I think.
I write.
and that is how I process.

C. told me I am hard to read. He doesn't know what is going on inside of my head. He wants me to talk more, to respond, to reflect out loud.
I laughed.
Not at him, just the irony. I've been blogging for 5 years. I've spent the last 11 months processing through writing. It's difficult to do it verbally. So maybe yes, me holding back is partly a defense mechanism, but it's also just my pattern, it's natural. It isn't that I don't want to talk or share what is happening inside, it's that the response is so crucial and I'm so used to sitting and selecting the perfect words and sentences and response structure. And I don't sit next to you when you read my words, and at the point that we do talk, I've had time to formulate my thoughts and a later verbal conversation comes much more naturally, confidently.

I'm working on it. Practice, practice makes perfect. There's just not enough time to practice in one week.