Bizarre Session, I don't know what happened

I feel for you on this! It sounds like he is willing to work very hard on it at least - I hope you will be able to feel understood soon.

My therapist sometimes sounds a little angry at a former therapist of mine (who was a good therapist, but whose modality wasn't a good fit for me). He also told me one time that he cried when a therapist kind of screwed him over once in a way that made it impossible for him to keep seeing her. I am really grateful for the fact that he knows what it's like to be vulnerable in a therapeutic relationship. It would be so hard to feel like he didn't get how painful it could be, and I didn't realize until this thread how important that is.

But you express yourself really well and he sounds really sincere in trying to understand you - I have faith that you'll both be able to really fix this - I really wish that for you.

For me, a lot of dissociation happens (besides experiencing difficult emotions) when I feel invalidated or not understood. Is it possible that something similar is going on for you here? That your therapist not only failed to grasp the importance of the issue but also (maybe not willingly) dismissed your feelings and perspective on the matter. Which maybe triggered your dissociative response.

I had this (invalidation and being dismissed) happen more or less constantly to me when I was little so it's no surprise that experiencing something similar today might trigger some dissociation even though I might be able to handle it differently today...
Just a thought - feel free to dimiss it if not appropriate

With regard to T realizing what's going on for you (dissociating): My T had a suspicion (based on me having some spaced out look at times, or not being fully focused) and sometimes even asked "what's going on" "where are you now" etc but I didn't take her up on it. Only once when I had a really strong dissociative reaction and couldn't remember most of the session (plus I had those weird body experiences in session) I brought it up the next time and we started to talk about it. This was after about 2 years of therapy. She said that it took her quite a while to pick up on me dissociating because it was mostly subtle and somehow I was mostly able to carry on having some sort of "normal" conversation, even though inside everything was turned upside down. Which kind of indicates that I've been doing that for a long, long time, most of my life probably. So what's visible on the outside might not reflect what's going on inside of you...

All the best, c_r

I appreciate your perspective. It certainly seems like a treacherous subject, especially where there is a professional and/or emotional interest. I will persevere, mainly because I trust that his desire to help me will ultimately outweigh whatever is blocking the understanding at the moment. Our therapeutic relationship is strong and built on mutual trust, so my instinct is that we will have to simply continue to chip away at the boulder.
Thanks so much for the useful link; do you know whether they support people worldwide, or just in the US?

EM, TELL is web-based, so I assume your location won't matter. I've seen reference to UK groups, but don't know if they continue.