I have had this happen with more than one therapist, although the professional information I provided did not take up two whole sessions.

What it brought up for me was actually quite instructive in a couple of ways. The first was about the conflict that some children (like myself) feel when having something "put on" them that really shouldn't be there because of their role as the child-- which commonly happens in many kinds of abuse and neglect. One of the things that I am crazy about as the parent is having my child be a child. But what I learned about this conflict from my T putting me into the role of helping him (or her) in this role-reversal was that my childhood role-reversal experience carried both power and damage. I felt both that I had control (because of being assigned the "adult" role) and that I was a failure (because no child can succeed in an adult role) and that really messed up my head. When the role reversal happened in T, it gave me a lot of empathy for the child me who felt so conflicted, who wanted to do the "helpful" thing and yet wanted very much in T to be able to let go of helping everybody else and enjoy being nurtured. It reminds me of when I was a full time academic, how wonderful it was to attend a conference or a workshop when I didn't have to give a presentation, I could just learn and absorb, and have no responsibility for teaching anyone.

The other thing I learned was about reciprocity in social relationships more generally. I learned that ultimately that my T asking for a limited amount of help from me was not the same thing as being "parentified" as an abused kid. But other social relationships were more like that, that they were unbalanced where I was too much the helper and not helped enough (really I basically don't let people close enough to help me). So I started re-evaluating my social relationships, including my marriage, and made a new start at trying to allow others to nurture and support me.

I don't think there's any right or wrong answer, such as a T shouldn't ever ask a client for help. I also think that the stock answer of it's important to talk to your T about how you feel also applies.

I find on this third round of therapy that this is an underlying dynamic in my T relationship. That it is a much more disclosing, less tightly boundaried version of my earlier therapy where I knew very little of my T's life and life experiences. This relationship is a much more reciprocal one, and it has something to do with where I am in the therapeutic process that my T is so willing to be so open about himself and his life. Even that is teaching me that relationships are not so cookie-cutter in type, and to be more flexible with my own boundaries when it is good for me.