This "resonates" with me also. I was trying to find the words to say how much I identified with what you are saying, MissC, and Kiya found the perfect word (thanks. In line with what you are saying, things that resonate with me are things that I "think", or intellectualize, AND feel. This doesn't happen often as my feelings are separated from my thoughts. But when they do match, it is like I really know and believe whatever has been said.

I think I told you this, but again, my T and H said things and questioned things that made me feel like they rejected the intellectual fragment. T told me that people usually don't like being analyzed, which I know is true. I analyze myself all the time. Analyzing others, though, has really helped me be empathic and less hurt when others get angry at me. If I can analyze the other person and think of a possible reason that they are reacting negatively to me, then I can concede that it isn't all me and feel like I'm set free from feeling hurt or angry. So, yes, this is a way to circumvent my feelings, but it leads to empathy which is a good thing.

A few sessions ago, I tried to analyze my T and although he didn't say anything defensive, I could tell that he felt it. It was like his emotions were betraying his thoughts as mine often do. Even though I know that I would feel the same as he did, it still hurts because, again, I felt he was rejecting this part of me.

MissC, you say that you feel it is obsessive in nature. I have been diagnosed with OCD and think that my analyses/thoughts are compulsive in nature because I actually feel anxiety lift when I "solve" something. I also am intolerant of others interrupting me when I am in thinking mode, which further points to compulsiveness. However, over the past few days, I am wondering if it is OCD or reenactments. I notice myself assertive my different fragments - such as anger, neediness, intellectual - and trying to get him to accept them. For example, SI ing in his office was my neediness fragment asserting itself after he rejected it in session. I was unable to let this go and continue to be unable to do it because he held me accountable for my actions and was angry about it. This makes me feel that he is rejecting it which then makes me unable to integrate it. Another example is when I wrote him the horrific angry letters, which was my anger fragment asserting, or aggressing, itself. It did make him angry and hurt, but he has written me a letter stating that he forgives me for this. I love the letter (transitional object) but I still am having difficulty because if he is forgiving me for showing my anger, it means (to me) that I was wrong. So, I can't let this go because I can't integrate it. So, basically what I'm saying is that I am yet unable to integrate parts of myself until he fully accepts it, in thought and in feeling. I think that evolutionary-wise we are compelled to "master" the past by trying to have another attachment figure accept what the primary attachment figure rejected. (This is what Freud called the repitition compulsion, and what is also called reenactments.)

I wrote this because I wanted to explain to you how I explain to myself what is happening to me, how I put into words my inner experience. What you and others write helps me so much! If it resonates with me, it helps me communicate my needs and explain my inner experience to others which can only be done when I can explain it to myself. A lot of my behaviors escalate when I feel misunderstood. I feel misunderstood when I am unable to explain what is going on with me, which makes it improbable that others to understand.

I am totally "gunshy" now about writing things like this because I don't know if it is off-putting to others. I apologize if it is, LOL.

I also need to say that although I describe some actions of my T that are negative, I don't expect him to know everything (even though he does) I think we both have been on a journey together. I can't help but feel that he has learned things from me and I know that I have learned tremendously from him. I told him that I like to go to a place where he often visits - it's like a not so transitional transitional object, LOL. He not only accepted this, he suggested a few places to visit there. This was so calming. This is what I have been trying to achieve by my repetitive assertions of my neediness. I now feel understood by him most of the time, but I still have things to teach him which means I have to see him for the rest of eternity, ha. There's nothing like diffusing the power differential by reframing things.

Thanks for allowing me to intellectualize, but I actually feel this too. This has helped me synthesize my thoughts and to put it out there to learn what others' experiences are. On this subject, in Kiya's words, I think my pendulum has found the center. I suspect that I will continue to be compulsive in an effort to achieve this on other topics. Until then . . .