over being mad now. it really helped to not have to wait so long between sessions... i was feeling a bit more relaxed...

i told him how my friend told me that i have this habit of going numb... then getting really mad... and that it can take some time to sort out the mad and so i shouldn't be too quick to give up therapy. and i said that that seemed kinda right to me. and that once i realised that i did better with refocusing on my work. and didn't feel so mad. took a bit of a while to communicate that. kept kind of going back through it and i guess he was trying to understand. but he could tell that something had shifted with me (and that i was trying to connect again) and he could tell that it had to do with this...

i told him that i didn't want to feel the anger because i didn't want to act out. act out from the rage. try and make him feel bad or do stuff likely to make him feel bad. he asked what i meant by bad. i said... anger... aversion. if he feels bad when he sees me then he might not want to work with me.

he said 'so your going numb was a repairing / maintaining relationship thing to be doing'. and yeah. thats it. he seemed... pleased. that the disconnection i resolutely maintained the week before was really about my trying to maintain the connection over the long term.

i told him that (i know this isn't you) but the last doc i worked with back home used to have his pager / cell go off in sessions and he would leave the room to take calls. people would knock on the door and need to speak with him. he would sometimes be an hour late for sessions or not turn up. i tried to talk to him about how i found those things hard. he promised not to do them again. he did them again. i told him again. he promised again. he did them again. eventually i got more hysterical with the way i told him i didn't like them and he got more defensive about breaking his promises. it turned really unpleasant for the both of us. i didn't want that to happen with my current t.

i said that i realised (afterwards) that he was on call for emergencies at the hospital. when he was late court ran over. he didn't have the time to see me really. he was trying but... he didn't have the time.

my t said i'd had a hard time of it in the service. and... before that.

he said 'don't make promises you can't keep'. somewhere along the story about my past p-doc. yeah. thats it. thats it exactly.

i said i understood that unforseeable things come up sometimes. with respect to his emailing me... i guess it was forseeable that he would be busy... was it forseeable how busy? i don't know... i said that it would be better for me if he didn't make promises if it was forseeable that it would be unlikely for him to be able to keep them.

he just said 'ok'. he kind of leaned forward. he didn't get defensive. he just listened. he said 'don't make promises you can't keep'. he got it. he got what the issue was. and he accepted it and said 'ok'. so i said... 'cause otherwise i get my hopes up and then it hurts too much.

it was good to say it. to be able to talk honestly about what was going on.

he said he wanted to talk to me (next time) about what we are doing. goals. stuff like that. he said something about how i had said before that i wanted to work towards integration and that he thought i was capable of that. and he wanted to talk to me about the process of what we were meant to be doing...

i said some stuff about how i don't really believe in dx categories...

and he said something about 'well i don't really either except that we have to... well... i suppose i have to... i don't suppose you have to...' and he looked a little bit puzzled. i don't know. i said that i wanted to talk to him about what we were up to anyway. that that was something i mentioned in the emails.

see him on friday. two more sleeps :-)