Therapeutic relationship scares me.

[Juana]

I am terrified that I need to get attached to my therapist for healing! I’m almost a year in therapy and I reject my T. T knows I reject because I don’t want to fall in love with them. They say therapy would not work well if I don’t open the door to a close and real therapeutic relationship. We do different stuff like EMDR, rescripting, talk, but all that doesn’t seem enough because I put T at a distance.

I believe in love with T is:
Pailful,
Stupid,
Shameful,
Scary,
Time consuming,
Energy consuming,
Doomed to fail.

And I believe I will fall in love.

I avoid their eyes.
I don’t know how to manage.

…
Help!

 

[Rose White]

It is possible to do therapy without falling in love with your therapist—there are plenty of people on the forum who successfully do therapy without that level of attachment. There are also people here who were afraid like you and allowed themselves to try attachment and it helped with their symptoms. Neither is better or more correct, just different paths.

If your therapist is pushing you to do something you don’t want to do? That might be an important conversation to have with them. How do you place boundaries? Do other people in your life push you to love them?

 

[arfie]

i get leery every time i hear the "in love" rhetoric. i've heard a few too many romantics chiming, "i love him/her, but i am not in love any more." these, of course, are the folks who change lovers and spouses quicker than fashionistas change hair color.

dunno if that applies here, or not, but i thought i'd throw it out there.

 

[Friday]

They say therapy would not work well if I don’t open the door to a close and real therapeutic relationship.

Sounds like they must be really bad at their job. Like really, reeeeeeally bad, if they can’t even teach their clients, but rely solely on a single technique …some kind of very narrowly defined… relationship, that both excludes the relationship you already have with them, and completely discounts any other techniques (EMDR, etc.) that they use in therapy.

 

[Movingforward10]

It is scary to have love or care or deep affection or total trust in your T.
It is vulnerable making.
That's what I said to my T, it's like I need to hand her some responsibility of me to her and that's a risk.
But, for me, it's been crucial for my recovery. I didn't have an emotionally attuned care giver growing up. So learning to have one in T inevitably brought up feelings of love. She also has said she has love for me (in a goodbye session when I ended therapy, but I have since returned. She usually uses the word care rather than love).

Love means so many different things to different people. So it's a complex word to use.

Working through all those feelings you listed about it, and exploring why you have those might help.
I would share those feelings and think many would. And I think it comes down to ingrained messages of "don't have needs" "don't have expectations". essentially all those primal relational wounds that exist to create these messages and then being scared of the intense attachments that we can have with our therapists.

 

[Juana]

If your therapist is pushing you to do something you don’t want to do? That might be an important conversation to have with them. How do you place boundaries? Do other people in your life push you to love them?

Thank you RW, and no, they’re not pushing. I’m the one who talked about this fear in the beginning, and I’m the one who’s been avoiding their eyes since then. They speak my fear of getting close to them, to create an opening.

I don’t think others in my life have been pushing this. I shall think more about it.

 

[Juana]

Sounds like they must be really bad at their job. Like really, reeeeeeally bad, if they can’t even teach their clients, but rely solely on a single technique …some kind of very narrowly defined… relationship, that both excludes the relationship you already have with them, and completely discounts any other techniques (EMDR, etc.) that they use in therapy.

I don’t think so, Friday, but thank you, I think I can understand why you read this in my post.

 

[Freemartin]

I really, really identify with what you’re sayin! For me, the biggest issue has been shame. And the feeling of being disgusting or kinda perverted. It’s been a long ass process, but somehow I’ve grown less uncomfortable.

I have a severe attachment trauma history, hence all kinds of troubles re needing someone etc. It’s really no walk in the park. And it makes total sense - for kiddos, the issue of getting/not getting attachment and care is quite literally an issue of life/death.

So, I’d say the risk of getting attached / beginning to love your T is real. And it’s scary and painful. But man is it worth it! They do say attachment wounds heal in an attachment relationship. And it’s true. Wounds can heal. And there are a lot of good, trustworthy people out there helping those wounds to heal.

 

[Juana]

Movingforward, thank you, I can relate to your words. I have been very lonely and very self sufficient (coping mechanism) from early on. It’s hard to learn to trust, or open up.

As I felt this fear jump up right in the first half of the intake session and stick with me in every session, I believe this must be one of major issues to work on. Your suggestion, to work through the listed feelings, can help. I’ll see how much courage I can create for that.

 

[No More]

I think you can have a good therapeutic relationship without love.

Not every client - therapist relationship is the same, or needs to be the same to be helpful.

Do you trust that your therapist is competent & kind, and has the skills to help you? Because for me, I can develop a real and close working relationship from that.

A therapist is not an appropriate person (in my personal opinion) with which a relationship involving love should be forming. That’s inappropriate boundaries.

 

[Juana]

Freemartin, it really touches me, seeing I’m not alone in this. Thanks!

 

[Midnightmoon]

I’m almost a year in therapy and I reject my T.

This bit jumped out at me, whilst I know a year feels a huge amount of time... For some people in some therapies, that's just the beginning. I had a therapy that ended awfully, and when I went to another practitioner I was adamant I was not opening myself up to another relationship again, because I didn't want to be attached and hurt again. I actually deliberately went to someone who advertised they worked in a solution focused way because I was so so sure I didn't want to attempt any depth or trauma work ever again.

So, she accepted that. We didn't do relationship, we did practical conversations, loads of them, and she would gently bring in tiny bits of *her* into the conversation. I resisted heavily and told her in no uncertain terms! I wanted to cling desperately to solutions, she told me that wasn't going to work... And yet didn't push me to trust before I was ready. She just kept being herself, and I eventually learnt, that this person on the computer screen was actually alright

Its been two years now, and I guess in the last 6 months I've finally started to trust and bring things to her I never planned to. I guess this is a long and waffley way of saying just because it doesn't feel like it's possible now, doesn't mean it isn't possible to trust and have a theraputic relationship in the future, just turning up and being even a tiny bit open to it is enough.