*Potential self-harm trigger (self-hitting)

So, before holidays, I showed up to session after having a couple drinks at company holiday party. Was 20 min late. I was thinking, given upcoming holidays that in the 30m left, we'd just have a lighter, rapport building session. I start kind of chatting about things. Then T says, "I have a question,"

"Have you signed your lease yet?"

I'd been planning to move and found a place, since my current apartment had lots of problems. BUT the property management company hadn't signed lease yet, they had to run background checks.

I got ticked off. Felt judged and kind of taken aback by the abrupt change of topic.

Things went downhill from there. T kept telling me he thought I was "afraid" that they wouldn't give me the lease. I couldn't figure out why they wouldn't give me the lease (I'd already been approved income-wise) and said, "why wouldn't they?" T telling me, "well, they haven't yet." I'd been snapping a hairband on my wrist (I have history of SI, but haven't seriously SI'd in over a decade) and he called my attention to it. I felt judged again, took hairband off.

He went back to apartment and kept pushing about it.

Finally I just lost complete control (prob. the two drinks at holiday party did not help in this regard! ) But so it goes - I started violently hitting myself and self-criticizing.

Felt humiliated and embarrassed after that. Then T asks if I can ask So-and-So to help with stuff. I'm out of sorts and just ask him "why are you telling me what to do?" He tells me he's not, he's just asking if I *can*

(well, like, why ask if I can if you don't want me to do that?)

It just didn't even feel like therapy. It just felt like this awful, painful interaction.

Went in for session right before 2 week holiday break and handed him a check (fuming inside that I *pay* for this kind of awful interaction!)

Then just sat in relative silence for 45 minutes (some talking, but mostly not) before I asked if he had anything he wanted to say before I left. He said a few things, that he was concerned, that he knows the break will be hard, that he'll be there when I get back. (He's the one leaving, btw!) hopes I have a nice holiday, etc.

I left.

I am still seriously considering just no-showing this Tuesday. I just don't understand how the above can be considered therapy. Isn't there some kind of 'processing' that is supposed to happen? Is it all up to me? Is his job just to sit there and provoke emotional responses then abandon me?

Guess I'm just looking for some kind of reality check. It's so hard to be a 'consumer' of something that one can't assess and has no way of knowing whether it's "good" or "bad" - just continually told it will take time and doesn't feel good.



P.S. - The lease was signed the next day, I wasn't afraid at all before that session (we had a move-in date and had seen the unit) but then I was consumed by anxiety that - for some unknown reason - the proper managers might go back on their word and 'unapprove' me. Maybe it was 'unconscious' fear? Or maybe *T* was afraid? I feel like I can't tell, once T "tells" me he thinks I feel a certain way whether I do or I don't...