A few weeks ago, I was super stressed and had told T that I did not want to get into anything too deep. So we talked a little bit about my stress levels and then kind of chit chatted and I thought it was really awesome because I walked out feeling cared for and so much less stressed. I felt BETTER after therapy and I think that is awesome.

This week, I had T at a weird time for me -- Friday afternoon. I had just gotten back the day before from dropping my son off at college. I spent most of the session Friday weeping. First about my son, then about my daughter's health issues. Then tried to change the tone of the session to something more upbeat and tried to talk about how I have been taking better emotional care of myself and described declining a case that involved almost exactly the same situation as something that happened to me growing up. Instead of being excited about my self care, my T wanted to talk about the the thing that had happened to me growing up. Granted, I had never mentioned this particular thing before, but ... Anyway, it was a hard subject for me to discuss and I had difficulty not getting lost in my head and in dealing with the flashbacks. I managed to deal with it, though, without having to have him walk me through the grounding exercises again, so that felt like progress.

So at the end of this grueling, weepy session, T says I am awesome and it was a great session. Seriously? I am struggling with this feeling that my T thinks it's awesome when I'm sad. I understand intellectually, that is not what he means, but it just kind of amuses me how far apart our definitions of "awesome" are. I understand these sessions are NECESSARY and this is where the real work gets done, but calling it awesome is weird to me.

How do you guys define an awesome session?