I took the elevator to the 4th floor right at 8:56. I don't like being early for sessions, or late either. One time when I arrived early, you engaged in a skirmish with the next door office about how their coffee smells came into your office, and it made you seem more fussy and difficult as a person than you come across one on one. Your office smells very warm-masculine, like shaving and cologne. I like it, but honestly the coffee smell I like fine too and I screen it out automatically. Once I got glitter on your couch from an evening gown ( was on a podcast & had to wear it). You were nice about that, you are charmable- just not often.

You asked what I wanted to talk about, but part of my mind kept being distracted by a subtext of the the huge new framed family portraits you placed at client eye level. In talking to you now, you are wreathed in your family members - kissing your wife at your wedding looking off an ocean pier with your kids etc, though you forbid questions about you. It is distracting, especially bc me having ended a marriage over a the loss of a pregnancy( complicated) and now BF and I deep in conversation about me not wanting to adopt kids, makes me feel like you are not on my side whatsoever. Early in therapy, you said women biologically want children more than men, and that was the lowest point of therapy for me and my hope for you to understand my universe. Yes, I love kids, but with my background I worry I would impart some kind of generational trauma as an accidental inheritance, and I wouldn't want to do that to any news life.

I don't want to change my seat and send all kinds of messages, but I also resent how the space feels different and so much more about you and your biography, a biography forbidden to patients.

We have a mutual college friendly acquaintance , so I know a good deal more about you than you would prefer, but I will never disclose that to you. The reason partly is bc while they are very personal things, they aren't the things I want to know and don't really make a difference to me. I know you though would be extremely uncomfortable. There is a sense of "touche" about this- you don't disclose- fine I won't either.

After reading LT's post, I decided to "link " you on Linked In. This is an experiment, bc I am tired of being so good and solicitous of your rules that wall you off from your patients. Also, I don't really use linked in. I have 1669 contacts who just sit there , I guess bc I am not looking for a job. you have like 22 contacts and are far more new to this community. If you think you are too good for linked in with a patient ( who happened to have a thriving job) then so be it. We will see what you do. You seem to be independlty affluent and don't work many days, and once joked about yourself that you are Doctor Dad in your house, so it all comes down to me resenting that- resenting that you will empathize with your deep blue eyes and say how you never dealt with a worse situation even in the military and that I have been brave and made a good life against odds, while you dismantle the defenses that keep my life going until 45minutes and then you say bye mid tear, mid sentence and are gone into the ether of I Am A Doctor Do What I Say until the next appointment.

I don't think this is wrong. I am just learning to hate therapy bc it is so much less compassionate than real life relationships. I have given unstinting time to teenagers as have my colleagues, so I guess you seem to miserly as the one singular person I have asked for help.

These aren't fair or right feelings. I am angry and sad, and feel like you care a little but not that much. Is that accurate mentalizing or inaccurate mind reading. You were a genius in school back in the day, and I think there is a part of you that knows your own insight is stellar and your metaphors creative and compelling. You think you give a superior performance in session, and how dare anyone want to leave at 9:51 to be a little more pulled together for the street than at 9:45 when you brilliance shuts off like water from the tap when I turn the handle.

You dislike dogs. My mistrust started there, since you pretended to like them for the first four months just to get along with me.

There was a time I loved you and loved therapy. It seemed like a journey of self discovery, though with dragons to fight . We felt like a team.

You repeated so many times it is a patient's relationship with herself that is all that matters that I have come to believe you. You facilitate people's relationships with themselves, you think psychoanalytic theory is hopelessly old fashioned. I adored you for a long time, but now you seem spiritually stingy hough yes your mind is exceptional, you are witty, clever, insightful- all those qualities. How much heart do you have though?

My best friend is a psychologist, though with a psychoanalytic post doc focus. Her theory is possibly your boundaries were maybe violated in an early life situation, and so you are a little compulsive in the exercise of rules for their own sake, butting boundaries before empathy. Once you described how your kids go in time out if they choose to take a cookie they were told not to. I asked" well, do the get to take the cookie to time out? I was joking, but man you were outraged by the thought lol. No OF COURSE no cookie in time out .