Many people here agree that their therapists are "human" or maybe "only human" and that they have their needs and problems too. Well, that's OK, I guess. Unless the therapists' problems get in the way of treating their patients or clients successfully.

I think some people enter the therapy field in order to get their own problems solved, rather than primarily to help prospective patients. That is OK; they have needs too, and there is nothing wrong with them getting help for their problems. But the danger is that they will not work through their problems sufficiently before working on patients. They may try to get their patients to help them. That is the difference between a therapist who is successful in helping patients and one who is less successful: how well they have been helped to work through their own problems before confronting patients. When one is advised how to choose a therapist this aspect of things is mostly not even mentioned. One is advised that it is necessary to pick one who has a sufficient number of letters after her name, has been in training at high-prestige institutions for so many years, and so on. But it is not the amount of training one has had, but what happens in the training. Does the person succeed in becoming sufficiently aware of psychological processes, including her own? Or do the trainers not want to have to judge that?

With my own present therapist, he wants people to be well. He is always doing things, being "helpful", giving advice, to "improve" his clients. That is, I think he does not just wish wellness for them, he needs them to be well. He needs them to be well so they can provide him with the security and approval that he did not get from his own parents.

I am finding it a bit strange that I can "see" this (or think that I can see it). I have been trying to understand what is happening with this attempted therapy, and if and how I can cope with it. Sometimes I can just accept that he has, or I think he has, uncertainties of his own; at other times I find it confusing (my mind really goes into a tailspin) and very frightening.

I think my fear reproduces a major fear that I had in childhood. My mother was very insecure and could not let her children be separate people. We had to be her parents. She had to possess and control us completely, so that we would do what she needed us to do (which was to take care of her). I found this extremely terrifying: I feared that I would get swallowed up in her and completely lose who I was. I would be presented with a danger that I could detect but could not understand, and be completely unable to cope with it. And that is exactly what happened. I virtually "disappeared" for many years. I thought it was forever.

And there was no help or recognition from anyone. Only torment from other children probably in similar situations. No real adults could be seen.

Similar things have happened in my life repeatedly. Other therapists have wanted me to take care of them. They have not seen this about themselves and have denied it and have been willing that I should suffer instead of them having to recognize their own fears. In this they have been "protected" by their fellows who should, instead, have been helping them. The fledgling therapists have been betrayed by the very people who should have been their guides. This is something that I have found very hard to take, because it is so much covered up and denied in the "mental health" profession. No one is benefitted or "protected" by this practice, except ones who do not want to face their own terrors. It seems to me there are a whole lot of those -- not only in the profession but in our society in general. What a mess!

However -- messes can be cleaned up when you understand more about them. I hope.