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Campanula said:

What makes my heart ache is seeing so many people feeling such love/pain for their T's. I've been there. It is dangerous and unbearably painful at times.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post"> Yes it is painful. And yes it can be dangerous if the therapist either does not know how to keep the boundaries OR does not know how to work through this with the patient. However, I also believe it to be an essential part of psychotherapy. How can you learn to love yourself or others if you can't even feel that love towards your therapist? (And when I say 'love' that encompasses a whole complexity of feelings).

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What I see here is people in that same boat ENCOURAGING each other to continue in this manner rather than asking - where is this leading? How much time a day do you think about your T? Is this healthy? Is it helping your mental state? Does it impact your work? Your marriage? Do you sometimes feel obssesed?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post"> Let's just clarfiy that this is not EVERYBODY. Just because it happened in one situation, does not mean it happens in every situation. For example, yesterday my T and I discussed my desire to sexualize the relationship with him in order to normalize it. There were other comments that were made that I would never share on PC just for the simple reason that things often get misconstrued on here-- you and all the others here were not at my session, so how would you know how it is taken?

I believe there is a big piece missing in this post. There is nothing wrong with encouraging these feelings. They are FEELINGS and should never be stopped-- only worked through. It is up to the therapist to be appropriate. Unless you are seeing somewhere in the posts, that a therapist is being inappropriate, I really do not understand.

What is unheathy attachment? Maybe some people could tell me I have an "unhealthy attachment" to my T because of the feelings I have towards him and my dependency on him. But when I am feeling out of my mind every single day during the week while trying to manage a full work and school schedule and he allows me to call each day and he helps me get through the day alive, then I would say my attachment is working pretty well. I trust him. And that's a pretty big thing.

The moral of my post is that the patient can feel whatever he/she wants. I know I have felt and stil do feel almost every intense feeling possible towards my T-- love, hate, jealousy, pain, sexual attraction, intimidation, admiration, trust, mistrust, endearment, attachment, etc.-- and I have shared every single one of these things with him in some capacity-- and never ONCE has he handled any of these emotions inappropriately.

I am sorry for whatever happened to make you feel this way, Campy. But I believe strongly in the necessity of erotic transference in the therapeutic relationship. I believe it is essential. I just don't want anyone to think it is wrong to feel this way towards their therapist. So many people have never experienced this before and it is new and scary to them.

These feelings should be worked through with the therapist and it is up to the T to handle him/herself appropriately. I know mine does.