Not connecting with new t

So I've begun to see a new t a few weeks ago.
I'm not sure exactly what my problem is with her....I was just journaling and when I journal I usually gain cllarity...but with this issue I feel like I don't have a handle on it....
The way it was with my previous t.....I would come to a session and I was fully aware of my inner and outer self....and I'd communicate that.... With this new t, I can't seem to be aware of myself....not just in t....outside of t as well....I've lost that sense of full self-awareness...and therefore I can't make use of the therapy hour as I used to....So what's blocking me? I can't figure that out...I don't know whether it's something in her...or something on my end.....whether to try yet another t.....or will the same issue come up there.....Gosh, I'm confused....
Last time I saw her I said I'm so frustrated at my inability to trust her....I've seen her only five times....
Am I not trusting her because I've been so betrayed by my previous t? Is there something about her per se....? Am I afraid of the consequences, if I dare speak my mind? As happened with previous t....
Can my insightful friends here help me make sense out of this? I am seeing her later in the day today and my mind is blocked.
One thought does occur to me, that my difficulty in connecting with her may be in part because I have not yet fully mourned the loss of my relationship with my previous t. Cuz as I sit here and type I am aware of a feeling of sadness and pain.....I am hurting.....
I guess it's hard to connect with a new t when still hurting about the other t....does this make sense at all....?

I think, yes, it may be because the new T is still "new" and you may still be grieving loss of the old T.

When I terminated therapy in 1987 after 9 years with my T because I had to move, change jobs, etc. suddenly I couldn't access my "inner" self. I was all surface, doing quite well, all the things I "should" be but felt like I had no feelings, like they were all partying down below only I couldn't figure out how to get to them :-) This lasted several years and it was only after starting to see my T again in 1996 that I realized all the changes (leaving T after 9 years, my home I'd lived in for 13 years, all my friends, my old job, etc.) had swamped me. So, your supposition makes a huge amount of sense to me!

Can you tell your new T about your pain of loss and betrayal by your old T at all?

I don't know if this will sound far out to you but I read Women Who Run With the Wolves at one point when I was still having some trouble figuring out what I was feeling and got a better sense of the underneath feelings working with/for me (rather than against me and thinking of them as "blocking" me). Maybe see if you can change your sense of frustration to a feeling of thanks because you are unconsciously helping yourself with some problem, your head just isn't sure what it is :-) "Trust" yourself to take care of yourself well and the parts of you might loosen up and talk to each other better? Speaking of unconscious; I had huge breakthroughs when I started looking at my dreams and what they seemed to be saying? Don't know if you remember yours or record/work with them at all but that helped me see better. I'd keep on journaling too, but "hopefully" that eventually you'll talk to yourself better again.

Work on understanding easy things with your new T? Sometimes small things can be as important as the bigger picture? I remember my T asking me about the blinds (was the sun bothering me or telling me it was bothering her, personally) and asking me was I too hot or too cold. Concentrate on little personal things like that, notice the "decorations" in her office, any little nic nacs you like or don't like, how the furniture is arranged, how comfortable your chair is/isn't and compare it to her chair (I got the "good" chair and my T got the cheap office desk chair and put her feet up on another chair -- At one point, because I was trained by my stepmother to believe it was impolite/wrong to put your feet on furniture, I scolded my T for doing so :-) Check with yourself to see if you feel guilty for seeing a new T, whether there's any sense of you abandoning the old one even though you were betrayed; maybe you feel the betrayal was your fault, and you're unworthy to have a new T, etc.

Perna, thank you for your response. Yes I've talked to my new t about the loss and sense of betrayal, but I think I may have not spent sufficient time on the pain of the loss.
I will try to get ahold of the book you mention, Women who run with the wolves.
Yes I've spent time observing the details in her office....it helps ground me a bit....
About me feeling guilt over abandoning the old t....hm, I think this merits some more thought....I think there's some truth there....to be explored oh yes....

((((withit)))) Yes, reflection can be good, but please don't beat yourself up over anything you've done concerning the old T etc.... I like to think that we all do the best we can, given the set of circumstances at the time. If we can later learn how to be better, that's what counts! ((((hugs)))

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I think that Perna so rocks... New here but I am part of the ....assume there is one...Perna fan club.

How long has it been between therapists? I think that working through your old therapist....what happened, why you left, how you left, how you feel about that ... the frustrations of starting over again.. all are important. Take your time. Five sessions is a short time.

As I transitioned from one T to the next I also found that one T was a kinder fuzzier soul and the other was not though smart and leading me forward. I know that both of them have had a solid place in my journey. Know that this T may be different and have different things to offer so that your thinking patterns may also change. Some of your muddiness may be trying to deal with the past, grieving and expressing whatever emotions come up in relation to your past T honestly and also a matter of your refocusing to your new T.

As with many things in life... you can not (I doubt) change therapeutic chairs and just continue where you left off. The chairs and blinds ....might need a little refocusing along with your eyes/glasses... or your mind's eye.

I'm running for goddess next week? I'd appreciate your vote :-)

One thing I happened on accidentally many years ago was having my own goals/objectives, not just looking for them while in therapy.

My work life changed dramatically when I figured out "why" I was working, what I "wanted" (I started working part-time so I could "get" new jobs (scary) and quit them at will (even scarier). I guess some of Barbara Sher's book, Wishcraft helped there: http://www.wishcraft.com/

My schooling accidentally got 1000% better when I was 41 and taking accounting, just to keep a friend company as she had to have the course for work (local community college). I found I loved the course and was good at it but had my usual problems of not wanting to go to class, do the work, etc. I struggled all semester but did pretty well, probably because my friend was involved but in the middle of the final exam I had an epiphany where I didn't quite remember something I wanted to and realized it was because I hadn't applied myself as hard as I could have and that it was 1000% my "fault"/pain/disappointment. No stepmother was standing over me with a whip, the professor didn't care how I did, my husband didn't care how I did (I already had a degree, good job, etc.) it was all "Me".

The same thing happened in therapy as I've noted a couple times; I got to the end of a session with the sense we hadn't been on the "right" topic and told my T and she thought about it and agreed with me. Incredulous anger for 2 seconds while I wondered why she hadn't done anything about it :-) and then the realization (like a ton of bricks :-) that it was my therapy and I was the only one "in charge" and/or she and I are a team, and it wasn't her "job" to figure out the topic, but mine.

I've been journaling, especially with "workbooks" of one sort of another (changed my life with Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way) and focusing on me, personally, in many ways regardless of what has been happening in the rest of my life, even in therapy. It's like I'm a separate "task"/chunk in my life :-) I don't know, withit, but maybe that's what you're thinking of with your "self awareness". Have you ever deliberately looked at that self awareness and found where it's coming from? I'd find a book or two and see if you can't coax it to come out, unrelated to your therapy? If you can get talking to it again, just you and It :-) then maybe you can move it back into therapy that way?

Perna, I'll def. vote for you I wholeheartedly agree you rock!

First and foremost I aim for self-awareness outside of therapy. Though as of late I'm having a most difficult time of it. Yet even when I do I find it so difficult to talk in t....
Thanks all for your ideas, Secret Garden I enjoyed your response a lot! I guess I will give it some time, without pressuring myself...

Sky, thanks for your encouragement!