Second session with L. The first session wasn't worth discussing.

She asked if I could sign a release for her to get Pollyanna's files on me. "Isn't the release I gave him sufficient?"
"Oh, I didn't know that you'd signed a release. I'll call him."

We reviewed the goals that we'd discussed in our first session:
1. Reduce negative cognitions
2. Process childhood trauma
3. Examine how attachment issues influence my relationships
4. Deal with infertility stuff

What did I want to start with? What felt pressing? I shrugged my shoulders. I was very anxious. She asked me how EMDR processing had gone with Pollyanna. I told her about the day where I sent him the nasty email after processing, and it bothered me for several days after. She talked a bit about how the way she does EMDR is different somehow to Pollyanna, so that shouldn't happen to the same degree, "but I can't say that with certainty, of course."

She asked what it looks like when I get in that emotional place. I told her it is like I'm shut down and that the emotions take over. She clarified a bit what I meant, and I started discussing the prefrontal cortex (because this is who I am as a human being apparently).

This led to a conversation about the idea of wise mind. She actually had a white board and drew out a Venn diagram to discuss the whole thing with me. It was hard not to internally critique the way she was teaching it to me; I needed the lesson to be scaffolded. But more frustrating than that was how foreign the concept seemed to me. How much I was struggling with it, how stupid I felt, and how not Pollyanna L is.

Something we kept coming back to in the conversation was how I suppress my emotions, and I felt myself doing that as we spoke. I wanted to run out of the office and cry. I was holding back tears.

There was a lull in the conversation at this point; likely I was dissociating or too wrapped up in my emotions. "What kind of thoughts are you having right now?"

"In this moment? I don't want to be here, and I feel stupid that I'm getting upset over a f****** Venn diagram."

She responded with how it's important to work at my pace, and how it seemed like I needed to work on or reinforce some soothing techniques before we try to do heavy lifting. Like with Pollyanna, we would need to build trust.

It was toward the end of session at this point. She wants me to fill out a DBT diary card to track my moods this week. I've been booted from vacation, so I decided to turn the whole thing into a mini project and bought my first bullet journal after I left.

As we were wrapping up, she said that if I wanted to email her between sessions I could. She wouldn't always reply to content, but she'd at least acknowledge receipt. And we confirmed my standing appointment going forward: Tuesdays after work.