Icon applied for brief mention of cutting (not the focus of the post).

I am trying to sort through some excruciating exchanges with T this week, part of which I posted about in my earlier thread entitled "Aftermath"... These conversations evolved over the course of two days as I asked for an extra session this week.

Yesterday, I told T that I wanted to hold on to the resilience of my inner chlid and hoped to parent her myself--that I was aware of the fact that--although she had so little to hold onto--that she had a certain resilience that she created for herself.

T said that I had so little parenting and that when I did get some it was very rough, so I am drawn to painful experience. I asked him if he meant the cutting and he said yes, but also the ruptures we have experienced together. He said that therapy has to yield positive changes in your life.

I reflected and I told him that felt that there had been many positives over the past two years and I articulated several of them. I then said that his statement made me feel as though he were kicking me out of therapy, sort of "shape up or ship out." But yet, I was able to say this with a smile because the adult me knows that wasn't true. He pointed out that my feeling this is exactly what he means about me begin drawn to the negative experience of parenting--that rather than hearing him make an empathic statement about my experience I heard him tell me to get lost. This is similar to what I said in my prior thread about not hearing what was actually said.

I know I do this when I am frightened. It is a protective mechanism--a sort of batten down the hatches mode.

He said that he sees how hard it is for me to find a place at "home" in his office. I told him that I never relax, anywhere. He said it was important for us to stay aware of these negative feelings and exchanges and talk them through so we don't fall into the same pattern that I lived with as a child. He said that what we were after was a new experience for me--a "re-parenting." He said that although it is important to go to these scary places of our childhood from time to time that the goal is to recontextualize the experience. I told him he reminded me of the guided imagery journey I listen to on a Bellaruth Naparstek tape for ptsd. She says that although you cannot make these things go away, your willingness to look at them can make them change over time.

I was able to tell him that I have finally accepted the existence of my wounded inner child and it is in his office that she can be--and that I knew it was safe there for her to come out and ask for the colored pencils if she needs them.

I asked him if he thought I would be coming twice a week if I didn't get anything out of it. He said that people stay in bad marriages all the time. This statement freaked me out;

Yet he was very caring and open in saying he will see me next week at our usual time. I told him he was leaving me with a mind %#@&#!. Oh God, this is so freaking hard--it sucks.
I am left holding every possible feeling in the book. Oy vey.