What made you trust your T?

Inspired by SarahSweden's recent thread: What made you lose trust in your T?

Trust can be risked; we can risk trusting someone, but eventually, for the trust to ongoing, a person has to earn it. My latest therapist is the only one I've ever trusted and I've only been seeing her since mid-January. Nevertheless, in the short time we've been seeing each other, she's earned it. Here's how:

1. She sets an alarm to let her know when the session has five minutes left. She asked my permission to use it first. Every session, when it goes off, she jumps two feet because she is so invested and focused in what I am saying that it jars her.
2. In sharing times that I have been hurt, even when I speak casually about the event, she has tears.
3. When I was mistreated by another psychiatric 'professional' and she found out, I found out she could cuss. She was visibly shaking with anger for me.
4. She looked me in the eyes and told me, "I believe you". I've seen too much insincerity in my life - I know sincere when I see it.

If you trust your T; what has he or she done to earn that trust?

For me with my T its that he consistently responds appropriately to me. That's not something I've been used to so its a big deal. And he's proved his psychological maturity repeatedly ( that's another thing ) So he has earned my trust ( which isn't given easily. ) i

He has always been consistent.
He answers questions honestly, but with care.
He actively engages in supervision.
He responds humbly and non-defensively to criticism.
His actions have shown that he cares about me.

Consistent out of session contact
Compassionate eye contact
Accepting and non judgmental responses to me sharing vulnerability
Gentle tone and approach
Complete understanding of trauma approaches and trauma clients
Spent a year trying to gain my trust through creating a strong therapeutic bond

He stays calm and gentle, doesn't matter how frustrating I am
He's smart
He tries to understand my thoughts, my feelings
He believes me

When he gets it right, he gets it *so* right.

And his vulnerability.

I found I easily trusted my therapists.

Our personalities meshed well.
They understood me and how I thought -- what my issues were.
They were consistently supportive.
They were consistently honest.
They knew their stuff; it wasn't a mystery what they were helping me accomplish.
I saw progress, even when it was tiny progress.

Right from the outset, she has accepted my mistrust and skepticism and said she has to prove herself trustworthy.

Asked me gently at various points how she can make therapy feel safe for me.

She tells me she believes my painful childhood experiences even when I frequently express doubts because of my hazy memories.

Compassionate, validating and trauma-informed approach.

Shared authentic and genuine reactions without making it about her or blaming me.

Approaches with genuine, sincere heartfelt desire to connect with me no matter how hostile or shut down or defensive I have been.

Always has told me that I will be able to detect insincerity.

Shown genuine care, compassion and empathy for me from session one and still ongoing more than a year on.

Sees past my defenses into "the real me" and yet understands how being "seen" can be something I crave yet feel terrified and exposed about.

I'm not sure how much I trust my therapist now - he has recently way overreacted to something I did and has been inconsistent or intrusive on several occasions recently, which led me to feel worse than I did when I entered therapy. I wrote to him that I trust his heart and that is how I feel - I think he is a good person with good intention and doing his very best. We'll see whether that can still help me. In the beginning of therapy, he earned my trust first and foremost by seeing and really believing in the good in me. He gave me his time, went above and beyond for me and really put a lot of soul into helping me. I saw on many occasions that I was able to count on him even with practical things I needed in order to grow. He accepted me with qualities and passions I was afraid to believe in as well as well as the worst things I did in my life before therapy, thjat I was ashamed of. He was affected on my behalf when I was treated unfairly, too. He let me see him as an equal human being and not just a therapist, we've had a very heart-to-heart therapeutic relationship. Many other things, really.

What initially made me trust my T is that she stuck it out with me through our really rough beginning. She was forced to be the middleman btwn me and ex-T since ex-T refused to communicate with me directly. So it kinda made my T the "bad guy". We also had a difficult time with her boundaries: some were too loose and some too tight. But she worked through it all with me. She put up with ex-T's b.s. and she stayed constant and strong for me. And for that, I gave her my trust which was very valuable considering what ex-T did.

I first trusted my T because he proved, over and over again, that he meant what he said. When he said I was in control, I was: I controlled whether we talked and what we talked about. If I said I wanted to stop talking, we stopped.

I also think his complete acceptance of me has made me trust him. No matter how weird or "bad" I think I am, he accepts all of me. So I can trust him with all of me.

