Thank you everyone for your kind and thoughtful replies. Electric Manatee, your comparison to a hermit crab without a shell is dead on. I hadn't realised how much I'd shut out feelings even within myself until I went to therapy. Now that I've given myself permission to feel in the privacy of my own home -- with shell on -- my therapist and I are working on letting me feel things for others -- with all the highs and lows that entails. I hope you're further down the road than me... feeling things has made me feel more connected to the world, more human and at peace.

Xynesthesia and DP: I feel sadness (though it's blunted, unfortunately) for the people on this forum who want friendship / something other than a therapist--client relationship, especially for people who have no other support. So many people on this forum seem to be desperately craving connection and build up their lives around a one-hour window with someone who can't possibly give them the level of closeness they need. Xyn, what you said about needing to translate what happens in therapy to outside of therapy is so true. I feel unbelievably safe in the therapy room, and I've point blank told my therapist I need to develop the same kind of places in my real life. I've told him I can't just feel safe and emotional in his office. He listened, but he didn't comment.

I can only say that I'm not angling for my therapist's friendship. I don't want the burden of caring for him, and I would like to end therapy one day and leave him in my past (though I'm sure there will be times I'll miss him and think of him fondly). I look forward to our time together, but I also look forward The Apprentice and going on weekend getaways with my husband and hitting up London to see my friend's new art exhibition. I could definitely see me latching on if I had a smaller support system, but that's not where I'm at currently.

What I'm talking about is human connection, of feeling empathy and care for someone because the human in you recognises the human in them. Particularly when one person had reminded the other that they still belong to the human race. If that makes sense.

Manatee, so much of what you said was helpful. I suppose I'm expecting a lot of someone to know when to text me and when not to, so thank you for that. That perspective is enormously helpful. I probably message him once every other week -- usually to share a song or piece of writing we spoke about in session but which I couldn't find on my phone at the time. He's off the clock, so I try to limit it to something he could respond to in under five minutes, and never more than once a week. He always answers.

I guess what I'm struggling with is how vague he can be, or how he doesnt explore some topics even though he will pounce on loads of other other things I say. It feels like being ignored, as Spangle has said. A couple of weeks ago I asked him if it was OK to message him out of session. He wouldn't give a yes or no, just some vague answer about how he's old school and prefers things to happen in session. I asked him why he became a therapist and how he could be empathetic all day long, and he kept giving lame answers and saying he thought it was my way to avoiding talking about an issue until I got snippy and told him that he saw dodging the question. I have mentioned wanting to hug him several times, and have taken to clutching a cushion to my stomach every session to feel warmth and he never talks about it. I just sit in awkward silence. I shook his hand at the end of one session and it was never mentioned again.

We even had a whole session on our relationship, completely brought up and then led by him after the session I'd been most emotional. I argued therapy could never be intimate because intimacy requires two people, and how it's hard to share things with him because at the end of the day I don't know him. I felt strangely at peace at the end, though nothing was resolved, and he told me that "perhaps I need to bring less of the counselor and more of the human to sessions." But the only thing that I feel has really changed is that he has stopped wearing suits and now wears sweaters to session.

Having some actual words to address this with him would be helpful, as I feel a bit beat down. Something like, "Hey fellow human..."