I felt a little giddy that for the first time in over a year I didn’t feel like a huge magnet was trying to pull me away from my weekly therapy appointment. I mentioned this to my T and asked him why he thought that was, and of course he responded by asking me what I thought about it. I said it’s very clearly correlated with his decision to stop responding to my emails, but I can’t be sure that’s the cause and it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me because I really hated the fact that he chose to stop responding to my emails so I could never have imagined it could turn out to be a good thing. In any case, once he decided to stop answering my emails, I took a week off and felt surprisingly empowered by this. I actually did a late cancellation, spoke to my T about not wanting to pay for this despite the fact that it didn’t meet his cancellation requirements, and he agreed that I shouldn’t pay. He said that he thought I was no longer giving him all the power which is why he thought there was a shift in our therapy.

We talked mostly about my mom from whom I’m estranged and the fact that I’m really struggling with whether or not I should try to reconnect with her. I don’t want to but I do feel a daughterly obligation. I told him about how this week my daughter was emotionally distraught over a break up with her boyfriend and several tough work-related caregiving issues (I work with cancer patients) that I actually enjoy, but were making me feel emotionally drained. One day last week I just had the urge to call my mom (or the ideal version I’ve created in my head) and have her listen to me talk about my hard day. I said I wanted to be on the other end of one of those caregiving relationships like the kind I have with my daughter or with cancer patients. I want someone to look out for me and ask if I’m ok. To my surprise, I cried when I was saying this. Not a sobbing sort of cry, but had trouble finishing my sentence and had way more tears streaming down my face than I was comfortable with. I didn’t look at my T at all because I felt self-conscious, but we just sat quietly for a few minutes. I think he was saying a few things when I noticed we were over our time by 3-4 minutes and I said “I should probably go.” He *never* goes over time so it felt like a big deal. I’m not sure what to think about the fact that I cried. It really felt like an over-reaction on my part and I was feeling a bit like a therapy imposter. Despite the fact that I was crying, being a therapy imposter was on my mind much more than any sadness about lack of connection with my mother. I guess I’m not used to crying in front of him and was confused about it. I’m also aware that there’s been a pretty big shift in the way T and I relate and I think it’s good, but it has been unexpected.