Hello there NTLF, thanks for posting. I very much agree with your thoughts about the motivation behind using 'I'm sorry if...'. In part yeah it is a professional defence, and I imagine that my T, given that I have a lot of things I'm angry about, probably is feeling very wary of blindly taking responsibility for every criticism I level at her (this is me trying to be balanced by the way - my actual feeling is, just say you're sorry THAT, if you are, don't mess me about with ifs and buts and maybes, that just confuses me and makes me feel very very defensive, which just feeds my anger and resentment .)

Funny yeah I hadn't thought of that, about the idea of therapist failure. That they might experience my negative stuff as some kind of failure on their part, or an indictment of their competence. Jeez it's so clear to me that it's my stuff, that it's my anger that needs addressing and not what they're doing 'wrong' per se. As I said in a previous post, I've had a hell of a job finding a T who is comfortable with anger - it's obviously not something they learn about in psych 101. I should amend this sentence to say, I'm still having a hell of a job... though this T has been the most accepting so far - another reason I'm feeling devastated at the thought that maybe she can't take anger after all, it's seemed to be a potentially good therapy up to now

Thanks for the heads up about my listening to the intuitive part of me - on one hand that is something I know I should do, on the other hand if I listened to it all the time I'd be totally alone isolated alienated and in a very very black place indeed. It's why I get so screwed up by things like my T's email, I just don't have the ability to trust my own perceptions...

Lol about Ts and taking money, I have to say that's probably not what my T is doing, though of course how would I know . I do think that it was a bit of a freudian slip on her part and hopefully she'll allay at least that fear tomorrow. Well I live in hope...

Thank you Live