...anxiously.

I came to the appointment fifteen minutes early just to make sure and spent some time pacing around the door so as to not interrupt the possible session-in-progress (I wouldn't have, since there was no other client present). During this pacing, I had things come to my mind about leaving the appointment (which wasn't prepaid), but I clenched my fist and waited patiently. About five minutes before 3 PM I knocked on the door and came in.

The Psychological Service room was a small one in the "dungeon" part of the main building. It consisted of a corridor with a computer at the end of it, an arch nearby the computer and what appears to have been an isolation room at some point, what with the metal door. That part alone didn't feel comfortable, but there were things to compensate for the feeling of pressure of the walls, if just a bit: framed pictures with not much relatedness, a big soft sofa of pale yellow color, a small wooden table with a complete puzzle of a majestic tiger on top, a big rug beneath it all.

...interestingly.

The psychologist, Anna, was a young woman - my guess is she's not much older than myself. Around her, I felt even more defensive than I usually do, partly because of the manner in which she spoke to me - she did her best to act a friend and put both of us on the same level, which I didn't take well, preferring to treat her as a professional - and partly because she's a psychologist - which means that she would have the means to discern my personality, and I'm a very private person.

Still, we talked, and I told her about one of the problems that came to mind - a mild one to start with: my relationships with people in my immediate surroundings, i.e. my uni group. I feel like I went on tangents I didn't want to go but felt pressed to; my guess is that the pressure was from within, not from without, since when I talked about my issues with my friends, no such tension was present in the air. We finished half an hour early because I didn't feel like taking it further.

...okay.

It isn't to say that the session was a bust. I did learn a few things of interest, both about the type of psychologist that I want - someone older than me but not too old (say, ten to fifteen years older), for one - and about myself and others. Those were things I feel I could have gathered from a talk with a friend but were important nonetheless. I won't go into details (at least for now) since I'm still in the defensive rebound and amn't sure how much I want to share about myself right now.

Anna treating me as a friend felt like I've been forced into a contact more intimate than I'd like, but I felt too uncomfortable (anxious and stressed) to discuss it with her. I may have come across as distant and unresponsive, which both would be fair views of my behavior, and in both of those lie the nature of my problem. I've been for a long time having the hardest time of letting people near me; Anna didn't know me well but she said that she felt a certain distance between us immediately; we weren't able to delve into details of it.

...uncertainly.

I'm not sure if I'm going to take another shot at therapy soon. Maybe it's the person on the other end or maybe it's me, but I felt like I could have made the same progress in other ways, even if it would have taken me a bit more time. I'd like to think of myself as an introspective person and I've made significant progress on my own so far.

If I do decide to take another shot at it soon, I'm not sure whether to come to Anna again or find another person. For all my discomfort, it felt good talking to a person about my problems, and she has been respectful and compassionate enough about it.

Either way. Thank you guys for all the support and all the kind words. I'm doing my best to show my appreciation, even if I'm not always at best about doing it.

*sigh*

Let's see how this goes.