I'm worried about how sometimes I email my t and sound like a needy child, then immediately after hitting "Send," I feel absolutely horrified and ashamed! It's not a situation where I do it without knowing that I am doing it. But it is like there is a struggle between a child part of me that wants T to be there and comfort me versus the independent, "I don't need anybody" part of me that thinks I should not let myself attach to my t or get used to any soothing by her.

The way it starts out, usually I have emailed my t a normal message from my normal self. Then later, another part of me wants to communicate. I try to resist doing so with my self-control and usually I am successful in resisting the urge to send a child-like message. However, at times, this other part of me wins out and sends the email. Usually it says something like how much I miss her and need her, or whatever.

When I feel that child part of me present and she gains enough control to start typing that kind of email, the rational independent part of me immediately steps up and says "No, don't do that! It's not right. She is not your mother. Don't depend on her for nurturing. Don't be such a baby. Don't embarrass me like that. You're not a child!" Scold. Scold. Scold.

9 out of 10 times, I am able to erase the email before I hit "Send." But the problem is how much of a conflict I feel around it, and what a tug-of-war it is when I feel those two parts of me in conflict. At times, it may take more than 2-3 hours of writing and deleting email messages while the two parts of me go back and forth between wanting to say something, and not letting me say it.

So, like I said, in those rare cases where I lose the ability to prevent myself from sending an email of that child-like sort, I automatically feel guilty, weird, and angry at myself. I follow the email up with another email asking my t to just ignore what I sent, that I didn't mean to send it, etc. I feel bad that I was not able to prevent it and won't believe that I could not have stopped it from happening. I feel that what I said while in that child state is not at all characteristic of how I feel normally. I hate being needy, hate expressing emotions like affection or longing, and hate asking anybody for help or support.

After it happens, I can't seem to come up with a good reason for it, and for why I could not prevent it. It makes me think it was pretend or I did it for attention, or something. Because it just isn't like me. I mean, I DO have a very needy child part of me, but I have always been able to exert strong willpower over it and not let it take over.

I'm starting to feel really nervous about this. Does it sound like dissociation? I took a dissociation test online that scored me as 40. I know I dissociate. But not to the point of DID. And yet this "part of me" sometimes steps up and says or do things that just aren't like me. Why can't I prevent it?