Friday morning was a beaut. After a miserable September, weather-wise, it was lovely to be walking up the steep, peaceful, tree-lined streets above the Castro early on a startlingly clear, sunny and warm morning. I was on my way to my second visit to my therapist. I wished that I could just take the whole day off work and go lie down in Golden Gate Park.

As I reached the top of the street, Erika, my therapist, stuck her head out of her window and shouted down a greeting. Everything seemed so cheerful and light. Didn't expect to be close to tears half an hour later. The fact that I did end up being close to tears is, to me, remarkable, given that I haven't cried in front of anyone in at least eight years.

Although I came close to tears, I didn't exactly feel that I would really start to cry. But Erika brought so much out of me that it took me quite deep inside myself, to a point where I started to feel raw and vulnerable. I think that just the act of being very honest about things that you've long harbored inside of you naturally stirs your emotions. I found myself breathing with very shallow breaths; probably to stop the feelings from coming any closer to the surface.

I've always thought of myself as someone who's lead an almost charmed life, in some ways. I've never experienced tragedy, loss, or major illness. Yet, in talking with Erika, I realized - or rather I remembered - that I had experienced moments in my childhood and adolescence which, to me, were intensely painful and affective; incidents that may have caused part of me to recede inside of myself to the point where I can normally no longer feel deep emotions for other people.

On the surface, those incidents sound like nothing. But to a sensitive, imaginative child, their cumulative effect can be almost soul destroying. And I've never been quite willing to accept this - I've always gone along my merry way maintaining to myself that I'm relatively emotionally healthy; that unlike people who've been, say, sexually abused as a child, I've nothing serious to complain about.

So why can't I access my deeper emotions? Sooner or later, I'm going to have to confront this; confront my intense fear of emotion, and allow myself to cry in front of Erika. It seems, right now, absolutely impossible that I could let myself do that. But I don't think I'll make any progress until I do that. And if I can't learn to have deep feelings about myself, I'll certainly not be able to have them for others.

Please don't write to me in sympathy about this. Again, like I always say, I'm not writing this to get sympathy. In my day-to-day life, I'm mostly pretty happy. The stuff I'm writing about here is more long-term stuff that I need to work on if I'm ever to feel deeply connected and fulfilled. And I write about it because it's good to share it with others.