> I'm very afraid I'm doing therapy "wrong" and he'll stop working with me.

Hey. I hear you. I'm afraid that my therapist will stop working with me, too. I'm worried that he will grow bored with me, or that I will say or do something that will make him not want to work with me anymore.

I think that part of it... Is that when people have been abused / had traumatic experiences they often come to see themselves as dirty or disgusting or undesirable or unacceptable etc etc. The view is unconscious (trying to challenge it typically doesn't help). My therapist keeps saying he is there for me and he isn't going to leave me - but I find it hard to really feel this / believe it. Even though I know, rationally, that he is there for me and that the past traumatic experiences aren't my fault... Feeling that way on an emotional level is quite different.

> But lately there is this other feeling - unnamed but painful. It is a longing of some kind...but for what?

Maybe... For a perfect parent. A parent who is attuned to your needs, loving, compassionate etc. A parent who is powerful enough to protect you. Maybe what you are finding is that your therapist can be really very emotionally attuned to you so that you feel cared for and validated. Maybe... You are desiring more of that outside therapy. maybe... You are partly grieving that you haven't had more of those experiences in your life. Maybe... You are becoming aware that you don't have those experiences so very often in your relationships outside therapy.

The idea is that eventually... Your ability to emotionally connect with your therapist will generalize so that you can emotionally connect with other people outside therapy. There will be a number of reasons why you don't feel so emotionally connected to the people presently in your life (some to do with you, some to do with them). There are things that you can do to increase intimacy... Can you talk to your therapist about that?

With respect to the rescuing... It is true that you can't roll the clock back and have your therapist right there with you holding your hand, soothing you, protecting you during the times when you felt alone and traumatized... But... Your therapist can be with you right now in the present while you relive the memories. The incongruence between the unsafe memory and the safety in the present is supposed to help you process the memory such that it loses its power to capture your attention and have you feeling pain. That is one theory, anyway...

Maybe... You are just longing for more emotionally connected experiences?