I tried to explain what I realized when journaling
That my anger isn't happening right now. Like yes I'm experiencing it now, but it's not present me being angry about things that happened to past me, it's like reexperiencing the anger I felt at the time.
I don't know if he understood. Or really thought that was an adequate explanation.
I told him about how angry I'd been so much of the time but it never mattered because my father would never back down on anything. I couldn't win. I still stood my ground.

I told him I wanted him to tell me more about what he was thinking. He said to ask. I tried to explain that asking is already putting myself in a vulnerable position. That it's safer to assume he believes the worst.
I struggle to get him to understand when I'm using an example. Like I tried to explain how long it took and how difficult it was for me to ask him whether he cared about me, and how mortifying that would have been if the answer was no. And he started going in the direction of that topic and I tried to explain that I was using an example of something I had asked, but there are a million things I'm too afraid to ask.
He still doesn't get what I mean.

I did ask him some things. I asked him whether he thought those were normal age appropriate responses and he was like "what, to want your mom there?" like it was obvious that that was normal and I said yes and he said it was.
I asked if he thought I had been weak. He didn't. He was pretty emphatic about that one.

I told him about standing up for myself. At a recovery meeting some guy I'd never met before started telling me how attractive I was, how he didn't understand why someone so beautiful would hurt themselves, etc... I interrupted him to explain that physical attractiveness is not among my values and doesn't factor into whether or not I hurt myself, that has more to do with how I judge myself as a person. He said something about confidence and how i see myself and I told him I could be a really good ping pong player but that's not one of my values or how I define myself so telling me I'm a good ping pong player isn't going to change whether or not I hurt myself.
I was telling my T because he'd been talking about my resistance to giving myself credit or whatever and I was pointing out that I gave myself credit for this and that I'd brought up the values that are important to me in how I define my worth as a person.
T asked if it bothered me when people tell me I'm attractive.
I told him it does in certain situations. It's patronizing and dismissive when someone's first response to my mental health issues is to tell me how attractive I am, as if that should matter to me. That I got ER staff, psych nurses, doctors, and plenty of other "professionals" saying that to me and it's always bothered me but this was the first time I've really said something more than just saying that's not what I'm upset about.
I also pointed out that does that mean it would be okay for me to hurt myself if they found me ugly? Does that mean that when I'm old and they no longer find me attractive then it's okay for me to hurt myself?

We talked about me standing up for myself. I said that I was allowed to tell myself that I'm a stupid incompetent worthless piece of ****, but if someone else questions my basic competency or intelligence I'll defend myself with balanced arguments. Not like claim that I'm a genius, but pointing out where I am in life and the evidence that I'm good at what I do.

Thinking about it later, it does bother me when people say I'm attractive even when it has nothing to do with being patronizing like that guy, but not for the reasons he might think. It's one of those things like my fear of asking questions because I don't want to hope the answer might be anything other than the worst.
Like I'm scared of letting myself believe something better than is true. Like I don't want to hope that he might care about me if he doesn't. I don't like that there's no good way to respond to someone telling you you're attractive/pretty/beautiful. If you argue with them that's rude and considered digging for compliments. But I'm afraid of accepting the compliment without arguing because then it seems like I'm agreeing. And what if it's a pity compliment and they didn't expect me to accept it without arguing? What if they're laughing at the ugly girl for accepting the compliment? I'm don't want to consider allowing myself to believe it because that's dangerous. What if I believed I was pretty and then it turned out that people think I'm ugly and are just being nice? I'd rather be the ugly girl who knows her place and knows better than to think that others might think she's pretty.
And I'd rather know my place and not think that my therapist might care about me. Or that he might not think I'm overreacting and being melodramatic about the childhood stuff. Or that he might think that I deserved anything better. Or that he might think it wasn't my fault.

He brought up ten year old me again. I told him that the part of me that would want to be kind to her instead of hurting her would be the part of my brain that saw her as "other" instead of "me." He said he wanted to work on me being able to feel that for myself.

It's the same danger though. What if I'm kind to myself and I don't deserve it. He always asks why I wouldn't and I never have a good answer.