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Echos Myron redux · Jun 02, 2021, 09:45 AM

Where to start... at the beginning I guess.

First session back in his room after 15 months. I took a negative covid test this morning, he is fully vaccinated and I'm half vaccinated.

I walked in and he was just sat there totally normal. It all felt remarkably normal and familiar. He used to have a second chair but he has removed it and replaced it with a bookshelf which I think is better.

I felt okay, I just started talking about stuff I had had to do before i got there I was kinda talky. We talked about being back in the room, he said he thought maybe I was feeling agitated (probably because I was so talky) but I couldn't really connect with any feelings. Then the desire to ask him for a hug hit me. I wanted to say it but it stuck in my throat. He said I looked like I was waiting for him to say something. I said I was going to say something but I couldn't. He thought for a while and said he wondered if it was something to do with hugging. I nodded. He said "would you like to hug?" I nodded again. We stood up and hugged. It felt surreal but good. At the point I would normally let go, I realised I physically couldn't. I tried but I just couldn't. My internal voice was like "let go now, this is weird, you'll make him uncomfortable" but when I tried to release it was like I was stuck. He obviously noticed something was happening and he just said "It's okay, just breathe". That relaxed me, and I felt like it gave me permission just to hold on a bit longer, and after another 30 seconds or so I was able to let go and sit down but I was wiped out emotionally.

He asked what was going on. I told him I couldn't let go, and then I had ended up feeling ashamed that I couldn't let go. He asked (hope I still remember how to do a trigger warning)

Possible trigger:

if I had a sexual response (we have been talking about ET a lot over the last year)

but I hadn't and I said no. I told him there was a young part of me that needed to hold on because I feared this would be taken away from me again, then there is a shaming voice telling me it's not okay.
T asked how old the shaming voice is. I said I don't know, it's probably been around ever since I first decided it isn't okay for me to have needs. T asked when that was. I said I don't know, I don't remember ever not wanting to let go of someone like that. T asked who I might imagine clinging to like that. I think he wanted me to say my mother but I can't imagine that so I said "nobody, only you".

We talked more about the fear that I would never get another change to hug him. He asked if I wanted to hug again. I said yes and we did. That hug felt much easier and it was easier to let go of him.

I asked why he thought the first one was so difficult, he said "because it is the first one" then he said "sorry I didn't mean to be flippant. I just mean that all the pain and loss of the last year was wrapped up in that first hug".

Possible trigger:

i told him it was weird he asked about sexual responses because I didn't at all, but I have had quite a lot of ET this week leading up to the session. He said he thinks it says more about him than me, that he links sex and shame due to his Catholic upbringing.

We talked about how ET was more present since we worked online. T said something about the physical barrier online takes away any possibility of boundaries being broken. I said are you saying coming here presents a risk of it? He said no, he just meant it isn't physically possible, even in principle. I said it is possible to engage in sexual behaviour online. I'm not sure why I was getting argumentative, I knew what he meant. Anyway it was clear he didn't want to argue about it and he said he agreed with me that there is no possibility, whatever happens.

He asked what I wanted to do at the end (seen as we usually hug) and I said I would like a third hug if that's okay. He said yes and then we had a conversation about how many times we would have to hug per session and for how long to make up for the last year. He is very mathematically minded so didn't like my not very well thought through 3x for the next 4 months. When I thought more about it, it would have to be 6 months to make up for the year. Then we went down a weird conversation about mathematical and grammatical accuracy, and the book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves". Then it was time to finish and we stood up and hugged one final time, then I left.