Abuses of power are a very very slippery slope. I love helping people. I've actually spent the better part of my life doing it. But it often has been to my detriment. I'll admit that I have helped people in the past because I had an awful family and wanted to be loved.

I don't know what your therapists is asking, but I can tell you that requests from my therapist started out slowly. In the end, I was probably doing 3X the work for him in terms of hours than our weekly sessions, and he was pouty and throwing tantrums when I had to take time to figure things out. In this case, he could have hired a professional (or a different professional since technically I am one), but he had "reasons" it wasn't working out. (The previous person in the job quit on him because therapist did something similar with him).

The fact that an issue in therapists life was even raised means that part of your therapy seems inappropriately focused on her. It should be all on you. So you can heal and get better and have your own life.

If you asked me in the beginning how I felt about my therapist and our dual relationship, I was actually proud of it. I felt special. I felt loved. He told me he loved me and that I was one of his favorite people in his life. I have hundreds of emails from him. I thought it was good for me. But now I look back and it was so absurd, and I had to go to therapy to get over therapy. In our time together, I gave him lots of gifts, helped him with many issues, spent far far too much of my own therapy time on him, and I paid him to have a dual relationship. And when I started to pull back, he attacked me verbally in pages of emails. And then I realized I had been in a cloud.

It took a couple of months (and emergency intensive therapy with someone else) for me to realize how much I lost in this dual relationship, and also instead of working on my trauma, I went even deeper into the hole of co-dependency.

In the end, I'm glad I came out of that cloud. I tell you this because the absolute hell of realizing the abuse is not something I want anyone to experience. Even fellow strangers on the internet

I've learned it's really important for me to now ask myself, what is the driving force? Why do I want to help someone? Is there any hidden issues where I'm trying to be loved? Am I actually afraid if I don't help a certain person that they won't love me anymore?

I hope this makes sense. I have a TBI and sometimes it's hard to shape sentences together.