> I want her to know the severity of my emotional distress so she'll go to the core with me, but then maybe she sees that as symptoms not under control...grrrrrr....the balance of that blows....

Yep. the balance of that does indeed blow. But yeah, I'd say that that is what is going on. When I read your initial post I understood why it was that she referred you on to p-doc and why it was that she didn't want to go any deeper with you. Of course I also understand your frustration in wanting to go deeper and deal with this stuff. And I also understand the frustration of conveying how intense emotions are but also wanting to convey that they are manageable to a certain extent... But yeah, the balance blows...

One thing that it might be nice to work on (in preperation) is some emotion regulation strategies and some distress tolerance strategies as well. It is really important to keep up with practicing those strategies because the core work can be really very painful and life can become about stringing together such coping strategies in order to get through at times.

I'm a bit scared of falling apart under the pressure of the core stuff. I have a tendency to sink into depression and just want to die. I start to feel like that during the week a little. Trying to implement strategies around acting opposite to emotion and exercising and self soothing etc but it is hard. I'm out of practice, you see.

Could you ask your therapist if she knows anything about Linehan's DBT skills? The mindfulness meditation, distress tolerance, and emotion regulation skills could really help you out. Especially the emotion regulation one by the sounds of it. Sounds to me like your t needs some evidence that you are able to regulate your emotion before she is prepared to risk talking about the core stuff. Why? Because she doesn't want to to disintegrate (which is horribly horribly horribly painful for you).