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Do you find it necessary to believe that your therapist likes you?

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I think there might be something to the safety thing being uncomfortable or hard to believe
For me, definitely. “Safety” came up early in therapy as something I don’t quite get. it doesn’t register for me as it‘s supposed to, I have learned. I can easily know that I am safe in the literal, physical sense - that nobody is going to enter the room and harm me right now, so of course I’m safe, and since that seems obvious the question itself “do you feel safe” doesn’t even make sense to me, or to be exact it didn’t the first time it came up, prior to the psychoeducation parts of therapy. It’s just doesn’t register as it should, even though I know it’s supposed to, but it sometimes is like a vicious little circle - how can I feel (or be expected to feel) what I don’t feel / haven’t felt if I don’t know what it feels like to feel this thing he’s expecting me to feel?

That’s why I wonder if it’s me, and if it is, how do I get around it? Or if I just shouldnt worry about it as far as therapy goes.

My background didn’t include physical abuse or intrusions. It was more that I wasn’t supposed to be there at all and was an obligation more than a part of the family; coupled with the absence of any social stability from conception onwards. There wasn’t a village to step in. My mother‘s emotional system was such that unborn me was likely bathed in hatred “chemicals” which they say affects how one’s emotional systems physically develop. Early life attachment trauma sort of thing, of the neglectful rather than hateful variety.
 
It’s not important whether they like me, or not.

It is important that I like them, and they understand me.

Whilst I CAN learn from someone I hate? And often have? That just makes a hard thing harder. It’s far more fun to go through hard things with someone I like.
 
Huxley, glad you found a resolution.
It’s not important whether they like me, or not.

It is important that I like them, and they understand me.
Friday, you often bring the wild card in my opinion—the one who makes me go hmmm 🤔.

How can you like someone, particularly a T, who doesn’t like you, (since it doesn’t matter whether they like you or not, only that you like them?) I can’t even imagine what that looks like—maybe SpongeBob and Squidward?
 
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