I was anxious walking into the session. As I was telling a friend before I went in, the second session is always the worst. There's a formula that all clinicians tend to follow in the first session. "Tell me about you and your history, but at a safe distance. I'll tell you a little bit about me, and I'll see you next week?" That's safe. That's known. In the second session, you still don't know who the clinician is, and they don't know you either, so the dance is awkward and fills me with anxiety.

At the end of the last session, he had given me a scale about dissociation that we spent most of the session discussing. He asked me questions about the things that I ranked highly. For instance, I apparently dissociate a lot when I'm driving. I hate driving, so I don't want to actively think about it. It's just something I do. I also have a tendency to dissociate from pain. It's why I'm still largely functional whenever I have my migraines or whatever.

There were a couple of questions that he asked me that were uncomfortable, and he commented then on my anxiety. He also mentioned that he noticed it when I first walked in as well. I said that I was anxious, but that I was okay to continue talking about the screener. "Well," he said, "I want to go at your own pace. So if something becomes too much, just tell me and we can switch topics." I told him that I struggle with that sense of agency in change. I don't advocate well for myself at all.

"Okay," he replied. "What if we came up with some way for you to signal to me when what we're doing is too much. Then instead of you using your words, you can show me the sign, and instead of me acknowledging it, I'll just discreetly change the topic." I was confused. What kind of sign?

"Well, this is just an example, but that pillow to your right, the one that I can see. What if whenever you were feeling a high level of anxiety and we need to move on you can turn it over to the other side. It's a different color so it's very noticeable." I picked up the pillow and looked at it. He was right. One side was rainbow and the other side was teal (so basically my dream pillow.) I said I liked the idea, so let's go with it.

We continued on discussing the screener, and he mentioned something that we had discussed earlier that gave me a great deal of anxiety. I told him something very personal that I've never discussed with another human being before, and it just felt very intimate to discuss, because it's something that I do by myself only. So I flipped over the pillow.

"So I told you that I had a few things I wanted to try to do today. One of them was to explore some coping skills that might work. I thought maybe we would try one now. Would you like to blow some bubbles?"

I looked over at the little end table next to me and there was a small thing of bubbles sitting on it, like what you might get at a wedding. I opened it up and blew a few bubbles, and laughed when he started to pop a few of them with his finger. I did the same. "How do you feel now?" he asked.

I was okay, and we were able to make it through the rest of the screener without any other major incident. Then we talked about some of the other coping / grounding skills that he wanted to show me. We talked about the idea of visualization a little bit; I work with it a lot at work. He had some candle samples to see if smell was helpful. I kind of shrugged my shoulders at that. I don't have a great sense of smell to begin with, plus I'm still super congested from my bout with the flu, "Yeah," he said, "I probably should have realized."

We went back to the screener for a moment, and he said that he was impressed with my ability for insight and the way that I was able to articulate my feelings and experiences with things. That it sounds like I have a tendency to dissociate at times, which seems to be adaptive in my actual life, but might be a hindrance to therapy at times, because it's easy to dissociate if it's already a coping mechanism that you can activate when stressed out/triggered/whatever.

I kind of shrugged my shoulders and said yes, but at least we were having the conversation. I hadn't ever discussed dissociation before with another therapist, and I guess I assumed I didn't do it often. The reason is because I have had very severe dissociation before, where I did feel 100% out of my body, but in my everyday life I apparently have the predisposition to depersonalization and derealization.

He took the time to emphasize again that while it's important to recognize our coping mechanisms, he also doesn't want me to push myself too far too fast. This is when he attempted to reassure me. "We're in this together, I'm not going to abandon you, etc." This for me was very hard to hear. I like the idea that he seems invested in my success and wants to see this through to some type of conclusion, but I also don't believe it at all.

RoboT never said these things to me, that he wouldn't abandon me or that we were in it together. He looked at himself more as a guide versus an active collaborator. So we weren't in it together, and he was going to abandon me. Granted, I left him before it came to that, but had I stayed like I originally intended, he would have left me, and it would have been in a state worse than what I came to him in.

So when New T (nickname will be Bubbles) said that, my anxiety went through the roof. I said to him that I knew I was projecting onto him, and that it wasn't fair. He said something like, "on a human level I'm touched that you care about the fairness of this all, but as your therapist I don't care. My feelings aren't important here."

Which made it worse. Because RoboT interjected himself so much into the room that his feelings did become important.

I tried to deep breathe to soothe, it didn't work. I tried a couple of other things, and they didn't work either. "It's okay," he said. "I'm not going anywhere, not now or in the future." Which, of course, didn't help. I looked at the clock and we were 5 minutes over, which made me feel terrible. Somehow I pointed out the time.

"Are you thinking about hurting yourself?" I shook my head yes. "I meant it when I said last week that I'm not going to make you leave if you're activated like this. It was concerning last week when you said that you used to go home and hurt yourself after therapy."

So finally after trying a few things to calm me down, I ended up blowing more bubbles and popping them. He said that popping the bubbles was the best part, and I agreed. He asked me to scale where I was anxiety wise, and it had gone down enough for me to leave. I didn't think that my schedule would allow me to see him next week, but it worked out that I'm seeing him on Wednesday.