[rolan86]

I found someone who I could tell all my troubles and and open up to for the first time in my life. I developed a relationship with her that I don't think I can ever replace. I feel like for once, I could actually talk to someone who understood what I was going through. I thought this would just be my therapist, but I eventually developed feelings for her. Strong feelings. It got to the point where she was all I could think about. I realize it's unethical to pursue a relationship with your therapist, and I wasn't planning on it for that reason, but I just wanted to keep in contact with her. That is all. I just wanted to have someone who I could let know how I'm doing, and give them updates on my life. Although I expected it, I was devastated when she said she was sorry but we could not stay in contact. I have now just become incredibly depressed about this. I feel a combination of angry, confused, sad, and scared. I am angry just at how the therapy profession just looks at patient's like me as "clients", when I opened up to her. I am confused about how I am going to move on. I am sad that I can never hear from this amazing woman again who means so much to me. And I am scared that I lost this support in my life, and fear that I might be afraid to see another therapist out of fear of becoming attached to them only to just lose them. I'm just so depressed about this right now I don't know what to do...

[insideout]

real love goes both ways... This thing you described actually has a name and I think it's called Transference. You can look it up on google or whatever.
I know what I'm saying is not helping you at the moment, but don't worry.. what you are feeling is a normal part of therapy.
It will all make sense later.

hang in there.
and welcome to Psych central!

[Leed]

Bless your heart -- did you know that this is a COMMON occurence? This happens very frequently -- people DO fall in love with their therapist quite often. It's for the very reasons you've listed. They've found someone they can confide in; someone they can tell all their troubles to, who will listen and understand; someone who is compassionate yet gives input. It would be hard to not have SOME feelings for a person like that.

But we have to realize that this person is getting PAID to do this job for us. They are EMPLOYED by us, and we are basically their BOSS. And when an 'attachment' happens, and they quit on us, it DOES hurt. But it's for our own good -- we can't have an effective therapy-relationship when our feelings get in the way.

I'm sorry this happened. Like I said, it happens frequently and it will keep happening to people. But I'm sorry it happened to you. It's a very STALE thing to say, but time will make things better. Please just be patient. In the meantime, PLEASE try to find another therapist -- perhaps a male this time, huh? God bless and take care of yourself. Hugs, Lee

[rolan86]

Thank you for the kind replies. I realize this might be transference, but that does not change the fact of how I feel about this women. I'm just so confused about how to process this all. My heart tells me to just keep emailing her, but my common sense just tells me to stop before I make a complete fool of myself. It is just driving me crazy over whether she actually cared about me, or if I was just lying to myself about her caring about me the whole time. At the end of journey she gave me a number to reach her at to update her on if I was going to stay at the school (part of campus health counselling) and she said that she didn't do that often. In her email after I told her how much I appreciated her, she told me she was sad when our sessions ended and that I will continue to be in her thoughts. I just hope she actually meant this. Maybe she knew I had a crush on her and was just trying to be nice? I don't know. All this speculation is driving me nuts and making me more depressed. It's hard because I want to forget about her, but at the same time if I try so hard to forget her, I will be forgetting all of the progress I made in therapy. I am just so confused and frustrated right now...

[Wants2Fly]

Oh Ronan, I am so sorry that you are feeling pain.

Please don't think I am being cruel when I say this, but it actually is a great change to learn to process disappointment and loss.

One of the things that has helped me when I lose someone I love (and I can be devastated) is knowing that the only reason I can feel great pain is because I felt great love.

These are twin emotions, and they let us know that we have a heart. Then we have to find our courage to get through the other side.

[PsychiatricEnigma]

Wow, this sounds complicated but it is probably more common than you realise. I have never had an opposite sex MH professional routinely deal with me (except a psychiatrist but he was well in his 60s lol) so I can't relate. If your therapist was that good to form a bond then it means she was good at her job and obviously she does look at as a vocation, because otherwise you wouldn't have formed a bond with her, if that makes sense. She does care about you, but that is as far as it goes.

I wouldn't stop therapy, but perhaps if you get a new therapist perhaps get a male one? That way your relationship will remain strictly professional and friendly/platonic, not sexual/romantic. I think what will help is distance. Once she is fully no longer in your life it will be easier to move on. Keeping in contact isn't a good idea, since nothing is going to happen.

I hope your feelings get easier over time. x

[Open Eyes]

((((rolan)))),

Ok, you found a really good therapist that helped you and you have formed strong feelings for her. Well, when we come across people in our lives that notice us, reach out to us, listen and offer their support, we tend to get attached to them, after all you are a normal human being and we all appreciate attention and understanding.

What you got was a person who showed you that there are people out there that WILL get you and are nice people. You learned to communicate with someone (something we do learn in therapy) and you learned that a person can listen to you, and that you are worthy of that. It is progress for a young man to learn how to discuss his inner concerns and allow that very human part of him to come out. Often when a young man is your age he may not have a maternal figure in his life or even a mentor father that sits and listens to him on the level that he needs.

It sounds like you're in college, a world wind of an atmosphere and many students your age are somewhat lost and many do not know how to share their feelings and concerns with others and often feel awkward. One of the reasons why this therapist was able to "get you" was that YOU are not alone in how you feel at this time in your life. You are amongst many, and it is important that you realize that so you do not feel like you are unworthy or incapable somehow.

