I used to post on this board under the name of Brown Owl, but deleted that account. I've come back as I've quit seeing my therapist and I'm having a hard time.

I've had infant emotional neglect, and every few months in my therapy, painful feelings were triggered, by something that happened between my T and I, and we were usually able to talk about what happened and my t apologised a few times for things she'd done. More recently my T just got really defensive. I 'confronted' her about something, this was a really really difficult thing for me to do. I think I expected her to reflect on what I said and maybe thank me for bringing it up, maybe acknowledge how hard it was for me to say that (and be happy that I had had the confidence to bring it up), may be explain her actions, certainly validate my feelings and point of view. I think I had high expectations of her, maybe too high? She responded defensively. I felt totally invalidated and like I had lost our relationship. I felt absolutely terrible after the session and repeated a mantra to myself 'I am brave and strong' (for saying what I said). It's ironical that one of my stated aims in my therapy with her was for me to express my feelings and not just bury them. Now I think that I bury them for a reason, as confrontation is soooo painful. I went back and talked about it a few times, painfully, but then quit.

Now that I'm out of the relationship I can see that neither of us considered at the time how difficult 'confrontation' is for me, it felt catastrophic to have confronted her. I read on this board of many times that clients don't confront their T's about things and now I see that there's a good reason why we don't.

I don't really want hugs from you guys, but I'd love to chat about this stuff and hear your perspectives and experiences.