I am protecting myself from further hurt with T in the same way I protected myself from my parents.

In therapy, early childhood is played out in the relationship with T. T becomes a "parent" giving us the love and security we never received and showing us how to translate that love into healthy adult relationships with others. After a while, a certain period of giving to us in one way, T expects us to move on to another stage of development in the same way a parent does with a child. I have seen it with many of us here. The phone rules change, the contact becomes more or less; the nature of the relationship becomes other than what we have come to expect. It happens for any number of different reasons, arising out of our therapy and where we are developmentally. This is when we feel the pain.

The hurt we experience when the rules change is truly unbearable. We experience the rage a young child cannot feel; we feel the pain of abandonment that we dissociated when we really were children. I say it's too much. T said it hurts but it is not too much.

How can it be otherwise? How can we grow into our mature selves if we don't experience the pain we set aside when we were children? Yet, I ask myself how can I continue? How can I allow myself to feel like I did last month during the ruptures? How can I dive in again and feel that kind of pain? It seems so much more manageable to avoid it; to go to therapy as an interested observer of my life rather than a feeling participant.

Oh no, a part of me is completely unwilling to engage on that level again. Yet, the observer in me knows it is necessary.