What you are open to and what you need from your therapy and therapist is changing. You have an gift in your ability to hone in on and articulate where you are emotionally and what you may need.

I don't think it's as simple as an "I need you to show more emotion" request with a "yes/no" response. It sounds like this conversation with your therapist is exactly a part of the larger conversation you're already having about validating your emotional responses, and about growing up in an environment that didn't allow you to trust your own desires for connection.

You're not a surface person, that's clear in your posts. You think and feel deeply, and it sounds like you need to know you're being met in that deeper space as you move into difficult work. You're being real, and you need him to be real too. Approaching it in that context allows both of you to move away from the idea that you are asking something that he can choose to grant or not, and into something a heck of a lot more complex but more therapeutic, I think.