Quote:
Originally Posted by laceylu
The way I see it is that your feelings for your T are real and genuine. To be ashamed of and to deny these feelings of love would be detrimental to you. The feelings are real and honest. To deny them would be like lying to yourself and to your T. T's need us to attach to them so we can heal. I loved my first T and still do love her. I think of it as therapy love. There are many types of love like husband/wife love or parent/child love. There is agape love which is love for God, I believe. So in my mind I believe in therapy love and therapy mommy. I spent a lot of years being ashamed of my feelings towards my first T and it was wasted emotion. I told my new T this and she validated my feelings and I also told her I was starting to feel the same way for her and I am not going to waste one minute being ashamed of my feelings towards new T. They are my feelings and the feelings are real and honest. Old T expressed her love for me years later when she sent me a sympathy card when my dad died. I spent all those years being ashamed of my relationship with old T because other people told me it was wrong. No what is wrong is to deny your feelings if other people including your T do not see your relationship with T as loving and safe and warm and healing and helpful. Love is good.
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Hi Laceylu,
I'm pondering on what you said. I don't want to deny my feelings toward t. But what happens with me is that if i express something and the other person doesn't respond in a way that feels positive to me, then i assume that the other person either didn't believe or didn't like what i said. That makes it hard for me to feel good about my feelings anymore because I'm thinking that they think what i said was wrong or bad. I guess maybe i take how other people respond as being more valid than how i respond.
Like, I feel good and happy about telling t i love her. . .but then when she responds that way, then I'm ashamed and think i said the wrong thing. It's hard for me to hold onto the good feelings then. But i guess i can still feel good about it if i choose to. . .
Yes, i understand about the different kinds of love. Like "agape," I learned that in my Bible studies. And "philia" is, I think, the type of love expressed toward friends. I'd like to think there is a place for the "type" of love that a patient can feel toward their t. It's certainly a relationship that is different from any other. But sometimes it hurts my feelings when it appears that t's don't view it as a relationship, but more of an "arrangement." It's really hard for me to view it that way when I'm pouring out my heart, soul, and problems, you know?
I'm glad you had such a good experience with your t's, and that they allowed your attachment and saw it as a healthy stage in your therapy. It sounds like it really benefitted you. I would say that my t encourages me to attach, but she usually does not respond in kind to my feelings of attachment.