breathe, is there anything to make you think he reciprocates your feelings in any way? Many clients fall in love with their therapists. It can be part of transference and is certainly, at the very least, confusing. Therapists are used to dealing with this.

Self disclosure by the therapist is part of some therapeutic approaches and is not necessarily a bad thing. It depends on the aim of the self disclosure and the content of what is said. You wrote: "We have spoken about his personal life, I know all about his family situation." This doesn't necessarily sound inappropriate to me, but might be. I know some about my therapist's family situation too, both current and when he was growing up. Each time he has self disclosed to me, it has been therapeutically valuable and served a purpose. In addition, therapist self disclosure can help build the therapeutic relationship into one of mutualism, an important value in the humanistic model. I guess my question would be, was this the type of self disclosure your therapist was doing? If so, it is probably fine. Or was it something more, not appropriate, over the top, etc.?

Anyway, from what you wrote, I'm not sure if there is more than just typical one-way therapist transference love going on here. Do you think there is? The text messaging seems a bit weird, though! The hugs are not unheard of, as we have a thread here where a number of people said that their therapists hugged them. Do you think the relationship is inappropriate?

sunny