That depends on what you mean by "take care of" I don't believe its my job in the client therapist relationship to "take care of" the therapist meaning I have to make sure the therapist is happy about me and what I say. If they are in the job to feel happy about everything then they are in the wrong profession. Clients are going to be talking about things that are upsetting and so on for them and some of those things may very well be triggers and so on for the therapist, especially if the therapist has a background of being a survivor themselves. It is the therapist job to "take care of" the therapist. Which is why at certain levels of certification and licensure USA therapists are required to have thier own therapists and attend therapy sessions for themselves.

I also dont have a problem with "transferance" though at times I do have problems with "attachment". Transference and attachment are two different concepts.

Transference is taking feelings and issues from inside the client and out of them and on to the therapist regarding the topic being discussed so that the topic can be taken care of.

For example a client is talking about an abuse situation and they start feeling like the therapist is that abuser that they are talking about, that the therapist wants to hurt them, is being rude and so on. by the client putting those feeling into the therapist they can recognize what their feelings are about that topic. Therapists use this type of transference all the time for example telling the client - "if I was so and so what would you say, do ..." "if I were you what would I be feeling right now about that happening to me? Therapists also welcome transference of the persons feelings into inanimate objects for example "if your abuser was sitting in that chair over there what would you say?" basically transferring the persons abuser from inside the person to that chair where the person can process the feelings without feeling threatened and vunerable.

Another example of transference is role playing... "I am going to be so and so and you be you and we are going to re-enact this situation..."

Attachment is whether or not a client likes their therapist, whether or not the client has a problem when the therapist is out of town or unavailable.

My past therapist knew it made me nervious and so on when she went out of town and state so we started saving workbook activities and so on and I would do them then.

My present therapist always lets me know ahead of time when she is unavailable and I have her voice on tape with the two of us doing relaxation visualizations during sessions.

As for letting her know how I feel about her. I have always been open about how I feel about her right from day one. and she has been just as honest with me about what she thinks of me including how she felt when I called her "a stiff with potential" . she also says I have swore at her and called her clueless. One day she asked me "have I grown on you yet?" I told her you might say that I don't think of her as clueless and a stiff with potential anymore. she laughed and said I hadn't swore at her recently. I first knew she liked me when I had left her office and had turned around to ask her something and she was at her desk smiling and whispering to herself "I think we are going to be able to work together" and that was only a couple weeks of starting to see her during the time Iframe that was calling her "a stiff with potential" and swearing at her.

periodically we do talk about how things are going between the two of us. We both know that we had a rocky start and regardless of if we like each other or not we both have to respect and trust each other judgement in order to do what is best for me. If either one of us feels we are going in the wrong direction we say so.

She flat out tells me "don't go there because..." or "I wish you wouldn't go there because..."

I always try something that she wants me to do and if it doesn't work I let her know right away for example the recent situation where her co workers were forcing her to push me into working on a project that neither one of us were completely ready to complete yet. She brought their request to me and we tried it. It was not working for me so I sat down and wrote about it and printed off the journal entry and went into my session telling her flat out when she mentioned her co workers deadline for my project "don't worry about the deadline cause Im not doing it" and handed over my journal entry that went into more detail about my decision to not work on the project under her co workers standards and requests.

The one thing I do do though is try not to move faster than my therapist. That decision isn't specifically taking care of my therapist. Thats taking care of me. LL is on the case after three years of my working with another therapist and add to that the DHS stuff involving my sons case.

Back when I first started with LL, LL and I tried to have her jump right in where my past therapist left off. Without knowing all the information needed it lead to a disaster of LL thinking I said something wrong at a court hearing that both LL and I attended. She thought she was doing what was best by strongly pointing out what I did wrong in the meeting so that it wouldnt happen again.The result was my retreating into la la land for months because I knew I had said nothing wrong and I couldn't understand why she was so upset with me. It took about 6 months to work that one situation out of her understanding how the DHS case and hearings have been run and my understanding that she had just wanted everything to be perfect for me because a DHS caseworker had just gotten fired because of my requesting local, state and federal investigation into that caseworker. Now everyone on the case was going to be seeing me as a troublemaker so to speak because they now knew I was not the normal nieve parent with a child in the system who did not know how to navigate the systems and recognise when the case was not being run ethically and legally correct.

It is virtually unheard of for a parent of a child in the system to win against a DHS caseworker and not only did I win on my complaint and the caseworker had been removed from my case BUT her other cases were put under review also AND she had been fired. Along with that comes removal of her state license which means she could no longer work DHS in the whole state.

So LL had been trying to make sure everything was perfect for me but not knowing everything she jumped in at the wrong time with disaster results of my floating in la la land for months.

Because of that situation LL and I both knew she could not just jump in taking things right fropm where SKR left off. We needed to take time to get to know each other and she needed time to get to know what the case was all about, how it has been run and what SKR and I had been working on.

I knew if I wanted LL to understand things then I had to take it in steps. Break things down into steps that she could understand instead of just lopping everything in her lap and saying ok here you go and hope she didn't make another jump without the crucial information needed. Breaking things down not only helped her but it also helped me because I was able to see other sides of things that SKR and I had already worked on from a fresh angle of what LL saw in it. Which only helped to bring me even more stability and so on.

Just telling LL thank you for things that she does for me shows I like her and what she does for me. Including her in on my projects, artwork and journal entries shows that I trust her judgement. I am always on the lookout for different things to do to help myself. When I find out that LL is aslo interested in something that I am doing I bring it in for her to see, make copies of and so on for example I have been doing Nancy J Napeir relaxation visualizations for years now either from her website or her books. When I entered the depression management group and LL was doing relaxation visualizations in the group and revieled that she does them on her own too. I brought in to my individual therapy sessions my Nancy J. Napeir stuff for her to see. Now not only am I on to Nancy J Napeir stuff but so is LL and three of her co workers and They use them for themselves and their clients. LL says not only does she get to bring me new resourses but she loves it when clients teach her about new things and resourses too.