This very much resonates with me. I'm almost 2 years into this kind of therapy. And I do think that it's a kind of therapy, for a specific place in healing, or for a specific challenge

My first male T was definitely neutered-- married and with a child, but he had a gentle presence more akin to a wise teenager than a *man." My second T was a woman (trained by T1). Both of them were very much empathic and nonthreatening, there was a sense of them as actual humans but not people sheathed with lives and personalities.

Looking back at this round of therapy, I think that my T has been very deliberate and planful in his openness about himself and his life, past and present. From the very beginning, he was definitely male. He is casual, dresses in cords and button down shirts, sits with his legs crossed, and is gentle and thoughtful, but non of these things neuter him in any way. Sometimes when I sit there, I see a little cartoon bubble that pulsates, "guy, guy guy!"

I don't think he's trying to get me to relate to him as a therapist. I think he's trying to get me to relate to him as a man, to be comfortable with intimacy with a man, which is exactly what I need. I've been married for a long time and have a strong and generally healthy marriage, but a shift in our marriage a few years ago has challenged me to figure out how to be myself and stay married, or even if that's what I want to do.

Part of this for me is relating intimately to a man that has so many (good) traits of the man who hurt me for much of my childhood, but experiencing it with safety and the ability to reflect on the process as an adult. I would say that my first T definitely taught me that men could be safe, and loving, and generally enabled me to get to the place where my connections with people were secure and nuanced, rather than hostile and superficial.

I think that small disclosures from the T about connecting around challenges (e.g. more daily life, such as something as dealing with maniacal people at work) are pretty routine in a lot of therapy. These kinds of disclosures don't work for people who are obsessed with the T, though. So for a T to consider going down this path of being the man-in-the-room, I think he first checked out with me that first, I was comfortable with these disclosures and second, wasn't going to hang onto them and focus on them in therapy, not myself. What I noticed is that his disclosures seemed well-boundaried-- they contained information, enough for me to get that he understood what I was talking about or going through, but they didn't include details that were not relevant. And he communicates this and then moves on and neither the disclosure nor himself encourages me to attend to him, rather than me. If I have a question or a response, he will answer it and then redirect me back to myself. I've never experienced something like, "getting back to myself and my own life, . . . . . " But every disclosure does emphasize that he is a person, with a history like me, with a marriage like me, with work like me. Although I think that I would sometimes like to diminish him into the background of my T, I really can't. I don't know if he knows that and the disclosures are part of that-- encouraging me to deal with the him in the room, not just a person, but a HIM.

I also think that part of this strategy of therapy is perhaps also getting me to relate to myself intimately in a different way. By him sharing with me about what he relates with to me, especially his similar feelings about his work and life experiences, in a lot of ways I think the way I relate to him is reflecting the way I see myself. I'm responding to him as a person, but what I am really learning to do is connect with my own feelings and experiences.

This really came into sharp focus for me when he told me he was a CSA survivor, about 9 months or so into T. I look back on it now, and I can pinpoint my reaction to his disclosure as the time I stopped beating myself up all the time, and when I really began to have compassion for myself and my child self who is pretty regular about her presence in m head. There are ways that he talks about his own healing that are both intimate yet boundaried, without gory details or anything else that encourages me to focus on him. I respond to him, but it is the connection to myself that blossoms.

There are other ways that this works for me-- when he discusses how his wife relates to him or how he relates to his wife, he shows me how I can communicate with my H or how he can communicate with me. And I learn something about myself in my reactions to his disclosures that points me towards I want to react differently with my H or my son or whoever.

Finally-- Ellie, I don't know whether your T made a mistake in asking you to give him comfort, as you put it. But I am also reasonably sure that he did not just blurt it out in a moment of weakness and that he thought about whether it would be useful in your therapy. He very well could be mistaken about that, but he could also be onto something. I would say that your reaction to his disclosure has revealed things that you would not have discovered otherwise, and that may be pointing you in a direction that you really need to go.