T and I accidentally had one of these feel the emotions/experience being vulnerable session last session. We were doing inner child work and he discovered I was not held, cuddled or touched as an infant. I have known this forever, it is no secret in my family. I never thought much about it. Between 1. My not experiencing touch and 2. Not understanding the big deal T was pretty shaken about it. So he was telling me how it was normal and giving all kinds of examples. I stayed focused on him and trying to remember to breathe but it was really upsetting to me to hear and think about all I missed out on. I know I was crying (first time crying with a T other than out of frustration about the T). I will be honest I am still not sure what all of the emotion was but it was strong and uncomfortable. Then in my brain it clicked that he just had a new grand baby at the beginning of the year and that he was comparing my experience with his grandkids (along with research and stuff)... then I started to see him doing all the things he was saying a baby needed and were right, healthy and normal to a baby and I started to trigger and get scared. When T saw scared creeping in he very gently asked if he needed to stop talking about touch. I didn’t have words anymore so I nodded yes and he stopped. When the scared left T reached out (spontaneously) and held my hand and I felt totally overwhelmed by emotion like a huge ocean wave coming over me and drowning... but then I noticed I could still breathe so I must not be drowning. I made eye contact with T and said thank you but he didn’t say anything for a bit. When we did start talking I shared how badly I wanted to push him away in that moment (while still having a death grip on his hand). He said that resistance was a good thing, that meant that we were where we needed to be.
Social skills are not my strength but I don’t see where it would be appropriate outside of therapy to go that deeply into anything from my past with someone. I wouldn’t really expect someone to be able to handle that kind of emotion except maybe a spouse but even then I am not sure. Now, this week T has been out of town all week and I think he is visiting one of the grandkids. When I think about him playing with the baby I still trigger. But this week I have been able to put some pieces of the puzzle together. Knowing why I do not expect my needs to be met, why I allow people to totally discount my needs, why I don’t like to be seen, why I don’t know how to self soothe... it is a really long list... and all of it feeds into unhealthy relationships as an adult, something T would like to see change. Everything coming up is really good stuff to work on with T... but I had (ok, I suspect this isn’t over and we will be diving back in...) to feel the emotions and sit with the discomfort to start to understand how it impacts adult me, my self perceptions and the things I need to change if I want to have healthy relationships. Knowing in my head that I tend to attract the wrong people, knowing that I am needy, knowing that I have an attachment disorder doesn’t allow me to change it... dealing with the feelings allows the change to happen.

Now... shhhh... don’t tell my T that I was listening/paying attention/agreeing...