I forget which parenting book said this but I liked it: basically whining is a way for a child to "hook" their parents. It's annoying and hard to ignore. A child is almost guaranteed to get their parent's attention when then whine. (Even little monkeys do it and their mothers seem to find it annoying too!)

As parents we often automatically respond to whining out of our own irritation ("cut that whining out!") instead of "unhooking" and hearing the message behind it ("I'm hearing that waiting in this line is really boring for you and you can't wait to get out of here. My goodness, your voice is really telling me what a hard time you're having!")

I bet your T is responding to you from a "hooked" place--whining is hard for her to hear so she won't let you have the feeling that's behind it. Since you're not a kid, you can ask her what's so hard for her about your whining and explain how it feels to you that she can't accept that part of you. You can point out that she seems unable to work a little harder to figure out both the need you're trying to express and her own feelings about your method of expressing it.