Have come across a number of things lately that talk about how people with childhood attachment trauma/stress learn, as a coping pattern, to suppress themselves in order to meet attachment needs.

If we have a stressed, depressed, or absent mother or caregiver, we learn to be concerned with their needs first in order to keep the relationship alive and to survive.

I bring this up because I have seen in this forum and others many people talk about suppressing feelings for their T, if those feelings are intense or uncomfortable, because they fear the T will bail on them.

In my case, I dared to tell my T that I was in love with her (or so it seemed anyway). And in the end it led to termination, which destroyed me. But with my long time partner, I have done the opposite -- shut down parts of myself in order to preserve a very dysfunctional relationship.