</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
sister said:
I know that i would have freaked out if I read those e-mails and I wonder if you discussed them with T? I wouldn't have been able to contain myself but I know you are better at that then I am!!

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">Sister, the email that really upset me was the one about me from my lawyer, and no, I didn't contain myself well at all with her! I wrote her a long email telling her how I felt about what she had written. I thought it was progress that I told her how I felt, as my usual reaction would be to ignore my hurt and not tell the person. I struggled with that, even thinking, "I wasn't meant to read these messages, so I'll just pretend I never saw them, and won't tell anyone." But I rejected this ultimate containment strategy because I knew it would harm my relationship with my lawyer, and it was too important to me--we do have a strong connectedness. So I saw it as huge progress for me that I told her my feelings instead of stuffing them. We talked on the phone and kind of repaired things, however, I don't think I did it well at all, and this has made me realize how much I need to learn better communication skills. When she tried to repair, I had a hard time "hearing" her because I was so flooded with my feelings. It must have been very frustrating and even hurtful for her to have me reject her efforts at communication like that. Sometimes, I am really embarrassed to be me.

After our phone call, I had session with T, and in the meantime, my lawyer called him to chat. So by the time I got in his office, he knew some of the story. We talked about it some, primarily what the lawyer had written and what it meant. He did ask once if I was "OK" with him, and I think he was giving me an opening to discuss his email, but his email was not so upsetting to me, didn't hurt me so deeply like the lawyer's had. I just felt some objectification of me in it, and we did talk about a couple of lines he'd written, and he wanted me to understand them better. I'm just struggling a bit on my own, as I've written in this thread, to handle the ambivalence. But this has not ruptured my relationship with T.

(Sister, this is what I mean when I've written elsewhere that I have so much going on in therapy that I can't take time out to talk about dolls and dreams.)