I think this is the perpetual balancing act for Ts: finding a place between validating and challenging. Constant validation might feel nice but we'd be in therapy forever licking our wounds. Too much challenge and we're out of there, never to return.

T and I used to argue about this quite a lot, and there were times when I'd tell her to slide back down the see saw (towards validation). Sometimes she listened, sometimes the impasse lasted for weeks. We already had a trusting relationship though. I think if you're seeing T's pushing as the opposite of building trust, that's more of a problem. I think that challenge/pushing can only be effective from within a trusting relationship, and that Ts should always prioritise building trust, since we know it's the therapeutic relationship which accounts for the bulk of therapy's effects.