I'm glad you were able to discuss it with him and you found some resolution in that. I agree with your comment about therapists as distinct from being a "yes man." I've heard a few therapy stories from people I know where they are clearly using the therapist to just give them what they want. They want to be adored and praised and told that the way they parent or treat their spouse is perfect. I don't really care what people do in therapy, but having to hear the venting about not getting what they want got pretty tiring, and the way that the bitterness seemed to linger and linger after they left therapy because of this was kind of sad. And a little too resonant about how I felt in relation to them, like they were angry when I didn't slather them with praise or want to hang out with them more. I've since dispatched these folks from my life.

I don't agree that always answering any question must happen for trauma survivors. I did a CSA survivor's group for many years, and everyone had their own way of asking their individual therapists and the group questions. I think asking a question of the T or anyone is a stand in for asking for what you want, which can be really hard for survivors. Sometimes trauma survivors have issues with seduction and use questioning as a ruse to express it. In one of our group sessions, a person who I thought otherwise had pretty healthy intimacy wanted us to go around the room and discuss what s@xual acts we engaged in with our partners and what kinds of s*x we really enjoyed. All of us said we weren't going to answer her questions. She laughed at said that's exactly what her T said when she asked him if his wife still performed a widely enjoyable (by men) act on him.

I think like most things, it's pretty nuanced when you try to evaluate what works and doesn't work for who in therapy. The only thing I know for sure doesn't work in therapy is having a s*xual relationship or other forms of abuse, or taking clients' money as a loan. I very much disagree with many posters on here that "good" T's do this or that, or that saying X or doing Y out of context of a session and a history together is absolutely wrong. It always makes sense to me, at least much of the time, that asking the T and telling the T about how something said or done affected oneself. I think that silencing in therapy is the same thing as powerlessness, and therapy is the one place where it is low risk to speak my piece.