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Originally Posted by Moment
I think it's great that you did this. I think it will make it a lot easier in the future to refer to this and to talk about these issues openly.
I can tell you that I had a huge amount of attachment to my therapist, and I bit the bullet and talked about it openly, and he similarly did not flinch. Now it's a few years later and we've done a ton of work together and the nature of my attachment has changed a lot. I used to think about him all the time and would long to sleep next to him, etc. It's not like that anymore, though I remain fond of him. I think part of what made it change is that we talked about it all along and he just normalized it and was very accepting of my feelings, which made me accepting of them.
If you're anything like me the trusting will come and go and it will be a continual testing kind of process...so maybe be prepared for that, be prepared for the possibility that you guys are going to have ruptures and conflicts. For me sticking with it and working through those with the kind of honesty you just showed is what has been most productive in the whole therapy thing. It's one thing to be able to tell a therapist you kind of love them but being able to say you're really mad at them is important too, and it's important for them to act in the same kind of accepting way.
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Thank you. I'm glad you've been able to have such a great relationship with your therapist!
It's not my first time going through this kind of attachment, which was why I wanted to address it sooner rather than later. I had an intense attachment to one of my professors in undergrad. He and I obviously didn't talk about it as openly as I discussed it with my therapist, but we did become very close (it was like an attachment fantasy come true... I started developing very disproportionate attachment feelings from afar when he knew me as just another student, but a few years later I was falling asleep with my head on his lap while he worked in his office because I'd had a bad day, and he sat in the ER with me and held my hand while I got stitches).
I got to experience intense attachment, intense moods, and slowly becoming secure in my attachment and moving from such intense feelings to more balanced ones. I moved across the country for grad school 2 years ago and he and I still send at least a few texts back and forth daily, but I don't feel the urge to act out for his attention or long to be comforted by him (though I do miss his hugs... He gave great hugs).
I know that therapy is a different type of relationship, and that the boundaries will make it a much different experience, but the intense attachment and longing isn't new at least, and I know that it's possible to work through and get to the other side, even if this time it probably won't involve actual hugs.
And hopefully this will help with my tendency to act out for attention, because I'll be able to communicate about it so that it doesn't get rewarded/reinforced.