• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Therapy relationship artificial?

Status
Not open for further replies.
is self disclosure equal to intimacy? Or is intimacy what you desire?
Is self disclosure equal to intimacy? I like this question. I don’t have an answer right now.

Is intimacy what you desire? I like this question too! I don’t have an answer but I’m leaning toward yes.
the 'why' of what about this matters, and exactly what 'does' matter?
Why this matters? And what ‘does’ matter? What matters to me is healing. And somehow the healing process involves this relationship thing (now I am distancing myself by calling it ‘thing’). Someone on this thread noted that another term for relationship is ‘alliance’. Ally. On your side. Not all relationships are alliances. Intimacy, to me, seems to be a kind of alliance.

I keep coming back to that word intimacy: it is important to me. I think it feels like something I thought I had but I didn’t, due to unrecognized csa, and now that I have recovered somewhat I am driven to discover it. It is something beyond me somehow, but maybe not unreachable.

Artificial doesn’t match with intimate to me. But the word ‘real’ is more readily contrasted to the word ‘artificial’. I thought I had intimacy prior to recovery. But then I realized that old concept of intimacy (is that the old tapes?) wasn’t real. I realized this through the process of the therapeutic relationship. The experience of having someone listen to my self-disclosure and not dismiss or discount it, like previous T’s *and myself* had, was different. And that different reaction motivated me to make changes to the environment in which I lived.

T says I’m afraid to be intimate because I’m afraid of being hurt but I realized and told her that parts of me are afraid of being intimate because I might hurt someone. I didn’t interact with people in a healthy way before recovery. I did things that healthy people would be hurt by, but in an abuse dynamic it was accepted. So my concept of intimacy has changed.
in that it is set up with a framework. Doesn't lessen intimacy or importance or significance.
A framework is a helpful way to think about it, thank you. I realize that frameworks are a very common part of human existence. Society and culture are frameworks. I guess the old tapes are a framework. Some frameworks are helpful, some are not:
 
Gosh, I would say my relationships with my parents is way way way more artificial than my relationship with my T.

The therapist's supervisor might just be talking crap?! Idk.

You know my feelings about my T, as we shared many similarities with that.

Yes it's a professional relationship with boundaires. But it's genuine and highly intimate. We share stuff with them that we might not share with anyone else. How can that be artificial?

What did they mean by artificial?
Artificial in the sense of being one sided. We know nothing more than superficial things about our therapist that they might tell a coworker. Though we bare our soul to them they will not, nor should they, do the same with us. They might add some information here and there in relation to showing empathy. But we only have a small sample of who they truly are. I don’t really see that as intimate more so as I don’t even know to be honest. Professional sounds dull but relationship sounds intimate. I don’t think there’s a perfect word to explain this; however, I personally don’t think it’s as intimate as a friendship.

I hope none of this sounds rude or blunt btw.

Nope, sorry I still don't really get your point. In that sense everything is artificial and I feel like your just over analysing everything. I don't feel like my counselors room, where the chair is placed, the way he sits or what he says is artificial or manipulated to get me to do anything.

For me and my counselor it's just normal.
To some extent I agree. From trauma I keep people at a distance. Distance is where I feel safe. At least in my case, my therapist sits in the chair farther from me. The one time she moved to the chair directly in front of me and that also blocked the door, my panic instinct rushed in and I felt unsafe in her presence.
 
@Freddyt I could never disclose to a T what I would to a spouse, or (just for me)
Sorry highjacking....
If my T thinks it needs looking closer at it, I will follow. My T hasn't asked more than a few general questions of any intimate nature, ever. I know though that when trauma occurs before puberty there can be dysfunction in intimate things. My relationship with my wife I would treat with due care but all my T had to say about that was that I had a "phenomenal relationship" with my wife.

That's the deal my wife made me make. She said if it has to do with my healing...do it.
 
Is self disclosure equal to intimacy? I like this question. I don’t have an answer right now.
I should have been more clear and said @OliveJewel , is self-disclosure equal to intimacy in your mind/ belief system? Or any other question, as was just an example I pulled out of the air- not for me to make the questions, I don't know those. Only you can compose them to ask yourself, and they can be public or private (or not at all). (Terms are really subjectively influenced; the question was whether therapy relationships are artificial, but the definition of relationship means different things to different people for example, some see it as a relationship, others wouldn't be comfortable qualifying it exactly that way on those grounds only.)

