If I say x happened and they respond x must have hurt - My responses range from - "Well of course it hurt you idiot - why would you bother saying such an obvious and pointless thing" to "so what does it matter even if it did?" - What am I supposed to do with that statement - how does the therapist saying it help me?
It is different from fearing weakness (which I probably do as I am not weak nor do I wish to become so) and I do not think I am dependent upon their approval - what possible reason would I have for depending upon their approval - they are not in my real life and my decisions do not impact them.
I wish I could figure out how to explain it better. It was good to me to find acknowledgement of it in these books. It was unfortunate that it has thus far been almost universally written as "in some rare circumstances, a client will experience the therapist's empathy as a source of distress or aversive"
I did not realize my response was really rare or uncommon.