I agree with this, and am sorry and sad for how much to must have hurt it hear this. "Alongside " is therapist jargon , nomenclature for what they do when their interventions bomb, and they can't engage the client. It is the idea of joining with the client exactly where they are. It is a strange double speak or else thoroughly unconscious for your therapist to put you in an odd power position - you are coming alongside his kids. This leads me to questions like: Does he have a kid with a sorrow like a drug issue who is hard to reach or does his family complain to him that he cares more about his work than them?

I don't believe it is all that much about you ( and that would be both a relief and a dereliction of his duty).

I have rehashed my tears so many times about my T saying right to my face, when we were discussing the writer Junot Diaz being the subject of #metoo a few weeks after publishing a heartfelt memoir of being - ( I left that blank bc I can never remember how to do the trigger) as a kid in the New Yorker and therapy saving him, that whatever had already happened, to me and to others, that at least the world would be safe for his daughter ( UnaLuna later made me feel more empathetic to my T by pointing out that actually this is quite wishful and she isn't actually safer by too much wholly bc he is her father) . I was just arrested by the moment; it seemed so completely cruel, and what you describe. Like the T facade crumbling leaving the father. He would happily feed me to wolves or throw me overboard it revealed if his family was involved.

Like life, therapy has so many limits. T's are full of BS if they claim the capacity for unconditional regard( my T mentions he has it on his psychology today page - ummmm NOT). But he is human and I am too, and we F up both of us. I just think it cuts so deeply to us as the vulnerable clients, and the hurt is dimentional and meaningful in a way it is not from client to therapist.

I hope your T is faithful to you in his fashion, and what you are receiving as a message is a bit off in terms of cause /effect. I don't believe you did anything wrong acknowledging Father's Day . The response must come from his feelings about himself as a father. I don't want to tread into fragile territory but the thought crosses my mind he doesn't want you to see him as a father and once I read the trigger dream, it came in my mind that perhaps he would rather your wishes be more like that in his countertransference.

It is messy, it is messy, and it hurts. Does it hurt more than it helps, this therapy stuff? I really don't know yet, but like you I am full of doubt that causes pain and preoccupation- I don't trust my T on some fundamental level and that is either accurate ( he doesn't love me, he loves others) or paranoid stemming from past damage( he is professional and a deep thinker, he cares and never gives up on me). I just don't know about your T or mine, except that it is going to be a long messy, bloody, teary, lovey, communion-y process with a good or bad end.

I spend a lot of time fearing the end is now and it is bad instead of doing mindfulness homework or turning my thoughts to my SO who really IS the better man. My T can't hold a candle to my SO except, except, he has my full attention and I want him to love me and he never will except ever day he promises he does.

Your T I am pretty sure is somewhere on a SUDS scale but just dealing with work/ life balance, and probably he is a traitor to one of them in his heart. How would it be is he would RATHER be in his office treating you than doing family life, so he is quite defensive?