Thanks, EM. I do get the sense that this is a limitation in his non-therapist life as well, from some things he's said. Like, when the whole conflict happened with my wanting him to stand when I leave (which he always does now...despite it being a huge NOPE before), he said how he doesn't like to be controlled or have people tell him what to do, and that applies to other people in his outside life as well.

The thing is, I often try various coping strategies (OK, I've been bad with the exercise component lately!), and he knows that. I never go right to contacting him. I recall once saying that if I'm sitting on the couch sobbing, doing a downward dog (yoga pose) isn't going to help me. He agreed, saying then the tears would just fall on the floor instead of my lap. And I reach out to friends, but I also worry about burning them out. Or I post on here. Sometimes talking to H helps. Or distraction techniques, like TV, listening to music, maybe one of those painting classes. But the problem with distraction is, it just pushes things away temporarily. Sometimes it's enough and the bad feelings go away. But other times, all I'm doing is pushing them from, say, 2 p.m. to 11 p.m., when my options in coping strategies are much more limited.

The thing is...what you say about his saying that I should just make the feelings go away or keep them inside--that seems quite a bit like the message I got as a child. So I'm not sure how that's helping me now...I want therapy to be a safe place where I can share pretty much anything (obviously not, like physically threaten him or something), where all feelings and emotions are safe. But I'm not so sure about that...I mean, even with ex-MC, it was all safe for a long time, until suddenly, it wasn't...