Hi LT. I never have with current T - she's incredibly open about where I want to go and will start each session afresh with no expectations or agenda. But my ex T had a thing about me expressing anger. She brought it up over and over again, clearly bothered about the fact I wasn't expressing it towards the people/situations she felt I should be expressing it to. At one point she told me to do the gestalt chair thing where I had to express my anger to someone, which was absolutely horrific for me as I felt put on the spot, especially as I have severe performance anxiety, but was too scared to tell T I didn't want to do it. I hated her bringing it up all the time and I had a feeling she was pushing anger on me because her own anger about stuff that's happened in her life. Once or twice she did mention getting very angry about things in her life, so that was a fair assumption. She definitely had an agenda about it. I remember her asking me how much anger I felt and me saying what she wanted to hear rather than how I actually felt because I was too scared to say otherwise.

It's a tricky one LT. It's easy to say talk about it, but I know it's not always possible. Could you try to point out that it's making you feel reluctant to talk about what YOU really need to in that moment, and make the point that way? At the end of the day therapy should be about what you need, although I know it's not always as simple as that and depends on the school of thought your T trained in. It definitely sounds like he's leaning towards wanting you to focus on your childhood and coming to terms with how your mother was, but that's really something to come to in your own time and way, not his.