I brought up with her today that I'd wanted to call her last week to leave a message to tell her about how I'd dealt really maturely with a situation and how I was super proud of myself, but I hadn't called because something about that felt like I was breaching a boundary...and she told me she'd made her boundaries very clear to me and our sessions are 50 minutes long once a week and that's it except for crises.

But with that said, it wasn't like a "cardinal sin" (?) to call her and tell her something good that I'd done, which is why she didn't mind that I'd done it once before, and just use my judgement and don't do it all the time because her job is to help me not need her instead of encouraging me to need her and I did the right thing last week by not calling...so then I started feeling defensive and trying to justify why my attachment to her actually wasn't unhealthy (which I actually don't think it is, and I don't think she thinks it is either...)

So I brought up with her that I thought maybe I'd identified her as a "safe, supportive adult" in my life instead of explicitly as "T", and she said that was normal but also that she didn't want me to be relying on her, to which I quickly tried to justify why I wasn't (ex. I know our relationship won't last forever and that doesn't make me anxious at all; I make lots of decisions without consulting her first; I have no desire to see her "in the real world")...so that did not go so well. Part of it is tricky because she IS a safe supportive adult in my life (although definitely not the only one these days), but only for fifty minutes a week if I pay her $110.

And then I brought up the situation where a few weeks ago I'd told her something vulnerable and she responded really well and it made me feel good and safe and she didn't know what I was talking about...which is fair because I know she has other clients; it wasn't that I was upset at her; it was just that she wanted me to tell her about the situation all over again to jog her memory and I was already feeling vulnerable and wasn't ready to be that vulnerable all over again.

By that time it was almost the end of the session and I was a little bit upset but controlling it really well and I told her I really didn't want to spend the next week worrying about this, and what I really wanted her to do was to offer me an appointment tomorrow, which she didn't, but when I finally came out and asked for it she said she had no problem with it as long as it wasn't all the time and to use my judgement and do what I thought I needed.

But then maybe I was just feeling super oversensitive because she framed it as though "if you need me, we can have the session, but if you think you can flex your independence muscle and not do the session, then you can do that," and it annoyed me because that read to me as "making me feel guilty about needing something" even though she left the choice up to me. I feel like maybe I was having an off day or maybe she was because a lot of the stuff she was saying just didn't feel right...so we have a session tomorrow morning...and that's all.