I'm sure it varies a great deal from person to person, and the type of caring in a good therapeutic relationship can remind people of lots of other relationships: mentor, older sister/brother, teacher, coach, etc., certainly there is some overlap.

It's very easy for me to see my therapist in that parental role because I was cognizant of wanting that when I began therapy: I am estranged from my mother, so as I struggled with being a good mother myself, I always wanted a motherly figure to confide in, someone I could trust for parenting advice, and moreso, someone I could trust to admit that I wasn't a perfect mother.

The facts that my therapist is about 30 years older, has sort of a matronly presence, has had the experience of therapeutic reparenting herself, and idenfities with some of my issues made it very easy for me to see her in that way, at least in part, not as a replacement mother, but a specifically 'good enough mother' one to give me that reparative sense of reexperiencing my painful early years and being there in a loving, accepting, healing way as I do. It's a very deep thing, one that's given me pause at time, incredibly powerful, and affirming.