Thanks, everyone, for reading my massive post. I left out a lot of details believe it or not. There were other things that he wasn't listening to me about during our Wednesday session, including that he seemed to have decided I don't believe he cares about me, which is not true. I just still have some issues on that front. I'm definitely not telling him what he wants to hear. I was trying to be honest with him, but he was in defense mode and wasn't hearing me. I feel it's entirely possible to be okay with discontinuing the calls, but still having some strong feelings about it. And he didn't refer me to the ER; not sure where that came from.

I think he did handle this in an inelegant manner. His timing was off. I really, really wish that if he was having misgivings about continuing with this, he would have said something a lot sooner. It makes me feel awful that he didn't want to do it anymore but kept doing it anyway. But, you know what, he's a human being and he makes mistakes. He's actually very good about owning up to it when he screws up. I admire that about him.

I don't think I'm up to seeing a different therapist at this point. I don't think I can adequately convey to someone new how I ended up at this particular point in my life or how to explain the abuse that happened. Maybe it's not necessary to fully explain, but one of my issues is feeling like I have to justify my feelings to everyone. We've identified it in therapy, but I haven't worked past it yet.

I realize I'm kind of in a holding pattern. There are things holding me back that I can't bring myself to talk about yet. Seeing a different therapist won't make me want to talk about those things any sooner. I'm slowly working my way there with him though. I put out small feelers now and again to see how it might feel to talk about these things. He's not a trauma specialist, but he's also read a lot of books that I suspect he's read because of his work with me. He's willing to learn and that means a lot to me. I think a lot of what I'm trying to work through with him is relational trauma from my marriage and attachment stuff from childhood. I feel a real attachment to him and I feel that's probably very important for me to be able to work with someone. Even though I sometimes get to the point where I want to push him away, I don't really want to push him away. It's just scary sometimes.

As for the tangible signs of care, this is also something we've brought into the open recently. I have some trust issues. My ex would tell me he loved me but then he would do things that contradicted that, so at this point, I don't fully trust words. Actions mean more to me and the phone call was an action. I'm working on trusting words, but it's not going to be something that changes overnight. And I do pay him every time he calls me. $2.05 per minute (although he sometimes rounds it down for simplicity).

I do think he has stuff going on. For one, this Thanksgiving trip seems to be a last minute, up in the air kind of thing, because he told me he'd let me know if he can be in office. He's said that he has his own problems and issues. He keeps telling me this week that he's only human. I think he thinks I expect him to be perfect, but in reality I appreciate that he's not perfect. It may not feel great when he's not, but at least I know he's real. During our last session, he said that working together like this, we're going to end up triggering each others traumas. He definitely triggered some of mine.