[peaches100]

I've noticed something with my t that really hurts my feelings. We've worked together for a long time (years). She's very kind and a great therapist. I have attachment problems, so some of our work focuses on resolving that. She is normally friendly and what i would consider caring and even somewhat nurturing toward me. But what i've noticed is that on the rare occasions when i get up the courage to express how i feel about her, she seems to turn ultra clinical and reserved.

For example, last week I gave her something I'd written that said i loved her. Her reply was that my feelings "are normal when somebody has been nice to you, and you've spent alot of time together." Now, I'm not faulting her reply. I felt alot of trepidation at telling her, as I was ridiculed alot growing up for sharing my feelings, so what she said helped "normalize" them. But her reply still left me feeling let down. I realilzed later that since I had gotten up the courage to risk telling her my personal feelings, i was hoping for a personal response.

Obviously, i didn't expect her to say she loved me too. But I hoped she would say she appreciated knowing how i felt, or she valued my feelings, or that she cared about me in return. But she said nothing like that. It was very hard for me to say i loved her, and I guess I hoped that it would move her. But as she read it, I couldn't see anything change in her expression or in her voice to indicate that I'd said anything other than just a bunch of words.

So. . .the following day, i started feeling foolish and ashamed, wondering if I'd made a mistake by telling her how i felt, since it didn't seem to affect her any more than if I'd told her i ate a hot dog for lunch. Feeling insecure, i emailed and told her that I was afraid I'd made a fool of myself by telling her i loved her, and that she'd probably want to run away from me now.

I was also feeling the urge to cancel my session in anticipation of her upcoming trip, because separations are super hard for me with my attachment problems. So i told her I was thinking of canceling because it would be too hard to say goodbye. It said,

Peaches,
You know that whether you come here tomorrow or not It is always your choice. You can choose to leave her and not say goodbye. If you feel like you have already made a fool out of yourself, that lies within you as it is not my experience. If you prefer not seeing me tomorrow and there is a good therapeutic reason, let me know.
R

Her reply sounded so cold and clinical to me, and i didn't understand why she would act this way since i had just told her how i felt about her last week. So i emailed back, pointing out that her reply sounded odd and devoid of feeling, and was she mad at me? She replied that she was just very busy, on call and that her tone didn't have anything to do with me.

Am i wrong to feel badly? Am I making a big deal out of nothing, because sometimes I do that. I just feel. . .let down, exposed, and like my feelings don't make a dent on my t at all.

[pbutton]

I would probably have a similiar reaction. However, I also have attachment issues, so having the same response as me is NOT a good thing.

She did say she didn't think you made a fool out of yourself, maybe try to focus on that?

[wheeler]

I'm not sure if it will help, but I would feel (and do feel) the same way as you.
This therapy-relationship-attachment-transference-crap is hard.

However, I think the only 'real' option is for you to work up the courage to talk to her about it.

Good luck

[unaluna]

I would try to see it as her giving you a safe place to have those feelings in, without worrying about what her feelings are about it. It's not "crap" - you are really kind of lucky to have clean unconfused space where just your own emotions exist? Yet it's STILL complicated! You STILL question what all is going on - I don't mean that in a bad way at all! You just still have feelings about it, and AT THE END OF THE DAY, as they say, whether she's a warm huggy T or a chili and frosty T, we are still not going home with them, so what does their mood or temperament matter? As she is going on a trip, yes, you can totally expect yourself to be weird, now and when she gets back, but these are also great opportunities for growth. So I would say she is being careful not to cause you more "breakage" before her trip, but also to give you the space to change if that's what is happening, it's your call. It's a delicate balancing act for them? You sound like you are making great progress in attachment.

[Sannah]

Therapy is about you and for you Peaches. It is for you to get comfortable with yourself. If she got more involved therapy would be about her too. I sort of see the therapist as a mirror.

I really get wanting to or expecting to have a response from T for saying particular things that I think are particularly meaningful. However, I've learned over and over again that I usually don't get the reaction that I want, or that I'm expecting, or that I'm hoping for. And we're never wrong to feel what we feel when it doesn't happen the way we anticipated/wanted. It's confusing and weird.

