What a weird session. I'm still trying to process it.

I brought my Uno cards, and told him right when I got there that I wanted to play. So we sat on the floor - he leaned against his chair and I leaned against the couch and we both stretched out our legs - so I was sitting by his feet and he was sitting by my feet, with the cards between us. The game itself was fun - we played twice and laughed a lot. At one point, I put down a draw 4 and he said "you're a bad person!" and I laughed and said "oh my god, my THERAPIST just told me I'm a bad person!" It was casual and fun. We have similar senses of humor and insulted each other and giggled a lot. After 2 games, I felt like we should "do therapy" so we put the cards away, but he felt FAR AWAY when we settled into our usual chairs so I moved over to the other side of the couch where I was closer to him. We stretched out our legs and touched feet to measure the distance.

After that, things felt strange. It was like we had had this moment of just being two people hanging out together having fun - no power imbalance, no one being needy, no emotions other than joy - and then all of a sudden we were therapist/client again. I couldn't quite make the shift and it was a weirdly quiet session. He asked me at one point if I felt connected to him and I said "I think so" and asked if he felt connected and he said "yes". We DID talk about things - the progress I've made in therapy, my struggle with accepting that he likes me, my inability to imagine that there is good somewhere inside myself.

This card game idea popped up in my head during the session after we finally started trauma work - and I wonder if I am pulling back, trying to avoid that? He is going to be out of town 6/12 - 6/22 and 7/3 - 7/6 and I think I'm scared to get into trauma stuff with so many breaks coming up. Plus, I just don't like trauma stuff, for obvious reasons. I feel like that's kind of where we're at in therapy right now, and I think I *am* ready for it....but I hate to have to go into that darkness. I don't know WHAT to do. I can't just play Uno at every session from now until July. I want to do all of these strange things - like sit in his chair and have him sit on the couch, for example. Am I testing? Playing? Avoiding? I know he'll let me do whatever I want, within reason. But does that mean I SHOULD do whatever I want? I'm paying a lot of money to play musical chairs and Uno! I feel like there's something I NEED, but I literally have no idea what it is. I feel like I'm grasping and not quite getting it.

So, I thought I'd throw this out there to see if anyone has any thoughts. I feel like I need some ideas from outside of my own head about how to proceed...

At the end of the session, when we were doing our hand holding thing, I looked him right in the eyes and told him "I'm really glad you're my therapist" and he said "Me too".