Therapy bringing up wounds from ex

It's incredibly common for people who aren't really committed and motivated to changing to bail on therapy a few months in, and this is exactly why. When you start peeling back into core wounds, it's difficult and painful and triggering, so you may go into flight mode. I think you're right, that you have a better therapist who is getting down to those core layers that you've dumped defense mechanisms over for years and years and years to bury, which means it's going to take some time to face and address. Because you didn't get to where you are overnight, so you can't fix it overnight. This takes time, and you are going to want to withdraw from your therapist and everyone else at times. That's okay to feel. You are getting overwhelmed and doing a lot of hard work, even if it's not wholly conscious processing. Be kind to yourself -- my personal recommendation is, if you feel overwhelmed, then do withdraw for short periods of time from others except keep the therapy up and as consistent as you can tolerate. Learning you can trust your therapist to be consistent through this triggering and pain is part of modeling a secure relationship, assuming your therapist actually is good. This is a normal step in the process.

To answer your other questions, I had just written something about essentially missing being triggered and anxious a couple weeks ago. I think that's a fallacy, and write more at the bottom comment of this page: jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1937/help-communicating-da-gf-triggers?page=15

APs can get stuck endlessly on exes, yes. It's not quite the same as the phantom ex phenomenon, because it's usually not that you'd lose interest as soon as you got back together (like avoidants do when using phantom ex as a distancing coping mechanism). But it's because you never fully processed it and got stuck at some point when trying to move on, so there's still trauma to work through there (which you're now hitting up against in therapy). I think you've made an important callout that you're not "angry" enough. Frankly, that's probably the mourning stage at which you got stuck, as APs very often have difficulty with anger because it wasn't helpful or productive when you were younger due to family dynamics. Maybe you were invalidated or told to suck it up when you felt angry, or maybe you getting angry produced a really scary response in the adults around you.

I was extremely uncomfortable being angry for much of my life and often questioned if it was "fair" for me to feel that way. But it's a typical part of the AP experience and is one place where I've noticed it's common to get stuck. (Ask tnr9 if she agrees, since this has been a theme in several of her threads too... and anne12 has posted an entire discussion thread about anger: jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/1468/anger-integrety-boundaries-ect )

I agree, and as I'm (maybe) shifting somewhat to some tiny level of security, I can feel these things. But while those moments of brokenness are much less, they're still so strong. I'll also admit it's about to be that time of month and hormones a couple of days before usually crush me — my last "big moment" of breakdown from X after therapy was exactly a month ago. 

I guess it's also a fear of knowing I need to be vulnerable and tell him a piece of what's up with me. He's been open, and I haven't... the irony but yup feeds into "we have to be perfect" but no one else does and we'd never put that pressure on them. 

There's also this weird feeling of "my problem isn't big enough" or "it's nothing compared to what he's been through."

So I just feel stupid thinking about saying it, but I know it does put a blocker between us for me not to be open and for him not to understand why I sometimes on occasion do the things I do. When he told me what was going on for him, it all made way more sense and I truly saw that this wasn't me (even if I'd suspected it for a while). I'm basically being a hypocrite telling him to open up, let me in, to be vulnerable — while I'm sitting here in my box afraid to expose some wounds — even if they aren't as big as his, they're still there. And I want us to have a healthy relationship — or as healthy as we can knowing we're still massively healing from our own sh*t — and that requires me being vulnerable too.