This isn't a session with T, but I went to a group last night (like an encounter group made up mostly of therapists I think) and I went way beyond my comfort zone.

I told someone something about how I experience them (I'm not gonna say what to protect their confidentiality) and they said it was hard to hear.

At that point, the part of me I've been fighting for so long in my desire to become my authentic self, able to verbalise how I am feeling in the moment turned on me and said "See? You are bad. You have hurt someone. It's not okay to be you". I tried to backtrack and say that that perception was probably something in me. The person said there's probably some truth in it but I couldn't stop beating myself up through the break.

When we came back someone asked me something about it, and I started crying and told them that I had an unpredictable caregiver when I was young, and I had learnt it was safer not to be me, and not to express my feelings and needs. I said it took years of therapy to get me to the point where I am willing to express my feelings in the moment and I hadn't realised how fragile that was, and how quickly that critical part would turn on me and say "it's not okay to be you". I realised that when I backtracked, and said it was all coming from me, that was my instinctive attempt to reregulate the other, even though this person doesn't need me to reregulate them, they are okay and it is okay for me to share my experience of them.

The person said that they wanted me to know that "it's hard to hear" doesn't mean they wished I hadn't said it.

I thanked them and actually once I had realised what was happening for me I knew it already. I knew they were okay and it was safe to express my feelings, but I lost sense of the reality of who I was talking to in that moment and it's like I reexperienced the unsafety of being my mother's daughter (I hadn't said anything particularly negative, just something that seemingly the person had been trying to change about themselves).

I felt better afterwards, even elated that I had discovered something new about myself. But today I feel a bit like I made myself too vulnerable in front of virtual strangers. I'm hoping that will pass. I really like the facilitator. If he had been my therapist I think I would have ended up just as attached as I am to my T. He said he found me beautiful (meaning as a person, not physically).

I emailed my T asking for 90 minutes to sort the rupture out. He emailed back asking if it was alright to start a bit earlier. I said yes, the earlier start is fine. He emailed back "I'm glad that works for you". I wasn't expecting him to email me and say he was glad.