I was fortunate to be able to stay in therapy for an extended time with one really wonderful T--@ 11 years. The hard work was during the therapy years, especially early on because I had no way to see myself outside of my warped family's view of me that my role was to fulfill their needs. I didn't exist outside of that role, and yet I could never succeed in it, either. My T was the first relationship in my life that didn't fit that pattern. So there was a lot of transference played out, and a lot of very patient re-direction on his part. He became the parent I'd never known. After therapy, the process continued with each relationship and experience, getting easier and more automatic each time. I also had the good fortune to meet a colleague in a new work situation who was exceptionally clear in such ways from her own experiences. She became a close friend, and that friendship continues after @ 25 years.

Unless I'm confusing you with someone else, don't you work as an addictions counselor? I would think this perspective would be very useful in such work. It certainly is in my work as a teacher. By not needing my students' approval to trust that I'm doing a good job, it allows me to teach more authentically and take more risks. My students often respond to this by also being willing to take more risks as well as responsibility for their learning, and they gain a lot of confidence from their experience of developing their own abilities to self-assess. As my T did for me by trusting in my abilities, my students gain self-trust through their experience of my trusting in their abilities.

I realize this sounds simplistic, but it's not a naive or blind trust. It's very much combined with responsibility and natural consequences. But what it does is take inappropriate psychological templates from the past out of the equation. In therapy it also very much helped me to weather periodic doubts about the "genuineness" of the relationship, or get through ruptures.