I think part of my question is whether this has to do with her using a 'psychodynamic' style. I had a T about two decades ago and things deteriorated in a similar way. Everything always seemed to come back to ME and some unhealthy attribute of mine. I feel like a lot of the terms they use, 'avoidance', 'projection', 'rationalisation' are eventually all ways of finding the client 'guilty'. And no matter how critical they may be they can always just insist the value judgement isn't from them. I had a long term CBT therapist who NEVER used any theoretical terminology - not even from CBT (lol!) and this kind of thing never happened. He just maintained an attitude of neutral curiosity throughout!