Hope it leads to a lot of revelations for you! 🤗
 
Last edited:
I read something helpful. It was the perspective of a T speaking to a client about their fear of talking about transference.

They said instead of calling it a relationship call it attached because you finally trust someone. Then ask how you can develop that in outside relationships and which traits you value and would like to replicate with others.

I feel a bit resistant to throwing out the term relationship all together but I see the perspective as helpful because it provides useful distance.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mee
" It's not like a naturally formed relationship, but it's definitely not fake, either. Many times it's supposed to be a model for how other relationships can be. Many times it's far too intimate to be the model for any other relationships.

Maybe it’s culture that needs to bend a little to make a little more openness - not the intimacy of therapy perhaps, more acceptable? It would cut a lot of crap !

I like the idea of the origin being artificial not the relationship ( I do not feel my Relationship with T is artificial, previous short lived T yes- that’s why it was short lived!) . But I think a lot of relationships start ‘artificially’. Friendships that begin in an office. Being expected to go to work social events. Is it true that Internet dating is now the most common way to meet? Once of course there were pioneer mail order brides, arranged marriage still exists with varying degrees of association between the couple before hand, people get engaged after communicating only online. in the past people used to be dear friends after being penpal corespondents over decades.


Someone else ( I’m sorry I forgot who and I forgot to multiquote. Edit @Movingforward10. Sorry I forgot it was you:) ) said brilliantly ( in my opinion ) that their relationship with their T was more authentic than their relationship with their parents. I feel the same. I met my parents reasonably organically ( I was a Caesarian rather than vagina birth 😂) but there has always been defensive, triangulation, gaslighting, straight up dishonesty in our family etc etc


My T is a professional relationship. But she shows authentic emotions. She tells me if I’m being unrealistic, that I’m acting out of fear or that I’m avoiding something. But she tells me kindly. She tells me with care . Care I feel is authentic.

What makes it authentic? Example- this week she started our session with ‘before we start I saw an advert for some earplugs you might want to look at, they help misophonia and sensory sensitivity and they might help you- I saw them Advertised and thought ‘mee! Mee might benefit from those!’

Quite often sessions start like that . She remembers my preferred things and things I dislike. and on tough sessions she suggests something I like as a Comfort.

I also think it’s a model for other relationships. She and I have talked about her being a ‘surrogate parent of aunt figure’ a person who shows care, boundaries. Integrity , and encourages me to find my own. Who holds space and models things like apologies and communication until I have ‘reintegrated’. Sometimes I read her things I plan to send to people or discuss actions I plan to take like I would a parent if my parents were people I had a good relationship with and admired. In the way I would hope I didn’t need to always if I’d had this consistently through my younger life. She praises me 😳 and validates me and also questions my motivation and what I want out of things. She asks me to make good choices for me- as a parent might want.

When we talk about the future she talks about it in mixed terms - that she will miss me when I decide to stop therapy , that she cares for me and enjoys seeing my progress and feels close to me . But she will also feel proud of me when that time comes, as she already does.

How can that not be a substitute for a parent figure? I think it’s everything those without safe parents could hope to hear , and more.

I guess for me the attachment thing is key and - I think also perhaps why transference isn’t an issue so much? I need safe, secure , ‘parental’ type behaviour modelled to me to take care of myself. I need to self parent - to take care of myself, to set boundaries etc. to be responsible for safety in a way I couldn’t at the age abuse started? At the age culture started to demean my agency even?
 
Last edited:
My t and I are employee/employer. It is down a different lane but similar to any relationship I have with any provider of a service.
In a perfect world we would all have friends we could open up to and groups where commonality was the basis for our ability to get feedback on our ideas and help with our problems. For me and a lot of other men my age mutual trust is a distant memory and hope to find it again is wasted hope. I pay for trust and I come here for commonality.
I pay for the knowledge of a good guide to catch a fish and learn about the waters he knows. After that I can do it myself hopefully. Much the same, a guide isn’t a fishing buddy.
 
