Thanks, Bill3, for sticking with me on this and coming up with so many good questions and ideas. I can see now that it can be a combination more than I felt before. And I was starting to see that working on self-care was probably what makes sense to work on especially since it will take time and practice to get something to become more "automatic."

I do have self-care things that I do regularly, like safe place visualizations, meditation, Tai Chi, exercise, and journaling, but all are kinda on the serious side and aren't all that playful really. They could be more so, but I'm looking for something else that I've not tried. Or haven't done in a while. That will require some outside help.

But so does the anger since it is coming from a deeper place than the surface irritations. I tend to implode rather than explode so actually allowing myself to have some safe form of expression seems to be what would be the best as a first move. Once I feel that I can experience anger and not have to shove it or turn it into something more internalized, I think then I can start to use techniques to modulate it. If that makes sense.

This is helping me clarify things by thinking out loud. I will go into session expressing an interest in doing both and see what evolves. He doesn't make decisions for me and is not the directive type, but he is excellent at understanding what is underlying what is going on and getting that out there to be seen and talked about.