I did some inner child work with my therapist a few months ago where for the first time ever, my therapist was really able to reach that inner child part of me. It meant a lot to me because that is the part where all of my pain seems to be held. Immediately after, however, my therapist backed away from me. It was very hard for me at first because she denied it, but she finally admitted that what she was doing, that the inner child work had felt overwhelming to her and had made her realize that she needed to tighten her boundaries with me and give less to me because she was already feeling overextended with me.

It was incredibly hurtful and painful to me because it felt like my worst nightmare was happening – that I showed somebody my real true self and my pain and then the person was running away and saying I was too much and changing up the rules on me. She eventually decided to hold off on making any changes with boundaries for a few months (for which I was extremely grateful), and she did apologize for the timing of the whole thing, for it being right after the inner child work, but she held firm to the fact that she wanted to start giving me less.

It all has still been incredibly painful to me but we have been able to continue working. I’ve been grateful for the extra few months in which she is still giving me email access and such. Even though part of me has been hurt, we have been able to do a lot of good work these last few months. Fast forward to this week. We haven’t been able to do inner child again since that night because she doesn’t feel safe to come out anymore, but for the first time ever, this week, I spoke to my therapist about that part and told my therapist that she was feeling frozen and not in a good way. This was very scary for me to do because it felt like I was kind of touching upon what happened back then and also just was being very open and exposed about a very vulnerable part of me. My therapist responded well about it during session and then encouraged me to email her about it. I did and then she responded to my email by sending me one sentence of very nice reassurance (usually she writes me a couple of paragraphs back), but then she told me that she is super busy with something else and has to go now.

Of course it is totally fine, but somehow this has made everything crash in on me and I have been so upset ever since I got that email. I just felt so deeply hurt all over again and like she blew me off and like she was backing away from this part again and I don’t know. I want to email her now and tell her my feelings, but I realized I’m terrified to do so. I’m so scared I’m going to make everything worse and that she’s going to wind up deciding to take something more away from me. Also, she has a bit of a temper in a way when I get upset about things, and she often gets cold to me and backs away for awhile until they are all worked out. I don’t think I could handle that right now. But I have such unbearable hurt about what she did. Just looking for any thoughts or advice. Thanks.