That's nice lostmyway. I think my t generally cares about people and wants people to be happy. He said that and I believe him. I don't feel like he has empathy for my situation especially though. Your explanation of connection makes sense because I think feeling like he cares about my situation would make it a good connection.

I feel like he pushes me. I think this would be different for some clients since I'm mostly dealing with depression, not as much with trauma. So I guess therapists can't empathize too much or it would be supporting dysfunctional, depressed thinking. I don't know, I guess they have to balance that with everyone, but it must be a lot easier to empathize with clients who have a traumatic past.

I still think I need to be able to trust him to be on my side somehow, even if it's hard to empathize with me. Even if he's pushing or showing me something he thinks I need to change. I don't know how I can trust him to be on my side like that though. I don't know if he can be. I don't think he accepts me like that, but I try to believe that just since therapists generally want to be accepting, that at some level he probably tries to accept me. It's really hard to give him that benefit of the doubt when it seems as if he doesn't like me very much though.