Yeah that's essentially what it is. She has given me gifts in the past. I actually have never had a therapist who hasn't, come to think of it. One gave me flowers for my college graduation, another a book of poems for our last session and the ex therapist mentioned in this thread has given me a few things - but only on special occasions like my graduation, move to a new city and Christmas (after official termination). I don't think the gifts cross any lines because they've usually come at termination or not throughout the therapeutic relationship but rather at its end.

I think we call it a friendship knowing it's not. Though we have recently played with labels like mentor, life coach, auntie and big sister (we are both young and close in age). I know she genuinely loves me and she says as much but I think that I can't call her by her name may have something to do with me truly missing the therapeutic relationship. At this point we can't have that though. I do know quite a bit about her personally. She doesn't tell me her problems often but she shares what's relevant to whatever I'm going through. Like she's shared things about her marriage when I've had trouble in my relationship. I've always appreciated that about her. I never felt alone or like my diagnosis was damming because she shared her own stuff with me. Honestly until her I had never had a solidly healthy relationship with a human and I miss learning about how to do that through therapy. I wanted to duplicate the work we did IRL and I feel like the friendship prevented that.