Yeah. I think I do want to be a little bit careful though. This might well be coming from my stuff... But I don't think it is solely coming from my stuff because one of my therapists commented on this after we stopped working together. She said that I come across as self-sufficient and kind of distant aloof and enigmatic. That I was kinda daunting...

I know that I do sort of try and alienate clinicians at times (to get them to back off because of my fear of intimacy).

I guess that my dismissiveness is probably part of that. I was talking to him a bit about some of my IRL relationships and I said that I guess I do come across as a bit distant and that people aren't really sure what to make of me. There are some fairly high profile proffs here and quite often students are visibly sucking up to them but I don't do that and so the proffs aren't quite sure what to make of me. And he muttered something about my coming across as enigmatic...

I was reading this case example about some lady who would turn up to her sessions with a plan of what she was going to talk about. That she would proceed to talk about it and everytime her t offered a comment / interpretation she would look a little annoyed like it was an interruption. That she would be a bit dismissive of it and ignore it and get back to her train of thought. That after a while the therapist started to feel powerless to help her. So he talked to her about whether she was afraid that if the therapist could help her because she might become dependent or needy or that it would be very undermining to her self esteem. And after some time... The issue became around how she needed to be self sufficient in order to be accepted as a child and she was afraid of relying on other people.

I wonder if I've got some of that going on too. Not with structuring the sessions but with respect to being dismissive of what he does say. Kind of a defence against neediness / dependency.

I think that he is trying to be a bit more interactive because he doesn't want me to get lost in the transference / the past. Because if that becomes too intense... Well... I can't afford to regress too much because I need to keep on with my work. I think that is why he is trying to be more interactive and why he tells me a little bit more about himself than he otherwise would (e.g., his having time off while his wife has a kid). But then I don't know. I don't really know how much he thinks about all this stuff... Don't know. I guess the only way to find out is to ask.