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Originally Posted by doogie
I can't speak to your experience, but I can share mine and hope it helps.
I have a secure attachment to my T. I've had to fight for it, but it's there. For me, it truly is the "secure base" feeling. I feel like the attachment itself isn't what transfers to other people, but I feel that because I have the attachment to her - that I know I have her to fall back on - I am more brave/feel stronger to explore things in my past as well as to take risks in getting closer to people in my relationship circles. If something goes wrong, I find myself running back to my secure base - to my T - for her comfort and help in figuring out what to do or how to fix it, but after I'm settled and feel better, I can go back out and try again.
I know all t/client relationships are different, so I can't speak for you and your T, but for me and mine...I think it's an AND situation. Would I be attached to her if I wasn't her job? No. Do I feel like she manipulated me by therapy tricks into becoming attached to her? No. I think what started as pure "job" stuff developed into a real relationship (within the boundaries of the T relationship). I feel like my T cares about me and I care about her. I DO feel like it is very real, it just happens within the boundaries of a specified type of relationship. I don't feel like I'm feeling 'real' things and hers are not. It's just a boundaried relationship. If you think about it, even friendships are a type of boundaried relationships. Even with my best friends, there are private things about my relationship with my husband that I do not share. There is a boundary there. Boundaries do not mean 'not real'. Paying is for the time and expertise, not the caring.
Good luck figuring it out!
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Thanks. Your post makes sense. That is how I usually feel about my relationship with my T. She has told me many times it is real, but I start to question it when she brings up how the goal is to have that kind of relationship with people in my life. I know my relationships with friends are deeper since therapy. I want that but want to keep T in my life too.
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Originally Posted by Anne2.0
Who says you don't have a secure attachment to your T? Attachment is just like everything else, it isn't either/or, but degrees that may ebb and flow over any period of time. Yes, there's a difference between a secure attachment and not, but it's not just a feeling in my opinion, it's also action. I think if you quit and restart therapy over and over, miss sessions when it's not part of your plan for yourself (i.e. because she didn't respond to your email or text or something), then maybe there's some insecure attachment at work. But I read a lot of your threads and I don't see how you are not securely attached, both in the warm feelings you have for your T and in your reliable showing up to therapy.
I don't get it.
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Thanks, Anne. My T explained that a secure attachment means the person knows the other is there for them, there are good feelings of love and caring, and they can hold onto those feelings. She said more but I forgot. Maybe I should record my sessions or at least when she's talking because I forget so much. I will ask her exactly why she thinks my attachment to her is still insecure. Maybe because when she does or says something that triggers me, I worry that our relationship changed in some way.
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Originally Posted by JaneTennison1
I guess I'm confused. You have plainly stated you are not in this to "change" anything and that you have found a use, even if not what someone would say is conventional. She gives you warm feelings and you appear to find some things easier with her support. To me this all sounds like a good attachment or relationship.
As well even if some of what she does is because she is paid then so what? You enjoy it and she helps. It's possibly a better relationship than friends, why not enjoy it as it is?
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I do enjoy my relationship with my T but I didn't mean I didn't want to change anything about me. I think I posted that I didn't want to give up the way I feel about my T. Stopdog is the person who says she has found a use for her T that is unconventional. I would never make such a statement! I start questioning my therapy when I read too many negative threads on this forum. T tells me not to read them, and that she will not abandon me. If she retires or moves, she will give me plenty of time to discuss it with her, and she won't cut off contact.
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Originally Posted by Anne2.0
If my T had said that to me, I'd want to know what a secure attachment looks like. I might also want to know how it would benefit me to have the "secure attachment" that T is looking for. How would I feel or behave differently, if my attachment was "secure."
I'm not sure a "secure attachment" is, like, an accomplishment. I don't think it is something you should feel bad about.
I do, generally, think that things I've worked on in therapy related to interpersonal issues do transfer over to other relationships. Or, said another way, my interpersonal relationships have improved over the course in therapy, partly because I've become more self aware and partly because I've been willing to do things differently with others due to my understandings about myself developed in therapy.
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I think secure attachment was discussed in other threads and I wondered if the heartmates feeling was what it feels like. I know T talks about not having a secure attachment to my mother, so I assumed she was trying to enable me to have one with her so I could gain more of a sense of Self. I'm pretty sure it IS a goal, at least for me.
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Originally Posted by feralkittymom
I tend to agree with Anne here: I don't see attachment as some "thing" to "get." Nor do I see the point in striving for it, even if it were possible to do so consciously. At times, it seems like more of a distraction for you from looking more deeply at yourself and how you choose to live your life. What is it that you think will be achieved by gaining such an attachment? What is it in your life that will be possible for you once this point is reached?
My experience has been that therapy only impacts life outside therapy when accompanied by steps taken outside of therapy. The t/client relationship can be the tool, but it isn't the goal. You've stated pretty clearly that you neither expect nor desire your life/self to change. Supportive therapy is fine, yet you seem dissatisfied with that as a rationale; so what is the therapy reward for you?
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I didn't bring up secure attachment. My T has talked about it as a goal because I didn't have it with my mother. I obviously am not writing clearly enough on here. I never meant I didn't want to make any changes in my life. I just don't want to think of my relationship with my T as merely a business arrangement. I want the heartmates feeling, which probably brings me back to wanting and needing a secure attachment to my T. She wants me to carry it over to others in my life, like my friends.
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Originally Posted by musinglizzy
I have attachment towards my T, but it's not secure. I used to. So I know in my experience that how my relationship with my T is seeps into my "real life." If I don't feel connected with her, I find very little (if any) connection IRL. It sucks.
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I'm sorry you don't have a secure attachment to your T. I wish there were a way for you to regain it. Does your T know that you still feel awful about her taking things away from you?