First, we talked about my job. Boss had been an *** about some mistakes I'd made and I ranted for a while about how he's doing a far worse job, told my T some stories that show that he doesn't know what he's doing and so on.

Then I mentioned me wanting to get a tattoo soon (we'd talked about it before, but now I'm really looking for an artist and all). T asked how my mom will react. I said she'll probably not be happy and told him about how I cut my hair short (think buzz cut) for the first time. I did it while I was at my boyfriend's and when she first saw me, she let out the most horrifying scream.

For some reason this led to a discussion about how my mom used to clean for hours every day. Literally 5 hours a day. She'd vacuum every room, clean the kitchen, the bathroom, all the mirrors, sinks and so on. He said that seems a bit excessive, normal people clean less, don't they? I was like 'I don't know, don't they... I mean I'd hate to clean that much, but you're the one supposed to know what's normal'.
At some point he asked whether I think it was an anxiety/compulsion thing. I asked how you can tell when your parents never share anything about their emotions with you? He said how people with compulsions usually do it long after 'it's okay' again. Like there might be a stain and they'll have to clean it for an excessive amount of time, until it's right *to them*. I said how I know that feeling. Early on in college in the US, I woke up to some woman yelling for help. For the rest of my time in there, I'd always check the door for whether it's looked. It just *feels* a certain way. You have to do it until it feels okay, and it's a very weird feeling.

T asked why I thought my mom was cleaning so much. I commented on some trauma I don't feel like going into here that might cause her to have felt out of control and how people try to control some aspect of their life by controlling something else.

After discussing that for a while, we started talking about some issues I used to have with a buddy of mine, we discussed that for a while. At some point I started crying and he got up to get me a tissue. But he has learned to just have them out or in his pocket or something instead of having to go pick them up in some drawer...

At the very end I managed to look at him, which felt really nice.