You have to make this leap of faith, this suspension of disbelief, or it is hard to go on in therapy. I am glad she asked you to write email, bc you come through your words as a real person, and write very well. Use that. Make yourself alive to her outside of her office by showing her what you see when you look out your bedroom window at the street below, what did you take away from Donnie Darko, do you have a dog? Thank her for a tiny thing she taught you , and write out how you used it that week. If you can do that with the intention of self-discovery to go alongside her discovery of you, it will be easier to feel her caring and also easier to locate the love inside yourself for the right person. There are so many kinds of love, and no way to say what is between two people in their feelings of a moment, even if they cant be acted out in real life. We'll never know if she loves you, bc she isnt allowed to say; she very well might. I listened in on a therapy podcast in which they talked about the moments they love their patients in all kinds of ways, and the bittersweet responsibility of keeping that quiet. The situation isnt hopeless to connect with her profoundly, and utilize this connection in the future in an unexpected way.

Have you read any attachment theory?

It is so hard. I have been in love, and even am now, but still my T preoccupies my attention and I feel guilty about it. I want to curl up in the palm of his hand. It hurts, always, to be outside that fifty minutes, and I don't know why. We are peers in age and education, and I dont know that I would have been interested in him meeting him at a social gathering etc. Today though, he had come back from Christmas and plastered his office with new pictures of his kids, and it gave me this huge pang as if I had never loved anyone else and needed love only from this one person, and cried all the way home, inconsolable. My heart still hurts right now, but my brain is like WTF is going on. This crazy behavior I am trying to understand - transference. And yet, however much it hurts, I am better than I was, I have learned so much. That is why know one can answer about this for you- therapy casts a long and magic spell on the patient, almost like a love potion when there is enough trauma or unresolved pain.

Stay with us.