Maybe it’s culture that needs to bend a little to make a little more openness - not the intimacy of therapy perhaps, more acceptable? It would cut a lot of crap !
Hear, hear!
she tells me kindly. She tells me with care . Care I feel is authentic.
This speaks to me. I understand what you mean. And the remembering likes and dislikes and all that. And the “proud of you” moments—all that. It’s way easier for me to tell my kids and students and friends that I’m proud of them now—and probably myself too, but of course that’s the very hardest.
behaviour modelled to me to take care of myself. I need to self parent - to take care of myself, to set boundaries etc. to be responsible for safety in a way I couldn’t at the age abuse started? At the age culture started to demean my agency even?
I am grateful you wrote this and your whole post because it helps me to see a lot of positives to the attachment and helps me understand the value I derive from the… attachment. I’m pulling back from the word relationship. Mostly because of the connotations, but it IS a relationship. I am getting needs fulfilled which were never allowed to be present in the relationship with my primary caregivers. I also talk to her about things an adult would talk to their parents about. I am grateful for her willingness to engage with me as a reparenting surrogate.

I am not sure how the separation will work, but most likely it will work.
 
I like the way @enough described it. Because flipping it I would never expect someone to have to feel connected or indebted to me when they their share intimate details. It is enough for me to know it's a courageous thing to do and for them to give me the compliment they trust me enough to know (or will soon see if they regret it) that it will be honored by me and it genuinely doesn't shock me in the ways they might expect. Choice of further trust or gelling over a great amount of time or circumstances would determine growing closer or further apart for me personally, but I could still respect them professionally nonetheless.

I like this too:
I need safe, secure , ‘parental’ type behaviour modelled to me to take care of myself. I need to self parent - to take care of myself, to set boundaries etc. to be responsible for safety in a way I couldn’t at the age abuse started? At the age culture started to demean my agency even?
except that I would not (just for myself) describe it as parental. Just, do they have my back? Because that for me I suppose is the deal breaker or deal maker for attachment. When family attachment is denied or rejection assured I don't think attachment is sought out, it feels foreign to believe it could exist, more like not 'if' it will turn but 'when'. If they do have my back however, I sometimes can take enough heart to have my own back a bit as well. Or think I have enough value to attempt to make decisions more caring for myself, or at least acknowledge more care for myself. I guess it comes back to 'worth'.

JMHE.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Mee
I go back and forth in terms of what I think and feel. Sometimes I leave sessions with this heavy recognition that my therapist cannot be the person I call after hard therapy sessions (nor the really really good ones)—she can't be friend, sister, etc.
And i can't be something similar for her.
The relationship with her feels less real in those moments because it's not "in" my life in the same way as those other relationships. I don't get to be there for her. As she reminds me at the beginning of almost every appointment, the 50 min are for me and me only. I've resisted that a lot and still find it deeply uncomfortable and selfish. I'm also in a place where I can now acknowledge that learning to tolerate that has had benefits.
And, it still does often make me sad that I can't know her in similar ways as I am learning to let her know me.

Recently, though, I've started to let go of the idea that the relationship with her is where I go to get my needs met, and I am beginning to see her as someone who is there to help me understand what I need and how to go about trying to find/build/dream that in other relationships. Reframing our relationship in this way has de-weighted it and enabled me to feel ok being more vulnerable. Ironically, it also helps me trust her more and feel cared for (a need I was aware of) - because she is trying to help me build a life that I will ideally feel less desire to escape from (a need I didn't realize I had).

I think the notion of the relationship being artificial can carry this idea that there's somehow less meaning and investment. Somehow it can't have a profound impact or can't translate into life. I think about how my insecurities sometimes have left me feeling as though my therapist only cares because I give her money, and I wonder what those particular insecurities would say if the roles were reversed. I think they might grip onto the idea that I may only matter to my clients because of the transference, not because of who I am.
When I am grounded I can recognize that transference isn't exactly artificial. It either sticks or it doesn't, and when it does, it's usually because there's something earnest about it (...when there isn't significant psychopathy, npd, etc. etc.).
When I am grounded I can also recognize that the kind of therapists that work for me are the ones who are open to being changed by the process, too. They recognize/acknowledge that they aren't fully in control over the therapeutic process.I think this makes it feel less artificial, fake, manufactured.

My last therapist did not see a therapist and she also did not have a group of supervisors/other therapists that she went to to discuss cases. My current therapist is the opposite. I find it strangely comforting to know that she has a support system.
To know that she has sometimes discussed tricky points we've had with people she relies on in her own life reminds me that at the end of the day, we are human and we impact one another, and that is real.
I know personally, feeling that I am real and she is real and that I actually can connect in a real way with someone is a piece of what needs healing.
I went all over the place here. I hope some of it makes sense. Thanks for the great discussion!
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top