Okay, I'm going to admit this and I don't mean it as a slam against anyone who has responded here on this thread because I think everyone has been wonderfully honest and up front about how they feel. I just wanted to comment on how our mental view of therapists as being perfect and untouched by the trauma of life possibly makes us close doors on important connections . . . doors that we might possibly close or cut off in other relationships we attempt to foster.

I get it that people are put off by SI and they want the person treating them in psychotherapy as having their, you know what, together. Anyway, I find it so sad that all of us on this forum talk about resenting being judged by others sooooooooooo much. There have even been discussions about how we resent, worry, angst about our therapists judging us. And yes, sometimes they do! Yet we admit freely that we'd judge the person who is willing to work with us therapeutically. I get it that if the person is an idiot who has no concept of how therapy should be conducted or she allows her personal issues to interfere with our therapy that we would immediately get out of the situation. But what about the skilled and compassionate therapist who demonstrates the ability to BE THERE with us in our pain, confusion and anger about getting well? There are so many ways that we could tell that the person we made an appointment with is poorly trained, mentally unstable or unmotivated and uninterested in our issues. I guess I'm saying, isn't it okay to stay with a therapist who went through hell and got through to the other side? It's pretty typical in addiction services that this kind of life experience makes for a better, more clinically aware therapist. Wrong?