I didn’t tell her about the hotline thing. But I told her about how my mother always accused me of lying and manipulating and making up stories for attention when I was little, and when I started seeing a therapist when I was eight, my mother terminated that relationship pretty quickly because I was lying to the therapist and trying to manipulate her. (She determined this because the therapist told her that I was a pretty normal eight year old with high levels of anxiety due to having a younger brother with autism who needed a lot of attention and because my parents were always putting me in the middle of their acrimonious divorce, and she suggested they stop doing that.)

And I told her that I used to lie a lot to therapists or teachers to get attention. There was this one teacher I had when I was about fifteen who I wished could be my mother. She has a little girl who was six years old and I was so jealous of this kid. This teacher would ask me every day if I’d eaten something, and after observing her reaction one day when I said I hadn’t, I decided that I was going to tell her every day that I hadn’t eaten even if I had because if I said I hadn’t, she would worry about me and fuss over me and find me something to eat. I did the exact thing later on with ED T; I would tell her I wasn’t eating properly even when I was just because I wanted love and care from her. And with the T I had when I was thirteen, at some point I realized that telling her the real things my mother and stepfather did to me wasn’t gratifying enough; eventually I ran out of really bad stories I felt like telling, so I just started making stuff up. I did the same thing with lots of other teachers throughout my life, and sometimes even with friends.

And T didn’t judge me for those things. She said that I must have been in a lot of pain and had a really deep longing to feel that I needed to resort to stuff like that to get love, and she feels really sad for that kid. And I actually feel sad for that kid too because I remember how alone and sad I felt and how desperate I was every time I would tell Ms. Fisher that I hadn’t slept at all the night before because of nightmares (absolutely not true), how desperate I was for her to notice me and pay me any attention at all, and tell me she cared about me. No one ever told me that when I wasn’t making things up. So I do feel sad for that fifteen year old. I just don’t feel sad for this nineteen year old who does the same thing on hotlines with people she doesn’t know and tells way worse stories than that. Well, maybe I will tell T about this next time…I will try to work up the courage.

She and I also talked a bit today about feelings. This started because I was telling her something that I guess made her sad, because she kept looking at me with this really sad face (she does that a lot), but today I didn’t have much patience for it and I was in a weird mood and I just burst out laughing after she’d done it a few times. She got confused that I was laughing while talking about something really upsetting, and I said it was just that it felt like she was trying to show me how I should be feeling in this situation because I was talking about it like it was no big deal and she was just giving me this really sad look. And she was sort of confused and she was like, “No, I’m just sad. I’m not consciously trying to look a certain way; I just sometimes get sad in sessions when you tell me stuff like this.” That felt…odd.

And I was trying to decide whether it was because I thought her “sadness” wasn’t genuine, and I decided that wasn’t it. And then I thought maybe it was because it was weird that she was acting sad when I wasn’t, and I think that was part of it, but I think also it’s because I am so used to hiding my sadness and I feel like it’s a “strong” thing to be able to do that, and the fact that it seemed like she was having a genuine emotional reaction to what I was telling her seemed…weak. Or immature. (Me projecting my own stuff, obviously.) And it just felt…uncomfortable. She really wasn’t trying to mirror anything for me; she was just really feeling sad. And I wasn’t. And it was MY story.

She is also amused when I think she is trying to manipulate me or play some sort of therapist trick…she thinks therapists don’t have tricks. Former T absolutely DID have tricks, but I was telling her about the T I had when I was eight and how she would make me play this board game that was literally called “The Feelings Game” and every time you got to a square it would have an emotion on it and you would have to say a time when you felt that emotion, and even at age eight I felt so manipulated because I knew the point was to get me to talk about my feelings, but I didn’t understand why the T didn’t just ask me about my feelings.

T thought that was an interesting interpretation. I suppose some people just don’t think in terms of “manipulation.”

I feel like I want another session with T to continue this conversation. I am feeling pretty triggered for some reason. Also, my problem again – I have coping mechanisms I could use to deal with my feelings right now. I just don’t feel like using them. Because telling T things that make her feel sad for me is gratifying. More gratifying than doing mindfulness or reading a book or taking a walk would be. This is my whole problem.