I had very different experiences with touch with two of my first three therapists as a teenager. The first, my school counselor, would hug me after these incredibly intense sessions where I'd burst into tears talking about feeling trapped at home or a man who'd tried to molest me once after following me home. Those hugs opened me up to being cared for in sustaining, healing, joyful way. And made me feel accepted. They were very powerful agents of change from a very powerful woman. She was deeply inspiring to me, and a lot of it was due to the bonding over telling difficult truths and touching afterward. The way she conveyed sympathy and shared energy in those hugs was really phenomenal for me.

Jump ahead a year and I'd disclosed abuse by my father to a 'proper' therapist in a clinical setting. I began asking her for hugs and she'd hold me in a very sensual-feeling way that was closer to being arousing than anything. It was a terrible combination of disclosing abuse and vulnerabilities and being embraced in a way that just wasn't therapeutic. It really confused me, added to my angst and was never resolved as she broke my confidentiality (damn interns!) and I left suddenly when that happened.

I had to process that experience in my current round of therapy because that fear of being inappropriately aroused with a therapist pretty much terrified me, made me a little fearful I could even do therapeutic work around the abuse anymore in a deep way. But my current therapist, a true pro, got me through it almost painlessly, she made is so simple- the gap in experience and skill between her and that old intern was just vast.

Also though, the healing touch from my first counselor stayed with me even more powerfully all through the years, it's been 20+ now, and so I wouldn't trade the ability to be touched in therapy for anything- those hugs and such were almost magically transformative for me, along, of course, with the rest of the therapy.