This used to happen a lot with my T. And it really eroded the relationship. I would bring it up to him and it always felt like he glossed over his part in whatever it was that had made me withdraw. Sometimes he'd deny having done anything "wrong," sometimes he offered a cursory apology before focusing on my childhood and the "original" hurt. And it just felt so invalidating. It actually became a re-enactment between us that really got tangled up in my childhood trauma. Like, here was this person who was really important to me, and it also felt like he had more power, and he hurt me, and when I protested, he denied it. And so my only option if I wanted to preserve the relationship was to flip to becoming conciliatory and ingratiating and trying to get HIM to forgive me, which I always did, because I didn't want to lose him. A total re-enactment in the here-and-now. It was so, so painful.

It took a lot of hard work and willingness on both of our parts to get us out of this recurring re-enactment. I had to try multiple times to get him to hear me, and we had some pretty rough sessions, and nearly terminated. But then he sought consultation, and I sought consultation. I ultimately said to him that I needed him to own his part, and I needed him to stay there, until such time as the hurt subsided enough for me to be willing to look at my childhood. He said he would own his part, but only his part. And I thought to myself, here we go again. He will think he is owning his part, and I will disagree. He will think his part is 1%, and I'll be left with all the rest. So I asked him, "Who gets to decide how much is yours?" And he said that I did, and that I got to decide when to move on. And that's when I knew that things had truly shifted.

Now my T actually recognizes himself when it happens, when I pull back, and he asks me, "What just happened?" And I feel safe enough to tell him. And he apologizes and he stays with me in my pain until the pain has subsided. And only when I'm ready do we connect it to other things and do therapy around it. I'm not sure I have any good advice, except to be very clear with your T that you are willing to look at the past and do therapy around that, but only when the rupture has been adequately healed, and you feel safe enough, and that only you can say when that is. Hopefully they will respect that.