Hello MLS

It must be very scary for you to think that perhaps your T is gaining some sort of pleasure from your pain. If that were the case then your therapst would be being very cruel. Can you tell your T about this worry? - otherwise it could get in the way of your work. Perhaps you have past experience of others getting pleasure from your pain? - if that is the case I am very sorry that happened to you.

I know I have also had such fears in my own therapy and when I could speak it my T was able to help me with it - it caused me to feel very small and powerless, just as I was as a child when I was being hurt.

As a therapist I most certainly do not gain any gratification from my client's pain - It does move me and I do enter into it in order to be able to help - but from a place of care and compassion - I do not gain anything for myself from the pain but do gain pleasure from the healing I witness.

Edit - I don't share my personal details with my clients to enable them to tell their stories, not to make me powerful (although the transference may be I am powerful - or voyeuristic!) - I do not want to get in their way or contaminate their transference by putting myself in to their process - the therapy is theirs and they deserve the space to get to those deep places without my stuff in their way or needing to look after me. How they see my not telling them about me is all part of the process and is valuable work in itself.

Moon