It went well, I think. I didn't actually ask her anything. I was also really nervous and thus being my super charming self and being all smiley and bubbly and downplaying serious things (and not mentioning some serious things, like when she asked about traumatic childhood events - I told her last week about my mom kicking me out and my father's remarriage, but that's all I said). Buy I guess she will learn more about those things as I start to trust her more, and it doesn't have to be right now, right?

She wanted to an assessment, which mostly involved asking questions about my childhood, like my earliest memories and deaths/traumas/illnesses, and I told her about being sick with ITP when I was really little and about my brother's diagnosis with Asperger's, and we talked a bit about current (former?) T who she doesn't know I'm still seeing and about former teacher/mentor and about how I respond to anxiety and how that manifests itself.

I felt good about talking to her - she is really expressive and smiles and laughs with me, which is nice, and she seems to understand me pretty well already (although honestly it's not all that complicated - her understanding of me pretty much consists of me being super intelligent/cerebral/analytical and liking attention and my control issues, although when I was telling her about my need to control everything as a little kid, she thought that was cute and I quickly corrected "cute" to "neurotic").

And she seems really empathetic - like she said it must have been really hard for me when I was three to be sick and have to have a needle every week and to stay in bed and not move for four days a month so medicine could have some time to kick in, and I'd never really thought about that before, but yeah, it must have been. And also she said she could understand how scary it must have been for my mom to worry so much about me being sick, and how her anxiety might have impacted me - also something I hadn't really thought about.

I wasn't so sure about all the emphasis she was placing on early memories, but she did say that she could see how CBT would be a bad fit for me since I am already so cerebral and analytical, and I told her what I really needed was a T who would be more empathetic and who would help me build trust instead of just focussing on thoughts and behaviours. And she thought that was very self-aware of me.

I don't know if I've really given her a full picture of who I am or what I need yet, and we didn't really talk about boundaries and stuff - it was really all over the place and we talked about a lot of marginally relevant stuff, like she asked me about my grandmother who passed away when I was nine and I talked about how we used to play checkers and she would never let me win because she wanted me to learn real strategy and how proud I was when I won at checkers for the first time...

But it's only the second session and it's about becoming comfortable enough with her to talk about big stuff and sit with big feelings, so I can accept that. She asked me today if I can feel the feelings I must have felt as a three year old in the hospital or about my parents' divorce and how scared I must have been - and I can't really connect with those feelings, or at least not with her.

She seems really nice though, and significantly less boundaried than old T - she took me in a few minutes early and didn't hurry me out of her office after and she said it was good to see me as I was leaving, and she was just really kind to me. We have another session booked for next Friday.