[hal90000]

I am not suicidal but I believe that if I continue working with my therapist I will very soon be. If you want to know how I ended up in this hellhole read on:

I learned about transference. I discussed it with my therapist. My therapist said it was normal and something we could work with. But that was 4 months ago and to this day I keep getting only sicker and sicker.

You can argue that I should enjoy my current feelings and continue working with my therapist, but unfortunately, after all this time, I can't force myself to do it, for the following reasons: I understand that my therapist treats me the way she treats all her clients and I understand that while my therapist is very special to me, and that while I lose sleep thinking of her, to my therapist I am just another client.

I just can't accept this situation without feeling as though I'm deceiving myself and insulting my own intelligence. I feel as though I've have fallen in love with "something" that is not legitimate, "something" that is just a facade, and I don't say it only because I know it's impossible for me to know the degree to which my therapist is play acting, but mainly because I understand that the moment I stop paying there will be no more friendly phone calls and no more friendly e-mails between me and my therapist. Obviously she doesn't care about me as anything other than a client.

I understand that my relationship with my therapist is a business matter and should be treated as such, but that's difficult to do especially given the fact that after all my mental efforts to not fall victim to my therapist's charms, I ultimately failed.

This situation is making me feel horribly because I never in my life had felt so much affection toward another person, and when I finally find someone I really like, it had to be someone who cannot reciprocate my feelings. I feel like I'm no better than the idiots who fall in love with movie stars.

And I feel like I am going insane, because no matter how much I repeat the same story I always get answers from people who keep telling me that I should just go along with this bull**** because it's "normal". But feeling pain after you hit yourself in head with a hammer is also normal.

All I know is that when I started therapy I didn't feel so badly. I wasn't even looking for a relationship. I was happy with my solitude. And some of you could argue that I should use this experience as an inspiration to find a woman, but I know I'll never find a woman as great as my therapist, which is very obvious, because real life people usually expect something in return from a relationship; and, as a thirty something underachiever with no goals in life and who has never had a girlfriend and who still feels uncomfortable in the presence of women, I know it's very unlikely I'll ever find a woman even half as great as my therapist. You could say that I should settle for whatever I can find but, if you remember what I wrote above, I wasn't even looking for a relationship when I started therapy. I don't want some random woman to act as a surrogate for my therapist. My attention, unfortunately, is focused on one person.

And to make matters worse, I am now afraid of women and afraid of the amount of power they can wield over me. I worry that I'll turn into a misogynist, if I haven't turned into one already.

Comparing my mental health now to my mental health before I started therapy, it's obvious that my mental health has significantly worsened: I now hate myself and I am beginning to hate women. I also feel disturbed by the fact that this therapy, which supposedly was based on friendliness and understanding, is turning me into a bitter, hateful person.

How can "love" turn a person into such a monster? Wasn't "love" supposed to heal me and turn me into a better, happier person? What went wrong? Is my therapist incompetent? Did she misread me? Did she overdo her friendliness? Or was it all in my fault? You can say that it was my fault, but I know that I did not choose to feel attracted to that person, and I also know that I was not the therapist in the room. And I also know that four months ago, if I had known what I was getting myself into, I would have found another therapist or stayed away from therapy entirely.

Maybe what went wrong is the fact that I was able to understand that while the "love" I received from my therapist looked and felt real, it wasn't "real" in the sense that I would have wanted it to be "real". If the "love" stops the moment I stop paying, if the relationship itself ends the moment I stop paying, then the "love" was not "real" because real love does not know artificial boundaries. Hence, this type of therapeutic "love", make-believe "love", business-like "love", can hurt more than heal some people. And it makes a mockery out of human nature and discredits the validity of the therapeutic process, for it assumes a certain amount of ingenuousness and naivete on the part of the patient. It assumes that if the patient has a mental or emotional problem that he can't solve on his own, then the patient is stupid. (And I see little therapeutic value in being told that I am stupid).

If you want to tell me that I am wrong and that my therapist really loves me, be my guest. But my conviction is unlikely to change.

