In homage to Lrad123's recent thread, my therapist swore at me today!

Now, I can be an unpleasant client and an all round horror, so I do not want to cast myself as the damsel in distress in this sorry tale of villainy. However, I am feeling bemused and ... alone, I suppose.

Historically, we have had a lot of significant email contact which she has always encouraged. We were discussing this contact.She began:

The Villain: "On one level, I welcome your emails because <insert waffle about how it moves our work forward and it is progress for me to be able to reach out to someone instead of being self-reliant. Whatever, we have heard it all before>

The Damsel: "What's the other level? If one level is welcoming, what is happening on the other level?"

V: "Well, I haven't really thought about this, but I do have another response when I get a notification from you and that response is "Oh-oh, what is happening now? Or, and this is my stuff, 'What have I done wrong now?!'"

D: "That doesn't sound like a very welcoming stance. Both to have that response and to tell me about that response isn't very welcoming"

Skip forward ten minutes, via a hostile debate during which she claims she is not pushing me away, and there we find her: shouting at me; swearing; and, in a less than dignified manner for a woman of her advancing years, telling me how angry she is with me. Quite an unnecessary disclosure all things considered, the nails she was spitting were indication enough.

Not content with this outburst (and why should she stop when she is riding high on the crest of her apoplectic wave?!), she moves on to point out several of my key character flaws, raises her voice again to tell me that she feels backed into a corner, and complains that I "push, push, push". So beguiling was this spectacle that I thought it best to add fuel onto the fire, lest she should burn out too soon. I said I pushed because she was evasive about whether email contact was ok or not. Oh my friends, I thought I was a goner in the face of her wrath so I started crying tout suite to take the heat off me - only a momentary diversion before she became quite delirious and suggested that I should make it more clear when I am experiencing loving feelings for her. We had thus slipped from epic drama into surreal comedy.

What a mess. And now I can't even email her to insult her because contacting her would make me the dog with its tail between its legs. Actually, now that I think about it, she has played a blinder. Exorcised her rage and rendered me mute in one killer move. Seems the old girl is more cunning than I give her credit for.