I’ve discussed on here previously strong feelings I have for my T, maybe not “love” or whatever but a feeling of being so happy after seeing her that I feel my heart swell. This is matched by a sense of sadness and longing because even I know that these feelings aren’t really about her, I feel so connected to her (or whatever she represents) that sometimes it hurts to know I’m “just” her client and that she is “just” my T.

I’ve had Ts before for whom I have had no feelings for whatsoever. None, at all. It was absolutely a professional relationship at both ends. I didn’t think of them outside the room, I didn’t care who they were or what they did, I certainly didn’t long for them, and I didn’t feel slightly like a jilted lover. Having said that, in those cases therapy didn’t mean much to me. I had some current issues and went for 6-12 weeks to sort them out. Then, bye bye, I was gone, never to return and never to think about T ever again. Now the T I am doing is really intense and bringing up a whole lot of full on stuff and I wonder if these strong feelings are a direct product of that. What do you think? Do you think that the intensity of the feelings is directly connected to the difficulty or intensity of the work? Is it better to have these sorts of feelings than none in order to work through the difficult stuff?