When I read so many posts where people's therapists have obviously encouraged an emotional connection on the client's part which they have no intention of seeing through to any kind of healthy conclusion.

I don't buy that it's good for people to connect to a therapist, just to be constantly unable to meet the very natural human needs and desires that arise out of such a connection.

Seems to me that almost all the posts on this board aren't really about people's issues that they went to therapy for, but are instead regarding the asymmetrical relationship they have with their therapist. It's as if the therapy itself becomes the cause and source of pain, not the initial reason or trauma.

It seems really screwy and sick, to be honest. Not from the client's P.O.V, but from the therapist's. Why oh why is it considered therapeutic to enter into a one sided emotional relationship with someone who is already in pain?

People speak about unconditional positive regard from a therapist. That's clearly not humanly possible. To claim it is is to basically pretend that one has reached Nirvana.

I feel like therapists hold themselves up as something they are not and never could be, encourage attachment and then act as if its the client's issues that are causing problems. It's not. You could take an objectively mentally healthy individual, put them in this sort of situation and they would react precisely the same ways.

Being attached to someone you pay, someone who has no real obligation to you, someone who can choose to take your money one day and not the next, or just quit work or lose interest is a very, very bad bet.

You don't have to have attachment 'issues' to think that. That's just common sense. It concerns me how many people are busy blaming themselves for feelings which are not only natural, but pretty much inevitable given the nature of their relationships.

You're in pain. Someone appears, claims to want to hear all you have to say and never ever judge you. Someone who will care about your every thought. And all you have to do is give them $150 per session (or whatever.) I mean come on. It's like a romance novel almost, but even worse because it's real life.

People feel bad because they want their therapist to rescue them, or be their mother, or their lover. And they blame themselves for those feelings because they know damn well how out of kilter they are with reality, but at the end of the day, I don't think it's the client's fault. You went to see someone who dragged up all your emotional debris, behaved in such a way as to forge a deep intimacy with you, and who thinks that it's perfectly reasonable to switch all that off at the end of 50 minutes.

It's not reasonable, or rational. Or even okay. It's manipulation, really.

I just had to get that off my chest.