My T specifically says bc of past trauma, I need to experience a CEE with him. I have a full life full of friends and a boyfriend, but I have kept secrets about trauma my whole life. Because my T is a peer, and so bright and has so much in common and is ingenious with language and funny , I have to police myself to remember he that has a wife and kids, that I am work and go in the work file, that he is a doctor and I am a patient in an office, because it feels real during the sessions. The sessions are intense and full of feelings and connections. His voice is stronger in my mind than anyone who has been in my real life for decades, and it worries me it could come to bad end if I lose my balance.

It is tough to handle being in intense emotional proximity to someone who is asking you for more and more disclosure, gazing in your eyes, and saying caring things one second, and then oops we have to end and not hearing from them day after day until the rinse repeat. It is against the social rules I learned about people who care, and sometimes I even wonder how responsible it is tohave clients sobbing in the stairwell and not knowing ( or caring?). I would never talk about this, bc there is a big risk of crossing those dearly held boundaries, and I would never be a boundary-crosser.

People tell their T's they love them etc- mine , I believe, would, give me the boot if I strayed from the delicate balance between acting "as if" we have a real relationship to learn those skills, and actually thinking we do. He also won't tolerate too much resistance, distance or pulling away, so it really is a tricky to get it right twice a week and all week. Because I have told him things I have never told anyone else, I feel a strong bond. He probably doesn't . I need to keep that in mind at all times. He says our relationship is real yet artificial, and there is no other one like it in the social world- not a friendship, not a business deal, not a romance. There is something painful about that, but yet I improve every month because of therapy. If he terminated me tomorrow, I imagine I would undergo the painful experience described by BudFox, and I am thankful and grateful to BF and others for keeping the reality right there for me to grab like a life raft .

These are all points that help me greatly keep my balance, and I am thankful to PC and BudFox for not letting the dangers slip out of mind. Sometimes I care about this T relationship more than my real one, and that is just wrong and misguided on my part.

3) One is not drawn into attachment or dependency, then prohibited from having proximity to the attachment figure beyond an hour or two per week.

4) The relationship is not rationed into brief, tightly controlled time blocks.

7) The other person is not in a socially and professionally codified position of authority and power.

8) There isn't an ever-present threat of being "terminated", which i think carries a very different meaning than the possibility of a real-world relationship ending.

9) One is not coaxed into trusting the other so soon, with so little information, and with so much on the line (likely in a crisis state).

10) There isn't generally such absolute seclusion