I just wonder if you could put it to her--"Look, I have these impulses to call you because I feel crappy, but I wrestle with myself about whether I need to or not, and whether I should or not, and how you feel about it?

How about an experiment, that for the next 2 weeks I give into my impulses; then we talk about it: how I felt making the calls, how I felt afterwards, how I feel now; whether you thought my calls were appropriate, productive, etc, and how you reacted to them. Then see where we are. "

I just wonder what it would be like to have a time when you had explicit instructions to call whenever you felt the urge? When you were not to feel responsible for where the boundaries are, nor feel any fear about whether you'd crossed them. To experience how that would feel? I'm just thinking it might be a way of getting out of your head about it and closer to the experience of feeling it.

Would that feel like a frightening challenge or a relief?