It takes me a long time to trust someone. I don't think there was any one moment that I realized, "Hey, I trust my T," but there are a few things she's done that have led to my eventual trust:
She has a similar sense of humor to mine.
She can tell when I'm lying to her when I'm too afraid to tell the truth.
She is willing to open up just a little bit about herself so that I can see I'm not weird or bad for feeling a certain way. I understand T's can't share that much about their lives but it's nice just to hear, "I understand that, I feel that way too when _____ happens."
She is kind.
When she listens to me, I feel like she's really listening. I know this is something all (or most) T's do, but it makes me feel good to know that she keeps notes on our sessions and reviews them before I come in so that even if my last appointment was more than a month ago, she remembers what I said to her.

I realized after last week's session, when I lied to her about feeling suicidal, that I'm actually ready to tell her the truth about those feelings. I am looking forward to our next session so we can talk about it.

For me I knew I needed to make a "leap of faith" and put all my trust in my therapist in order to make real progress, it was difficult to do, but I'm glad I did and she hasn't let me down.

She was there for me each and every time. She came out to meet me when I couldn't face going in. She responded when I told how I felt. She told me she thought about me on mothers day. She nearly always remembers to remove the ticking clock and she tells me repeatedly it is OK to be me. I will miss her terribly.

For me, it depends on trust with what - it is not blanket. I trust the woman to be there when she says she will and that the fee is what we agreed upon. I trust most others for those things also unless there is reason not to do so.

She has been consistent
She listens to me and validates my feelings
She asked how she can make therapy a safe place for me and then created that space
She asked me if it was ok to hug or hold hands before she did it knowing what my ex-T did
She is there for me outside of sessions and is consistent with it
She has shown she cares in her actions and also shown she can be trusted in her actions
She showed me many times that she has my best interest at heart

1. Repeatedly putting action behind her words.
2. Taking accountability and making amends for her part in the few rifts we've had.
3. Showing me that she, too, is human.

She was always there for me
She understand that I trusted nobody so it wasn't her personally
She followed through with things
When I tell her shameful aspects of my life she has never judged me she has always made me feel supported and safe.

I have worked very hard to trust my therapist. It hasn't been an easy undertaking and I freely admit that there are times when I'm simply waiting for the other shoe to drop and for her to disprove my shaky trust. . . but I've also come far enough to realize that much of this suspicion and hypervigilance is from my own issues. It's not an easy path, but I do love her consistency, unflappable, totally calm demeanor and most of all, I LOVE her willingness to own her side of the relationship!

My T has been consistent in her acceptance and care for me. She lets me work entirely at my own pace, which is pretty slow and holds me securely while I try to work things out in therapy. She offers a strong therapeutic relationship but gets how scary it us for me to be "seen" by her. She is gentle but very strong, keeps her stuff out of my therapy but is friendly and shares bits of herself that might be helpful for me. She never misses a thing between us. I'm extremely fortunate to have found an experienced, skilled T who really knows what she's doing.

She's new to my university's team of therapists. That may not seem like something major, but I felt like I had a clean slate with her.

This is new, but she has recently been pushing me when she wants me to get out there and get me out of my comfort zone. I feel like this strengthen my trust even though I already trust her fully.

One of the cementing factors in my trust for both my pdoc and my T was their ability to handle serious crisis with objectivity and calmness so that they could support me through those crises and beyond them back into healthier territory. Their consistency in that ability provided me with a strength and stability outside myself so that I could find the strength and stability within myself.

consistency, patience, kindness, his silliness and playfulness, the length of how long we've worked together, and all the crappy messed up things i;ve done...and he hasn't left or given up or yelled at me or thrown things at me (well, he's thrown balls at me but as a joke).

i was abused by a therapist, i feel some of the things puzzle_bug is saying. my former T i met with for 5 years before the abuse started. he was trustworthy, or i thought. it is VERY damaging to have a trust like that broken with a professional...

it took me a very long time to trust my current T.

I do think that positive threads often get fewer responses than negative ones. Maybe because there's not much to say besides, " glad it's going so well" of something like that.

I trust my T because she is honest with me, and because she obviously works very hard to be there for me. More than I expected. When she made mistakes, she was willing to apologize. She has enabled me to feel that nothing is TMI. She has proven that to me. Basically, she accepts me 100% and that's why I trust her. She's never late for a session, has cancelled maybe once in 6 years, and now always answers my emails.

When I thought I'd have to quit for financial reasons, my T gave me a reduced rate, which I still have. When my husband got sick, T was there for me even when I sent many emails. She came to his funeral and to my house.

I know she's not going to abandon me. I trust her word and her caring. I don't feel worthy of her love, but I trust that she means it. I have a very special T.

Trusted my therapist because:
My life was miserable.
I had exhausted all my other options in life.
She asked me to trust her.
I threw caution to the wind.
I was stupid...
yet no regrets —
My life is beautiful.