What I need help with is understanding what went wrong in this therapy, what its outcome says about me and my therapist, and whether I should continue working with this person and enduring pain as I delay the inevitable, or find another therapist and hope that he or she can actually help me recover from my wounds.

[Liam Grey]

First of all, welcome to the forum, Hal..! I'm new myself but I'll do the honor anyway.

Well, you written a lot of things I can totally relate to. I'm a lonely guy like you (never had a girlfriend due to my social phobia problems, even if I wish it so, soo much)... and I think I know how you must feel. I'm of course experiencing some kind of transference too and it's tough (and really, really complicated).

Nobody is caring for you the day before and then bam!, the day after there is this person that cares for you, listen to you, smiles to you, understands you and so on. I think it is perfectly normal that somebody filling a so big empty space, suddenly becomes really important even if the reason we were there in first place, was not her at all! And even if we are paying for it and we are perfectly aware...doesn't matter, the emotions are just there anyway.

I don't think this situation was your fault; transference just happen to a lot of people. And I don't think you are wrong on the "love" stuff. Therapists don't "love" (in the very romantic mean of the term) their patients.. at least usually. In the best of the cases they care... they let you call them, send emails or asking for support even outside the hour therapy, but the bitter reality is that if we stop pay for them... well, frankly I don't know if it's like this 100% of the cases but I think they gonna discard us. We should remember they are always working and not doing some voluntary job or such (by the way, and I'm talking to everybody, don't feel offended if you think your therapist is different, didn't mean to describe it all!).

I'm in no position nor qualification to tell you if you should drop your T, completely leaving therapy or else... I didn't clearly understand if your T is aware that the situation is still going on and getting worse... you should bring it up to her and decide togheter what to do.

Please, stay strong and forgive my bad grammar.

[mark366160]

Hey Hal... I, like Liam, have been struggling with this as well.

My position is a little different, in that I am married... and I know she is too. I went in for something completely different... and then fell for her. There's several other complications as well...

Regardless, when you start digging around on the internet about this thing, you'll find that therapists, especially female ones, do not go for their clients, unless you are some super stud that can get anyone you want and they don't care about keeping their job. She may care for you... but if you are looking for a romantic relationship, about all you can expect from yours (as mine) is to learn how to possibly start one... to get to know how to talk to a woman... to be comforted by one... to be able to speak your mind to one... and possibly on the process, learn to talk and speak your mind to a "real" one.

I cannot tell you what you should do... but there are really 2 options. Tell her, and see if there is anything you can learn from it (which I have done)... or decide to stop it because the pain is too great, which is also where I am leaning because of my situation... and the impossibility of it all. If you seek to learn more about relationships with women because you are lonely or whatever, see if there is anything to learn from her that can make paying the money and dealing with the pain worthwhile. If you are really trying to deal with something else and in need of therapy, find a man or someone you could not possibly fall for.

In the end when you look at all this, it sucks... but then you started this for you... and if you are hurting more than when you started, there is no point in making matters worse, unless you are willing to try and learn something which can be made to apply elsewhere. She may be able to help in this regard...

I feel for you... and wish you the best...

(((((((((hal)))))))))))

I'm sorry you're in so much pain I wonder if switching to a male therapist would help?

The love that occurs in a therapy relationship can certainly be confusing and hard to deal with. I do believe that working through it and getting to the other side can be really healing...but if you are in so much pain that suicide is starting to seem like an option, than it seems like it might be time to move on. Maybe a new, male T could help you move forward.

Welcome to PC....I hope things get better for you.

[hal90000]

Originally Posted by Liam Grey

Nobody is caring for you the day before and then bam!, the day after there is this person that cares for you, listen to you, smiles to you, understands you and so on. I think it is perfectly normal that somebody filling a so big empty space, suddenly becomes really important even if the reason we were there in first place, was not her at all! And even if we are paying for it and we are perfectly aware...doesn't matter, the emotions are just there anyway.

And if even two laypeople like you and I can see that, what makes you think that a therapist wouldn't be able to see it? Of course they saw it coming. And thanks to their malice, incompetence, twisted sense of morality, people like you and I needlessly suffer.

