Had my second (third?) session with my new T (M) on Wednesday.

I started out talking about how I'd seen a video of a sea creature called a 'feather star', the day before. I told him how it hovers along peacefully above the sea bed, feeding on plankton and things. How little creatures - shrimp and fish - have developed perfectly matching camouflage and hide safely and securely in their fronds. At one point I stopped and said I regretted talking about it already, and I was worried he'd find it stupid and weird. He said he wasn't finding it stupid and weird and I said "I haven't finished yet!"

Anyway, when I started to talk about the shrimp I started to cry. I said that it had just struck me, watching the video, that I wished I was a shrimp instead of myself. Safely camouflaged in a feather star.

I tried to explain that recently I've been having these occasional attacks of existential crisis, where I feel overwhelmed by all the other people and creatures and things in the world, and often there's a feeling of jealousy... of wanting to be something or someone else. As well as just feeling kind of baffled and/or amazed by it all.

I can't remember what his response to all this was... I think he asked some questions, to try to understand. He didn't appear to think that I am crazy, so that was nice.

I said that shrimp don't have to have heart surgery. I kept crying. I explained that a few years ago I had been diagnosed with 'health anxiety' and sent for CBT... because I was so afraid that there was something wrong with my heart. But it had spread out to many aspects of my life - I couldn't eat most things, because I was afraid they'd kill me, I couldn't take medication and I was terrified of any kind of medical procedure (something I've since had to endure a ton of). I've also always been terribly afraid of needles and/or having anything put in my veins (like cannulas).

(Trigger for medical stuff.)



He said that sounded horrible and terrifying. But he sounded... I don't know... kind of self-conscious? Not quite genuine? I'm thinking now that it's interesting that I felt absolutely nothing typing that out, and I probably didn't feel that much about it whilst relating it to him either. I'm too disconnected from it, it's too unimaginable. Maybe it was unimaginable to him too.

Maybe it was that feeling of a lack of connection from him and between us that made me talk about missing R (my previous therapist). He asked me to tell him more about it and I basically started to list everything I loved about R - his use of interesting long words, his sense of humour, how kind and gentle he always was with me. I also talked more generally about how we'd spent a year building a relationship, and it had finally got to a point where I was really comfortable with him and we really were working well together, and it just bloody sucks to have to start all over again.

I said (hesitantly, feeling pretty bad about sharing this) that I was aware that a part of me hated him for not being R. That I knew it wasn't fair, that he is actually doing me a favour by even seeing me at all and he doesn't deserve to be hated.

He said he was glad that I'd named that, because he'd been having this feeling like everything he said was wrong somehow. And weirdly, or perhaps not weirdly at all, now that we'd both got that out in the open it seemed to dissolve a bit.

I think I talked a bit more about my experiences with C (my first T) and R, the bad and the good. I said how I'd sort of had to 'teach' R how to work with me.

He said something about feeling like he had to earn a relationship with me, and wondered if that might apply to other people in my life too. I said I could definitely understand him feeling that way, and that yes, I suppose I did expect him to earn a relationship with me. But that I didn't think it was that way with other people in my life - just therapists. He asked why and I said something about different parts of me being much more present in therapy and having different needs. Sometimes conflicting needs. He seemed to understand that.

I talked about a 'disagreement' I'd had with a friend who had stopped talking to me because of it. I said I'd been a d**k to her (and that more generally I keep being a d**k to people). As I described what had happened, getting kind of annoyed I guess, he said that it sounded more like I felt that she'd been a d**k to me. I said no, and started crying again. I said that I felt like she had good reasons for the way she felt and I should have just left it the f**k alone. He said it was like I'd been angry and righteous at first, and then it had quickly dissolved into hating myself instead. I thought that was very astute of him (though I suppose it was quite a straightforward observation), and said yes - that's how it always is. That's very familiar to me.

I feel like I must have missed something out, because that doesn't seem like enough content from a fifty minute session... but I think that's pretty much it. There were fairly long periods of silence/quiet sobbing on my part.

He gave me a five-minute warning, which I find quite annoying, remind me to tell him to stop doing that. Because I'm always keeping an eye on the time. I knew there were five minutes left.

Talking quite fast and animatedly, I squeezed in a description of a dream I'd had recently (it suddenly felt very relevant, I can't remember why). I'd been on the waltzer on the pier, with my mum and my partner, but it started malfunctioning. They stopped it and said they were going to fix it and start again but I was too afraid, sure that something terrible was going to happen, and got off. My mum and partner rolled their eyes and me and scoffed at how stupid and anxious I was being, and stayed on. I couldn't watch, so I walked around the corner, but then I heard a crashing and banging and I knew immediately that something had happened to my mum. She had been thrown off the ride and hit her head and was really confused and distressed.

I told M that when I'd woken from the dream my immediate interpretation of it had been that it was clearly about my mum, and how fragile but confident she is - how I'm afraid she'll hurt herself by being that way. Then I'd spoken to a friend about it which had uncovered more layers. It's about my heart - how I always knew that something was wrong, even though I was treated so dismissively. And when I was younger I used to go on the waltzer all the time - I smiled telling M how (I am from this city and he is not) you could buy a wristband that would let you go on unlimited rides and me and my friends used to challenge ourselves to see how many times in a row we could go on it. But now I wouldn't go on it. Or anything like that. Because I'm too afraid for my heart. I don't do anything fun anymore.

Then, in a lecture that Monday, my tutor - who is very interested in Jung and archetypes and the collective unconscious and symbols - had been talking about dream symbols and had said that a cycle, like the wheels on a bicycle perhaps, might represent life - the life cycle. And I very suddenly started to cry, and said that the waltzer is like that, a circle, a cycle, but it was too fast and too scary and too broken and I needed to get off. So it was like 'stop the world, I want to get off'.

All I remember in terms of his response as I related all that to him is that he'd been sort of smiling through most of it, but his expression changed as suddenly as mine when I started crying again. I think I took everyone by surprise.

When we both stood up at the end of the session, there was this moment where I was suddenly struck by how extremely attractive he is. I mean, I was aware of it already, but I hadn't been looking at him much, and somehow it was just... agh. He's just really lovely. I'm a bit worried about that.