I've been thinking about this.......& may be off base, but it seems like the more emotional issues that we share with T, the more the line between how we are (or would be) with friends & how we are with T's becomes less clear.

I know that I never had friends to share & talk with before I left my husband......well now, I realize that a lot of things that I always talked to my T about are things that I now talk with my friends about. Taking that a step farther, a friend, I would ask to save me out a matzoh ball, a T, I wouldn't.

I think when we start to expect them to do things for us from within their own lives (not their life as a T) then it leaves us open for disappointment when they don't come through the way we expect them to.

It's hard to distinguish that line when we need to feel close to T in order to feel safe enough to talk with them & to share the things we share with them. Things we would feel like we could share with a really close, good friend......but instead, it's really our professional T that we have this relationship with. When they don't come through like a good friend would come through for us, it hurts. At times it's hard to separate that line if we don't focus on it extremely logically (& even it's not easy).

Think that T's tend to be able to draw the line easier than we do since we are the ones that emotionally need to connect in order to be able to open up about ourselves in therapy. They connect, but at a different level then we do, since they usually don't open up much about themselves to us. Think the most problems happen when we expect actions from our T's that would normally be between friends.

Just some thoughts on this....hope they make sense.