Originally Posted by Liam Grey

I don't think this situation was your fault; transference just happen to a lot of people.

It's good to know that it probably was not my fault, but if my therapist had read me correctly from the get go, she could have used her knowledge of psychology (which obviously vastly outweighs mine) and her acting abilities (which evidently are finely tuned) to prevent this tragedy from happening. Was she sincerely trying to help me or was she trying (consciously or subconsciously) to make another fool fall for her? If the latter alternative sounds too far-fetched, it's not like psychotherapy literature is not plagued with stories of incompetent, narcissistic therapists who go on ego trips making patients drool over them.

Originally Posted by Liam Grey

And I don't think you are wrong on the "love" stuff. Therapists don't "love" (in the very romantic mean of the term) their patients.. at least usually. In the best of the cases they care...

Of course. But, from our end, their "care" sure looks like something else, doesn't it? And if that weren't true, then we wouldn't be enduring this pain, or would we? A therapist can't mess with a patient's unconscious and then claim, without deceiving herself, that she wasn't at least partially responsible for the ideas that she helped plant in the patient's brain.

Originally Posted by mark366160

My position is a little different, in that I am married... and I know she is too. I went in for something completely different... and then fell for her. There's several other complications as well...

I hope that your therapist did not jeopardize your marriage.

Originally Posted by mark366160

Regardless, when you start digging around on the internet about this thing, you'll find that therapists, especially female ones, do not go for their clients, unless you are some super stud that can get anyone you want and they don't care about keeping their job.

That's obvious, too, and it also makes this situation more painful and unbearable.

Originally Posted by mark366160

She may care for you...

In a very abstract sense, yes. But when you care for everyone, indiscriminately and regardless of how likable or unlikable they are, your "care" is cheap and, to me at least, isn't worth anything.

I don't want my therapist to care about me. I don't need her to care about me. What goes on in another person's brain once they are out of my life has nothing to do with me.

Originally Posted by mark366160

but if you are looking for a romantic relationship,

I am not looking for a romantic relationship with my therapist or anyone. (And yes, I feel attracted to my therapist, but that doesn't mean that at a conscious level I don't feel repulsed by that person.)

What's even more insulting is the fact that by not doing anything to prevent this trainwreck from happening, my therapist effectively imposed her agenda on me. Did I tell her that I wanted to have a romantic relationship with another person? Did I ask her to teach me how to have a romantic relationship with another person?

Originally Posted by mark366160

about all you can expect from yours (as mine) is to learn how to possibly start one... to get to know how to talk to a woman... to be comforted by one... to be able to speak your mind to one... and possibly on the process, learn to talk and speak your mind to a "real" one.

I disagree. Starting a relationship with a "real person" (ie: someone who is not getting paid to like you or pretend that they like you) is a very complicated matter for men like the previous poster and myself. If these things came easily to everyone there wouldn't be a multimillion dollar industry dedicated to teaching socially incompetent men how to attract women. But I am not interested in having a relationship, so I don't care one way or the other. What I care about is the painful, not "tender" feelings I ended up stuck with.

[elliemay]

One of the best quotes I ever heard was "Psychotherapy is what happens when two people get shut up in a room together, but agree not to have sex."

I have to agree it's one of the most frustrating, insane, contrived situation that I have ever run across in my lifetime.

However, it's also been one of the most beneficial.

I don't know if your therapist has been overly provacative, inappropriate, manipulative or unethical in any way, but I do know that the pain and anger you feel are very very real regardless.

I think those feeling are coming from a very very vulnerable and soft spot in you that your therapist (hopefully with good intent) has touched.

I think anyone with whom we feel vulnerable can wield a tremendous amount of power of us because innate in that vulnerability is the capacity for them to hurt us - and very badly.

I started a thread not long ago about "resolving the transference" (I think) that sort of laid out how I worked through feelings very very similar to yours.

I don't know if it would help you or not.

If you just need to vent, then vent away. I think a lot of people here will completely understand.