I guess the question I have explored, with myself and sometimes with my T, is how do I make sense of this gap between what I expected/wanted from him and what he actually gave me? One of the most important things for me in therapy has been my T's honest reactions. He's not a bullsh*tter and while he is very gentle and sensitive, he seems to work very hard to give me what the "moment" needs rather than what I want. It's so important to me because I grew up in a house where you couldn't ever tell the truth, nobody believed you if you did, and I often got mixed messages from the adults who supposedly knew what they were doing. When he gives me an honest reaction to what I'm telling him, it's like some of the damage from my childhood is erased.

I think what I have learned from this is how I relate to other people when I don't get the reaction I'm looking for. I don't know about you, but sometimes my friends, or potential friends, don't reciprocate in the ways I'd like them to. Or I don't feel like reciprocating and I"ve noticed, particularly with my BFF, that she reacts to me not giving her the reaction that I wanted. It has really helped me stop trying to falsely analyze people and their connection to me-- and by falsely analyze I mean to make assumptions like "my BFF called to cancel the plans that we made earlier this week. I must have done something to make her angry, let's spend 20 hours trying to figure this out." Now I can accept what things are more on a face level-- e.g. she's tired, as she said, and she just wants some time alone at home.

In my version of your story here, I try to take the honest reaction of my T to learn something about myself. It doesn't always work, but it has at least helped me to try.

Anne

[Sannah]

Another excellent post Anne! I like how you brought up expectations. It really is healthy boundaries to allow people to react the way that they chose to react. Our expectations are really unhealthy boundaries and a need to control others.

[SallyBrown]

Peaches,

I feel your pain. Two very similar things happened to me, and they were two of the biggest ruptures I've experienced in therapy so far. To answer your last question, no, you are not making a big deal out of nothing -- the clinical response works well for some people, but not for others. I have attachment issues as well, and the clinical response is very bad for me too.

So let me blather on a bit about my experience, and maybe some of it will ring true for you:

First, saying I love you. I don't use the word "love" very much. I was terrified to use it in therapy to describe anything at all. The part of me still wounded from childhood wants nobody to know anything about what I am attached to, because the result was often either shaming or deprivation. I tell my T that I hoard good feelings and memories to myself so that no one can harm them.

So when I finally told him I loved him, and he reacted as if I had told him I love cheesecake, it was not good. Not good at all. And like you, I didn't expect him to say anything back about his personal feelings about me, nor did I think they mattered in the context of what I myself wanted to say.

What I found was that what really upset me is that he didn't seem to recognize just how big it was that I had said those words. I have never told anyone I loved them without hearing it from them first. Around 8 or 9 years old I stopped hugging my parents and telling them I loved them, at all. T had made me want to change that, to give attachment and vulnerability a try, and this was the biggest thing I could have possibly done in that direction. So I found that what really hurt was that it seemed that T either didn't know me anywhere near as well as I thought, which was disturbing, or that he didn't care, which was more disturbing. I felt like I had been doing the right thing all along, hoarding my good feelings, so why the hell had I wasted 4 years in therapy? If it made no difference whether I said "I love you" or not, then what was the point?

I felt that if he did not see my saying "I love yoU" to someone without them saying it first or even expecting to hear it back, as the most important thing I could possibly have done, then therapy with him was not going to work. Therapy that I had invested a lot of love into. And that was devastating.

As for the cold e-mail, I got a very similar e-mail ("It's up to you whether you want to come in or not"), but at a time when I was quite suicidal and really not able to think straight about whether to come in at all. At the time I needed someone to say, "You're so serious about killing yourself that you've been updating the beneficiaries of your savings accounts, and you're NOT SURE if you should come in?? Get your *** in here!"

The thing that makes me most upset in periods of serious detachment is that it seems like I can do whatever and no one will care. Everything feels like it's up to me, and to an extent it is. But it's also a lonely way to live, to not rely on anybody for anything. I err on the side of taking on too MUCH responsibility, so by the time I actually ask someone for help I NEED help. It hurt that T did not see that -- that I wouldn't be so indecisive if something wasn't really, really wrong. And it hurt that he did not see that my reaching out to him at all was a big deal, and instead zeroed in on my implying that I needed him to make a decision for me.

