Came in yesterday "late," because showing up to anything on time really bothers me. We talked about how yesterday was incredibly stressful and taxing at work. How thoughtlessness almost made me late. How all of the day's events were just adding to the uneasy feeling I had. I did not want to see him today. I explained that I'm in the middle of a round of hormones, and being there scared me. The last time I was there where hormones were influencing me was Valentine's Day. He asked me to describe how I was feeling. The analogy I used was that my emotions were a fire and the hormones are an accelerant. It feels foreign. He said given the history between us and my internal experience, my anxiety made sense. He said he was hopeful that today would be a different experience.

Overall it was a different experience. We didn't talk about much. Mostly we talked about the relationship. Ugh. He's going on a "break" next week. It really isn't that big of a deal. He wanted to make it a bigger deal than it was. The conversation around this started with a comment he made about my emotion. That I was sitting well in my emotions and feeling them appropriately. I commented that I didn't agree. I did the math and it's been nearly 8 months since I've been able to cry in therapy. And I'm a crier.

He challenged me to focus less on the emotion and more on the fear. What bad could happen? I said that the detachment from emotion was protective. That eventually the wall would crumble and that's when bad things would happen.

"What bad things?"
"It's when the other shoe will drop."
"You're using euphemisms. Specifically what bad things?"

I said that I've grown to like him and appreciate the working relationship that's developed, which is impressive considering. So once I give up trying to hold the crumbling wall, that's when he's going to decide to move or take off time to write a book or whatever that would make him unavailable. That it's what happened with RoboT. That I'd been abandoned by him. Therapy has actually made me worse, and that I had measurable data points to prove it.

Bubbles asked me to compare and contrast his break versus the break and end with RoboT. I said the same was that the therapist would not be a resource available to me. The difference was that this upcoming "break" is barely a break at all and I wasn't terribly affected by it. He would be back. Bubbles said I was right; he assured me he would be at our next scheduled appointment on the 26th. I said I didn't like that. That he could get hit by a car or catch ebola or something because "who knows what you're up to next week."

He asked if it would help me if he told me he wouldn't tell me what he was doing next week. I said no. What he doesn't know is that I already know why he's out of the office. Thanks, Google. Unlike other people here, though, I don't have the strength to admit to him that I know this. Especially now that he said he wouldn't tell me what he's doing, I feel a great deal of shame about it.

What I replied was that I didn't want to know what he was doing. It wasn't on the list of many personal questions I wanted to ask him. That when I said that, I didn't mean it. I just have one question.

"I had that written down to discuss today."
"Of course you do, you asshole."

I hemmed and hawed, and ultimately I wasn't able to ask him the question I had for him. He observed that I sounded and acted very adolescent when I was trying to talk to him about my question. I agreed and asked why. He said that when people are activated, they have a tendency to regress to whenever the trauma was.

It was the end of session, so he did something really smart to help me come to baseline. I was telling him about my plans for the evening. I went out with my friend from college. We go out now every 2-3 weeks to commiserate about our jobs. He asked me a question to differentiate the population of students my friend works with versus the population I work with. A lot of my students have ADHD, so he asked me a very intellectual question about my opinion of the prevalence of ADHD diagnoses in America. I went into "adult mode" very quickly and was ready to leave afterwards.