While it seems like you have strong loving feelings for this therapist, what that REALLY means is that you actually did something important, you shared yourself in a new way and you were accepted and validated and encouraged as well. While this woman is trained to do this for her patients, that doesn't mean there are not other women out there that have the ability to listen ONCE YOU ACTUALLY TALK AND SHARE YOURSELF. What you need to take away from this therapist is YOU and YOUR NEW ABILITY TO TALK AND SHARE. It is NICE to talk and share isn't it? Ofcourse it is, and you need to do that WITH OTHERS as well.

You actually learned some key things (if you can set aside the love feelings for a bit), you learned HOW to share yourself which WILL BE VERY IMPORTANT down the road when you have a relationship. A lot of men don't learn how to open up and just say how they feel, and when they don't learn that, they end up being very misunderstood by their female partners. Men tend to think that they have to HIDE their emotions and what that leads to is they actually push their female partner away instead of truely bonding and allowing their love partner in so together they actually form a bond. So you get to learn that.

I think this female therapist is probably on the young side and while she may be good at helping you express yourself, she is not finishing her job if she is distancing from you now. This is not your fault you know, she needs to point out what I have shared with you here and help you past this emotional attachment to her. This is not about you falling for her, this transference thing that is common, this is should not turn to feelings of rejection or that you are doing something wrong. This is just what often takes place when we LEARN TO SHARE OURSELVES WITH OTHERS.

There is always a risk when we open up to others, as some people do not share well and are not very receptive. However we do need to keep making the attempt to share ourselves to find that right person who IS receptive and that opens up the opportunity to forming a RELATIONSHIP.
This therapist should be guiding you to learning this because it is important. You should not be walking away from this therapy feeling bad about your sharing and finding her feedback helpful and encouraging to you. You were actually LEARNING somethings important about yourself and ofcourse we can LOVE the person who takes time to CARE, LISTEN, HELP US SEE OURSELVES, LEARN AND OPEN UP AND BE OK WITH THAT PROCESS.

I hope you will be honest with this therapist and just tell her that you are struggling right now and you honestly don't know how to settle down and work through it. You SHOULD be able to learn how to work through this, and as I mentioned in my post here, SEE WHAT YOU HAVE ACTUALLY GAINED in this therapy. Because you HAVE gained things here, it is really important NOT TO LOSE SIGHT OF THAT.

Open Eyes

[Open Eyes]

In all honesty here, what you need to learn is how to pay attention to the entire experience in how this therapist sat, listened to you, and gave you permission to share and how that helped you feel connected to her. This whole interaction is SO IMPORTANT to view and learn from because YOU CAN LEARN HOW TO DO THIS YOURSELF when YOU are establishing a relationship, actually any relationship.
It is actually a skill that you can LEARN and is what many therapists learn themselves, but you don't have to be a therapist, you can just be a better person overall and be able to learn HOW TO SHARE AND LISTEN TO OTHERS better.

A lot of men don't learn this and get married and down the road the wife becomes unhappy somehow. And by the time they get help with a therapist, that time that a real bond should have been formed has passed and often the repair fails. It is sad when this happens and all it means is that the people involved in the marriage relationship just never learned how to really LISTEN AND SHARE. Communication, something we are all designed to do, all the technology we have, yet so many simply don't learn how to truely communicate, sad isn't it? Perhaps we should all learn to have therapist skills, which means ACTUALLY LISTEN AND VALIDATE OTHERS. We love to have that take place, ofcourse because we are humans and humans thrive on that.

If you think about how this sharing with this therapist brought you to having very real feelings for her, there is a significance to this that is being missed here. I have heard of a few men here that had tried to repair a marriage and it just didn't work. And that was because the foundation was never really there. It doesn't have to work out like that, it is often that many simply do not learn good relationship skills. And what I am saying here, is you actually learned some of that with this therapist that you could utilize in other relationships, because you aready know, IT WORKS by WHAT YOU FEEL.

What would be helpful is if you were able to learn from this therapist how to adjust interactions so that you could work on interacting yourself where you don't have this strong attachment happen but you DO FORM good relationships, like friends etc. What I am talking about is thinking about how SHE helped you come out and open up, learning the skills SHE used for yourself. That would be very helpful and actually be something you could utilize YOURSELF in your own relationship building.

Think about this, try to set aside this love thing and think about the whole picture if you can. Don't be hard on yourself and feel rejected here somehow. You are HUMAN and THIS DOES HAPPEN but you can actually rise above this and LEARN somethings. I personally feel you should be honest with this therapist and tell her that you need to learn how to work through these feelings instead of being confused.

[Open Eyes]

((rolan)), I may have repeated myself a few times in my posts. I was writing my posts this morning and multitasking and getting interupted. I don't do that well right now with this dam PTSD I have and get interupted while I am concentrating .

I am just concerned that you don't see the value of therapy and you're doubting right now, asking what you learned and what the point was because of your confused feelings. I really hope you will be open with this therapist and see if she can help you work through this. Please don't be ashamed if you feel like you love her, as many have stated here, that happens a lot. But there are lessons to be learned here so please see if you can open yourself up to finding resolve here verses remaining confused. Each experience is just another valuable lesson and can mean progress if you learn to look at the whole picture.

(((Hugs)))
Open Eyes