Now that I’ve nearly finished my book on defense mechanisms, I’m wondering what to do next. I’ll continue with my book on shame and the defenses against it, but I’d also like to work on something more interactive, involving visitors to this and my After Psychotherapy site.

The project I have in mind would last about a year and eventually evolve into a book. At the beginning of each month, I’d post an exercise in a separate section of my personal website. During that month, participants would independently undertake the exercise, then share their responses with one another as comments to the posted exercise — a kind of virtual group therapy.

I would also respond to and engage in the conversation. Participation should involve no more than 5-6 hours per month.

Now that I’ve mostly recovered from the last few stressful weeks, I’m able to see more clearly how my stress affected my behavior and emotional presence during sessions. I like to think I’m more self-contained than I obviously am; recent experience has shown me otherwise.

The first indication was the email I received a few weeks ago from Adrienne after one of our sessions. She didn’t mean to be intrusive, she said, but was I all right?

Amidst the end-of-school-year chaos, I’d been feeling stressed. I thought first about asking what she’d noticed, but felt that would be a deflection. So I wrote back and briefly told her the truth: that there were a lot of things going on at the moment, most of them good, but that all in all, it felt like a lot and I was feeling a bit under stress.

I also told her that I thought she was afraid I would fall apart or drop her as a result, as everyone else in her life has always done.