Thanks everyone,

Sorry, things here have been rough and I lost track of the thread a little. But I appreciate all the very caring and smart replies!

Soccer Mom: " Apparently it's a struggle for T's to keep people in therapy who have Childhood Emotional Neglect."

Huh! Wow... that's really interesting. I wonder... I definitely have a background of neglect. I wonder how that plays into all this. Do you think it just makes the attachment hard? Makes it hard to believe T cares (I struggle so much with this!)? Or something else? Maybe... for me, I just feel like I've *always* had to do *everything* myself, alone. There really hasn't been anyone that I could "lean" on or depend on. And honestly, I'm not at the point (after 9 months!) that I feel like I can really "count" on my T yet. I don't think that's his fault, but I don't know how to deal with it either.

Very interesting to think about though... I might ask him about this. Thanks.

Soup Dragon: "Maybe if the T wasn't for us, there would not be uncertainty, maybe if they were completely wrong, we would know immediately that it was not a good fit. Maybe there is not a perfect T as no T is a perfect human being, and maybe "good enough" is OK.
Maybe there are some core things that need to be there, like consistency, commitment, and for me great patience, but the rest is all stuff to work on in the T relationship."

I'm so glad you had a good session with your T. I think you're right in a lot of ways. I kind of WISH my T was awful, and that I could see that from the start... because it would be so much easier to just say, "oh he's awful, I'm quitting".

I do think he's got some good qualities, and has been better in some ways than any other therapist I've seen... he projects a lot of "stability", he reads and reacts to things I write, he manages to not be defensive (whereas other Ts have gotten stuck thinking that I hated them personally, instead of understanding that I was just scared and hated therapy). I think he's committed, he does his own therapy, and he even gets supervision, despite having ~30 years of experience. All good things.

But I worry sometimes that he's not really an expert with my stuff. That he's not going to know how to deal with my stuff, and that I might need more of a specialist. But when I tried that, that didn't work either. So I go in circles. It's hard. I don't know what to do, honestly. But, I like my T enough, I think, to keep trying for now and see where it goes. I just hate to think that I might be wasting even MORE time and money, neither of which is plentiful!, if it's going to turn out that he doesn't have the skills to deal with my flavor of brokenness!

thanks!