that clearly said WTF and said, "I'm not crying that hard." She explained she didn't mean the crying, but if I was thawing, I was turning ice to water and I'd leave a puddle.

I explained about my client and trying to help her. T looked at me with tears in her own eyes. I thought to myself, "She empathizes with this. My T is still in there." That didn't last long.

"You know that sometimes what you do with your clients isn't going to work. You have to let it go. God has a plan for their suffering. You can't let your clients get to you like that."

There is truth there, but really, T? That's where you're going with this after all the talks during sessions past about how much you individually like and love every one of your clients and think about us outside of session? That you set aside time every day at home to pray for each one of us depending on our issues. That you work very hard outside of work on your own 'stuff' both internal and external so that it won't get in the way?

She then abruptly changed the subject and stated that I'd always lived by my feelings, I just didn't recognize them. I wanted to ask if she knew the definition of 'numb'. She then looked out the window and asked me if it was raining. I told her it was.

I felt so weary and beat down by this point, I went into sarcastic mode. I said it was nice to know that I'm acting "borderline" (she used the term earlier in the session...I can't remember every detail ), I've always lived by my feelings even when I was numb, and I've lost 12 months worth of progress.

She looked at me and said (dead serious), "I don't think you've lost 12 months; maybe 6." I said I didn't believe I'd lost any months, I just made a mistake. She then said, "Well, you're probably right." I asked her if she was okay, that I perceived something was wrong. She said, "Well yeah...it's been a long day. I mean a long day. I've had a scratchy throat for a couple of days now. And I've been eating pecans all day and they gave me indigestion."



She said the was one last thing we needed to discuss before I go. That sounded ominous to me. "You brought up a couple of sessions ago that you wanted to work on respecting my time boundaries. Let me explain something. You said in your email if I hadn't started setting up for my Skype session that you would have took a coupe of minutes to explain how you were feeling. That would not be respecting my time boundaries. If you have something like that, you need to wait until your next session, even if you're my last client of the day." I agreed with no qualms.

I reminded her that I didn't have a session scheduled next week. She said the only day she had a 4 pm available was next Thursday. I said okay, put it in my phone and grabbed my stuff to go before she opened the door. I wished her a good week and started to walk out. She stopped me with her arm and pulled me into a very tight hug. She said, "I love you." I was speechless for a moment and didn't say it back. I said, "I'm sorry I disappointed you." She let go of me and said, "You didn't disappoint me. Clients don't disappoint me. They frustrate me sometimes (frustrate is the only negative feeling she ascribes to clients). I hope you realize that no matter what disagreements, then quickly said 'mishaps' that happen in here, our relationship doesn't change. It won't change. I want you to learn that in other relationships too. Have a good week." I left.