Quote:
Originally Posted by Mastodon
I agree that it's not necessarily absolute, fkm. I would not want a T who shared absolutely nothing. But my biggest problems are to do with relationships (both my marriage, and other social relationships), and despite this I would not want T to share anything about his family, if any, or his past relationship issues, if any. That would make me uncomfortable, and it would make me wonder if he thought less of me for not managing my problems as well as he did, and it definitely wouldn't make me feel more understood. T understands me, that's something I am convinced of, but since our relationships are necessarily different, using his own relationships as examples for me would just make me feel that he wanted me to be like him, or something.
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I don't generally think it's helpful for Ts to divulge about issues they share with a client. So I wouldn't want a T to share about trauma if I were dealing with trauma. For me it was more inconsequential info or answers to my questions, usually about parenting or child behavior as a way of making sense of my own experiences. I think hearing him relate parenting experiences gave me confidence both in his knowledge and goodwill.
By absolute I just meant that most people who talk about their Ts as "blank slate" really aren't blank slate as it was originally conceived, unless they are in traditional psychoanalysis.