So my session begins before I walked into the office. I walked into the waiting room to find T in session with someone else. He had asked me earlier in the week to move my session back, and I obliged. While I was in the waiting room, I heard a very loud thud from his office, followed by loud laughter.

He was about 5 minutes late coming out of that session. So he went to the restroom quickly before meeting me back in his office.

The loud noise was him falling out of his chair as he reached behind him to grab his appointment book. The laughter, his words, were his attempt to laugh off the embarrassment he felt at falling. I was just glad he wasn't injured. Well, except his ego a little.
He asked how the trip was. I shrugged. He asked if I had a good time, and I said I did. "I can't help but feel like something happened while you were there."

So I told him about the phone call from my mom and that I hadn't listened to it yet. "Can I listen to it now?" He said that was fine, then quickly added "you're going to put it on speaker, right?" I nodded and hit play as he scooted close to me to hear.

We ended up playing it twice. There was a part toward the end where bio mom was slurring her words, so T asked me to play it again. After the second time, I put my phone down, fuming.

"Use your words, Daisy." I said how much I hated her. How worthless she was. The tone of the voicemail was terse, angry. How dare she be angry with me?

"You're not just feeling angry, are you? Give the other emotions voice too. What does the sadness say?" I said it hurt that she would call me high. That she thought so little of me. That she couldn't give me the things a daughter needs from her mother.

We talked about my mother for the majority of the session. At one point, T had asked me to say something to my mother, and so I said "she is...no, you are..."

At that point T said he liked what I was doing, talking directly to her, and brought over the Evil Chair. That lasted a while. I told her what I needed from her, how I felt about the voicemail, etc.

I don't remember most of the chair work. I was really upset, sobbing some. But one thing I remember saying was that I felt bad for my mother because I feel like I have the capacity for deep and meaningful love, but that her continued bad judgement precluded her from having that with me. At that moment I looked at T and said, "now, this may come as a surprise to you, but I think I have the capacity to be a very likable person." He said that wasn't surprising to him at all, that he liked me very much. I clarified that the surprising part was that I was saying it. He laughed and agreed.

T at one point reframed something I said as that I needed to let the relationship between my mother and me die. It was an eloquent way to say what I was thinking, but I shrugged my shoulders and said I didn't know how. That I felt like I was never going to get there. That I was exhausted from the conversation. I didn't want to talk about her anymore.

T looked at his watch. "Well, we have about 20 minutes left. You said something else was bothering you." He was right. I had said that I was upset by multiple things right after I had listened to the voicemail. That I wasn't sure how much of what I felt was because of her or other issues.

I shook my head. I didn't want to talk about it. "Well, we don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, but I can tell you're upset."

I said that my anger was probably due to recency bias. That ultimately it wasn't important, I'd get over it. "Wait, how recent are we talking about? This morning?"

I nodded and muttered "I'm upset with you."

"Why, what did I do? Or I guess I should say what did I do now?" We both chuckled at that. It's been a rocky few months between him and I.

I told him I was upset that he wanted to move my appointment for someone else. I had assumed it was a personal thing, not for another client.

He said he was attempting to accommodate the family that came in before me. But did I remember what the text message said? Yes, "if not, no problem." But I glared at him and said that he was an idiot to think that was enough, because we've talked at length about my inability to set boundaries. It was part of the conversation surrounding my mother earlier in session.

So the conversation transitioned from him being a butt to my lack of boundaries with others. My department chair seeks me out for the nasty favors at work because he knows I'll do it. For example, my coteacher got pulled to cover a meeting at central office on Friday during our remedial block. When I asked her how that happened, she told me the department head was actually looking for me, but I was still on vacation.

He said that he thought that my inability to set boundaries was linked to my intense fear of rejection. He clarified in that moment that fear of rejection from others is normal. I said I knew that, but that I also knew the extent to which I feared rejection was abnormally high. He didn't disagree with that.

He said that in order to protect myself, to set boundaries, I'd have to risk being rejected, but that ultimately he believed that the risk was worth it.

I sighed and said I wasn't sure if I was in a place to take those kinds of risks. That I felt like I wasn't making progress anymore with him or in my journey of personal growth. That perhaps this was as good as it gets.

He said he agreed and he didn't. He said that I hadn't been making as much progress recently, but that's a normal thing. He talked about how he used to play guitar and for a while he was really happy with how good he was playing. "Like wow, I'm actually proficient, but then I started to feel frustrated that I wasn't getting any better. That I wasn't going to be the next Eric Clapton or whoever."

His point was that at some point we all plateau. That growth becomes so small and incremental that you don't even notice it anymore. This upset me a lot. I was sitting in session very upset about everything that had happened with my mother, thinking about how nothing is ever going to change, and I felt like he's confirmed that I have reached the pinnacle.

He said it was about time to stop (though he shorted me 5 minutes from the people before me), but wanted to share two things with me, as he could see that I was really upset. I don't remember what either was. They were what I felt were droll platitudes that had nothing to do with me. After he said both, he looked at me and said "that didn't help, did it?" I shook my head, and he said "I'm sorry" in a really low voice. I shrugged as I grabbed my things and walked out. I nearly collapsed in the elevator crying.

I've been asleep most of the day since my appointment. I just don't know that I have the strength to continue. I don't want to feel this way anymore.