It used to make me angry, actually, when people would say that "you shouldn't kill yourself, it's not fair to those that love you." Oh really? I'm not supposed to look for support when I'm depressed, because it's up to me to get better, and I'm not supposed to look for support when I feel like starving myself, because it's up to me to improve my body image, but all of a sudden when I make a decision that life just isn't my cup of tea, it's not up to me?

I could continue about this, but I don't want to jack your thread! In the end, these things were resolved by my therapist and me agreeing that the more distant clinical approach wasn't going to help me. I mean, it just felt like my childhood all over again, and was yielding the same conclusions. I found out later that his training group had pressured him to be more distant with me, to stick closer to dogma, not long before I took the leap and said, "I love you." And he apologized for betraying my needs in that way.

so your T is probably doing what she thinks is right for you, but that doesn't mean it is. It took me telling my therapist, "Look, the cool clinical approach might work well for you and other patients, and that's fine. I get the theory and everything. But it doesn't work for me, and I intend to start looking for a therapist who takes a different approach." You may need to find a new therapist, but see if you can express your needs clearly to this one and find a new way of doing things.

Sorry this is such a novel -- I hope it's helpful.

Edited to add: The clinical response does work for some things, I should say. It helped me to be less silent. But it does not work in times of vulnerability and rare periods of attempted attachment.

Originally Posted by Sannah

It really is healthy boundaries to allow people to react the way that they chose to react. Our expectations are really unhealthy boundaries and a need to control others.

Thanks for the compliment, Sannah.

And this just blew me away, thinking about this issue as one of boundaries. That is very insightful.

One thing that I've really changed as a function of therapy is my expectations for how my H is supposed to react when we have a decision to make. I'm a good problem solver (lawyer training and all that) and think quickly and easily through multiple and complicated issues and arrive at a conclusion. My H is a super smart guy but isn't the clearest thinker when it comes to solving problems, and he just runs slower than I do. I used to pretty much berate him for not following along with me rather than giving him the space to think through things at his own pace, because, after all, I so clearly laid it out for him! I hurried him into a decision or wasn't willing to consider his issues thoroughly enough, so he felt unheard and/or attacked. Once I stopped expecting him to be just like me and gave him space to be himself, the process was so much better and both of us ended up satisfied that we'd arrived at a solution that was right. He still ends up agreeing with the solution I proposed in my own process most of the time; he just doesn't feel forced into it.

There is also that close relationship between boundaries and a need to control others, as you suggest. Earlier in my therapy with this T, I used to "correct" him all the time. About his choice of words, about a nuance that I was making that he didn't get, pretty much about any small thing that didn't make a difference. That was all about control of his words-- and if I could control his words, I thought I could control the therapy. I've since learned what I've learned from supervising beginning attorneys-- if you allow them to be themselves and to have the autonomy to approach things as they see fit, rather than what works for you, they do better work. My T does better for me when I stop insisting that he see/talk/act a particular way.

Anyway, thanks for pointing out these concepts. Really useful to me. Peaches, apologies if I have hijacked your thread towards a direction you didn't want to go.

Anne

[Perna]

Originally Posted by peaches100

Obviously, i didn't expect her to say she loved me too. But I hoped she would say she appreciated knowing how i felt, or she valued my feelings, or that she cared about me in return. But she said nothing like that. It was very hard for me to say i loved her, and I guess I hoped that it would move her. But as she read it, I couldn't see anything change in her expression or in her voice to indicate that I'd said anything other than just a bunch of words.

It is hard to remember we are going to therapy, not to get someone to express themselves to us but for us to express ourselves.

In a sense, your disappointment is a real breakthrough too! You would have denied wanting/needing/having such feelings at first, wouldn't you? You would not have even "seen" them. I think you should get up the courage to tell your T you were disappointed and wanted more It's okay to want what you want! That's very hard to learn. Too, it's okay for T to respond however T does (or anyone); what is harder to learn is that it's okay not to get what we want, to experience the disappointment and how to use it to steer a different direction, to go express ourselves truthfully to someone who will give us the experience we want and hope for.

That's the whole point of therapy, sorting through the people and understanding our feelings about them and theirs about us. But T is a "tool" rather than one of those people, she is working to help you express your feelings for her (or anyone), to be disappointed and know it and to be okay with, express, and use that disappointment to change your approach in positive ways. It is a little like "anger", you express that you are disappointed, or angry and the other person engages in a conversation with you and you understand yourself and them better and directions you need to take to move forward.

