Dear MC,
Why am I so worried about the handshake thing? I'd feel better if you'd respond sometime before Wed. to say you'd be open to trying the in-office (vs. hallway) opening handshake. Or something. I know it probably seems weird if I'm hung up on this...but I don't think it's just about the handshake. It's partly about the change in moving to the new office...but that timing also coincided with your wife's passing. So I think just as much of this is my fears about a change in you and how you are as a T. So anything that might be a sign of something different, my brain is jumping on.

And there's probably the fear, too, that, well, if you could stop doing the pre-session handshake (even if it's logistical), what if you find some reason to stop doing the post-session ones, too? And what else might you take away? E-mails, especially because I've sort of been overdoing it this past week, with T away and me being in a not-so-good place?

OK, there's something to talk with you about. Along with the seeming hard stop at 3 after our appointment, which doesn't seem to be another client (at least not an in-office one), even if you retrieve us pretty late, which also seems to have changed with the changing office. Especially since you've been more flexible with sessions ending when we haven't seen you on our usual day/time.

Yeah, there's clearly a lot that I'm worried about regarding you. Including my paranoia that your hard stop at 3 p.m. is actually because you have to go get radiation treatment or something. Or that weird reference you made recently to "a stop I had to make on the way to work" without saying what it was (because normally you'd say) is actually a treatment of some kind.

OK, maybe I don't feel quite as safe with you as I said in that e-mail...though if it was, say, a personal health thing, that wouldn't be about me...but still about abandonment fears.

Love,
LT