I didn't write about my session last week. I was going through one of my "no one cares about my story or what I have to say" moments, but then I realized that while I do want support when I post about session, I also use these posts to refer back to previous work to measure progress toward my goals. They allow me to see growth.

There's one relevant portion from last week that's relevant for my session from yesterday. I had something that I wanted to discuss with him, but didn't remember what it was until the end of the session. So I didn't want to discuss it at the end of the session with him, and I struggled to say it out loud, so I wrote it down on his notes.

Yesterday I came in and we discussed my physical appearance for a couple of minutes. He wanted to know why I dyed my hair. I said it was a physical promise to myself. It's borderline professional looking, so I wouldn't allow myself to go to work right now. This way I am giving myself time off. I've worked hard for it. I deserve it.

He asked me how I was doing otherwise. I said not well physically. I was nauseated and had a migraine. I'm in the middle of a round of hormones for fertility treatments, and this is how it makes me feel. Today I feel like I'm being punched in the ovaries, but anyway. He said he was surprised to hear that I had started treatments again, because last week I sounded ambivalent about starting again. I said ambivalent wasn't the right way to think about it. I'm conflicted. The treatments suck, and I'm trying to protect myself from getting hurt, but I really do want to start a family. I said I didn't expect him to understand. He can't.

Then he asked if there was anything else I wanted to talk about. "No, I don't have an agenda."
"Well, I do."
"Of course you do." He was referring to the note from last week. He had said when I had written it that he didn't understand what I meant. I sighed and said that I wasn't looking forward to this conversation because I'm not a huge fan of confrontation.



He said that he'd respect my boundary, and then asked how I felt about the conversation. I said that there was the intellectual part of me that knew that's how the conversation would go, but the smaller, more vulnerable part of me was scared and anxious to assert the boundary. I was told from a young age to be seen, not heard.

I got quiet.
"What's going on up there?"

I said that I felt alone. In that moment, even though he was only a few feet away from me, the space between my couch and his chair felt like hundreds of miles.

"Is that a feeling that you feel a lot? Hundreds of miles away?"

I nodded and started to cry. I began thinking about when I felt the most alone.

"Do you want to go with that?" I looked up and he was holding the EMDR tappers. I nodded and took them in my hands. It was a slower tapping, so not actual processing, but I just let my mind wander where it wanted to. Most of the following I didn't tell T. Just sat there and cried.

First, I thought about the moment I realized that my bio mom had left and the absence of feeling that I had. That led me to how sad it was that I couldn't allow myself to be sad in that moment. That I was never sad when I thought about that moment. That it was just the acceptance of fact. Why? Then I thought about the memories I had of my mother before she left us. I don't have any good memories of her. Frankly, I don't have many memories of her at all from when I was young. I do have fond memories with my father around the same time.

How sad, then, that I have no fond memories of the woman who birthed me. Why? I thought about the moments in which she told me that she didn't want to have children. How all of her children were birth control babies. So she didn't want me. Then why tell me that you took me to live with you for a month instead of abandoning me? I spent so much of my life angry at my father because I felt like it was his fault that I didn't have a relationship with my mother. I hurt her because I wanted to live with him, so she distanced herself. None of that was true.

But then why bother defending my father? He never wanted children either. So no one ever wanted me. No one wants me. No one loves me. No one would miss me if I were gone.

It was at this point that I threw up my hands to tell T to stop. I wasn't willing to let my mind go there. I want to live, and there were only 15 minutes left in the session. He said that we would continue to work, and there would be a point at some day where those ideating thoughts wouldn't feel as scary as they did now.

I laughed. "I look forward to putting your future children through college."
"I don't think it'll take that long."

He asked why I was afraid of thinking those thoughts if I knew I wouldn't act on them. I said that I didn't feel predictable right now. That the meds I'm on tend to ratchet up all of the feelings past where they would normally go, and that the thoughts before I started to ideate were very painful. Again, most of these thoughts I didn't share.

We talked about the difference between VDay and the session thus far. What was the difference? I said that I wasn't on any treatments on VDay, but that my cycle was getting ready to start. Versus yesterday's session I have these artificial hormones flowing through me. Both feel out of control. The analogy that I used was that it was two sides to the same coin. So I didn't want to risk putting myself in an unsafe place.

Then he complimented on how good of work I had done in session. I rolled my eyes and said that he said that every time. Because he's said it so much I don't believe him anymore.

"That's okay," he said. "You don't have to believe me. What if I told you that I think you come in here every time and do a good job?" I just don't see it.

We spent a few minutes at the end talking about business things. Next Tuesday my session will be at the new office. He's splitting from the practice he's with now, so I have to do all of the BS paperwork again. He'll e-mail me everything in the next couple of days. Also he's going on vacation. I'm not pleased about it. Thankfully, though, it's only a week. That I can cope with.