Do you ever share unrealistic "I wish..." statements with your T? How does he/she react? I shared such a statement with my T last session. For the last day I've been thinking about his response compared to the response my former counselor made when I shared such a statement with her..

My former counselor
Sunny: "I wish he would just never come home." (Said in reference to my husband about a year and a half ago when he was away on business. Things often seemed so much better when he was gone, and I thought life would be great if he just never came home. Then I wouldn't have to go through the pain of breaking up the marriage, etc.)
My former counselor (as if she were breaking some bad news to me): But that's not going to happen. He is coming home.

My current therapist
Sunny: I wish I could be divorced tomorrow! (Said last week in the heat of feeling I-am-so-effing-sick-of-this-divorce.)
Therapist (smiling): I bet you do. Or tonight!

The response from my former counselor was kind of a conversation stopper. Well, of course I knew my husband would really come home. Did she think I was living in la-la land? It really took us nowhere for her to say that my little heartfelt wish was unrealistic. I knew that. It made me feel like I had shared this silly thought with her and she had rejected it. Although the thought was silly, it reflected a very serious and authentic feeling. Her "rejection" of my comment contributed to making me feel I had to be completely serious and totally realistic with her all the time. This little interchange did nothing to advance our therapeutic alliance.

On the other hand, I loved my current therapist's response. He knew that I knew I could not possibly be divorced tomorrow, so he didn't say, "but you know that can't happen," or something similar. He took the somewhat whimsical wish in the spirit it was shared. He empathized with me, and took it one step further, which showed that he understand my desire to be free of my marriage at last. This drew us closer, since I knew he understood 100% my impatience and desire to move on.

I've been thinking about these 2 interchanges a lot. Is the difference in the responses because my former counselor was CBT and my current T is humanistic? Were they trained to respond the ways they did? Or was it just kind of instinctual, the ways they responded, having more to do with their personalities? And my therapist's personality and response just fit better my own personality and what I needed from a therapist at that moment?