I love my therapist a lot. I have not had a lot of people in my life who I have been able to really feel love for, so loving her feels important to me. For me the love is a lot about the feelings of safety and trust that I feel in therapy. I have come to feel (after several years) that my therapist won't abandon me. I also trust her increasingly to take good care of me, and I feel like I'm very important to her. But I would have to say that I love her most of all for the things that she has given me that I have never had--a place to have my emotions heard and validated, a place to be myself, and a place to make some pretty big mistakes.

When I first started therapy I told my therapist that I had a history of getting obsessed with mother figures, and I had even done things like ride my bike past one of the houses where one of these women lived. About a year in to therapy was really obsessed with T (and she knew all about it), and I sent her an email telling her that my feelings had gotten really out of control, and that I was thinking about finding her house. I sent her the email hoping that she would do something to stop me. She wrote back and told me not to do what I was thinking (and I didn't). Months latter she told me that me wanting to find her house came up in supervision, and that a lot of people had been against her continuing to see me as a client. She felt differently, and told me that she thought I had contacted her because I wanted help (she was right). Knowing that she would protect me like this made me feel very loved and very important to her. I'm so glad she was able to tolerate what was likely a very difficult situation for her, and take care of me. I love her very much for this, it makes me feel like she is really just a sort of exceptional human in some re guards. I can't imagine therapy with anyone else.