During today's session with new T, she wanted to know about my mom kicking me out. I told her. Dispassionately. I guess you might say I was feeling numb. I explained it in a very detached, clinical, rational way, and gained some sort of vicarious thrill at how upset she seemed to be getting on my behalf. She is very, very expressive, as I've mentioned. Her eyebrows kept going way up when I said something she found "shocking" and then her face was just so sad for me...and the funny thing is, I didn't feel anything, except faintly amused.

I told her about my mother kicking me out and me having no one in my corner and having to advocate for myself, and the things the social worker told me, and about the situation with the Minnie Mouse when I was six and about my mother locking me out of the house in the cold when I was nine, and the situation with the teacher who I told about my mom abusing me who then decided she wanted nothing to do with me...all of that was very upsetting to T, and it pleased me. She said one of the worst things for a little kid is for the adults around her to be unpredictable and that must have been so anxiety-inducing, and she told me a bunch of times that in no way was any of this my fault, although she correctly identified the guilt I was feeling about the whole situation...she said we should work on that.

She asked me how I felt about all of this, and I said I didn't feel anything (which I didn't), and she asked me if I knew why that was. I said of course it was because of cognitive dissonance, because if I accepted all the things my mother had done to hurt me, I would have no way to justify the fact that I love her dearly and continue to spend lots of time with her; it would be irrational, since how can you love someone who did all those terrible things to you? It's much easier to think it must have been my fault (T repeated again that it wasn't; I was a thirteen year old kid).

And I explained to her how everyone had always treated me like an adult when I was a kid, and I always wanted that and acted like an adult, and she said she understood that, but I was still a kid, and my mother guilt tripping me about all of the money she spent trying to get me back and about her attachment issues stemming from me "leaving" is completely inappropriate, because she's the adult and I'm the kid.

I told her about what happened a few weeks ago with mentor figure telling me about her mom making her sit in the corner and how that triggered me so much that I had this blow up with my mom where I brought up all this stuff about what had happened, and T said that's one of the things that tends to happen when you repress all those emotions - they just explode out of you like a volcano, and that's why therapy is important to process them, and my relationship with her might change, but it's important to do that work. And she said that we also need to work on the guilt and the overdeveloped sense of responsibility for everyone in the world...

We talked a bit about attachment issues, and the way I tend to be drawn to people whose roles are boundaried but who personally have no boundaries...and that was about as much time as we had. I was completely numb and not connecting with any of those emotions at all, which I think unnerved her, and I was fine just walking out the door without even asking for another session.

But now the numbness is starting to wear off and I'm feeling all this anxiety and guilt for telling her all that stuff, like maybe I misrepresented the situation to her or maybe I didn't give her the full story or maybe I said something wrong...because I think it sounded to her like there were all these adults in my life who were really terrible and uncaring who just didn't understand or support me, and I cringe at how all of that must have sounded, talking about my father who didn't support me, my mother who hurt me, the social workers who didn't believe me, my teacher who refused to speak to me after that, mentor figure, even old T...and it just feels wrong somehow.

All that guilt and all that anxiety is swirling, and I want to email her to ask about another session this weekend (that's my instinct), but I also don't know if it would accomplish anything, or if it's a habit I want to get into. I guess I really just want to give her a fuller picture of my mother instead of just as this evil demented woman who destroyed her child's psyche, which I know will come in time and I don't need to rush it, but the anxiety...and also I really do want to talk about old T, which I didn't, and the way I talk about old T to new T makes me cringe inside, because I seem so negative about her, when really I just am so, so attached to her and so, so hurt and sad...