I was disappointed in my husband, told him, and he explained his position and it turned out that I was replaying experiences with my stepmother, I was trying to hold him to rules she and I had had 30 years previously that were not "true" or good for me now. The disappointment and talking about it was one of the highlights of that day!

[pachyderm]

Hard to accept that a T might be doing something wrong, isn't it? I mean, how can you count on help if they can make mistakes? If they can make mistakes, then maybe sometimes you have to take the bull by the horns and tell them about it. Maybe you are right sometimes. Hard stuff.

[SallyBrown]

Well said, pachyderm. Since so much of therapy is going outside of your comfort zone, it can be very hard to tell whether you're unhappy because it's working, or you're unhappy because it's not.

[granite1]

peaches good to hear from you .i wish you were feeling better.i wish i knew what to say to help but sending you hugs and good thoughts i am so glad you came here to post.

[mcl6136]

I blurted out, I love you, to my cold, distant T after one of our sessions had been really productive and meaningful to me....(yes, recall that I called the relationship a real mixed bag).

He said nothing.

It floored me. It hurt me, and it freaked me out. I felt very NAKED. I expected....well if not reciprocation, then at least a response of some kind.

I thought it over and eventually realized that regardless of his response (or lack thereof), I still had those feelings of gratitude, warmth and love for him in that moment and I'd like to think it took real courage to express it.

That was mine. Nobody could take it away. Nobody needed to mediate it or mitigate it for me.

Caring for your T is a good and natural part of your healing process, it seems to me. It's beautiful ...and it's yours.

Just my two cents.

MCL

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by mcl6136

Just my two cents.
MCL

Good work. Worth at least a nickel.

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by peaches100

Am i wrong to feel badly? Am I making a big deal out of nothing, because sometimes I do that. I just feel. . .let down, exposed, and like my feelings don't make a dent on my t at all.

All the feelings you mention here seem perfectly normal. And even if they weren't, they are your feelings.

FANTASY:
You: I love you.
T: Thank you! That's good to know.

Is your T perhaps young and inexperienced and overreliant on doing things by the book?

[laceylu]

The way I see it is that your feelings for your T are real and genuine. To be ashamed of and to deny these feelings of love would be detrimental to you. The feelings are real and honest. To deny them would be like lying to yourself and to your T. T's need us to attach to them so we can heal. I loved my first T and still do love her. I think of it as therapy love. There are many types of love like husband/wife love or parent/child love. There is agape love which is love for God, I believe. So in my mind I believe in therapy love and therapy mommy. I spent a lot of years being ashamed of my feelings towards my first T and it was wasted emotion. I told my new T this and she validated my feelings and I also told her I was starting to feel the same way for her and I am not going to waste one minute being ashamed of my feelings towards new T. They are my feelings and the feelings are real and honest. Old T expressed her love for me years later when she sent me a sympathy card when my dad died. I spent all those years being ashamed of my relationship with old T because other people told me it was wrong. No what is wrong is to deny your feelings if other people including your T do not see your relationship with T as loving and safe and warm and healing and helpful. Love is good.

[peaches100]

Wow, so many insightful answers -- posts i need to read through and really think about, and respond to.

About 2 hours ago, i remembered something hugely significant. Tomorrow is the first anniversary of my t's mother's death!!! I feel like such a piece of crap now! It was totally insensitive to have sent those emails to my t about "my" disappointment! I'm a rotten client! I emailed her that I remembered this, and that it was so insensitive, and i'm so sorry. But she didn't reply.

I'm supposed to have a session tomorrow, and then she's gone on vacation to Panama and i won't see her for 3 weeks. I don't even feel like going tomorrow. I feel horrible for being so selfish. . .

[SallyBrown]

Originally Posted by peaches100

Wow, so many insightful answers -- posts i need to read through and really think about, and respond to.

About 2 hours ago, i remembered something hugely significant. Tomorrow is the first anniversary of my t's mother's death!!! I feel like such a piece of crap now! It was totally insensitive to have sent those emails to my t about "my" disappointment! I'm a rotten client! I emailed her that I remembered this, and that it was so insensitive, and i'm so sorry. But she didn't reply.

I'm supposed to have a session tomorrow, and then she's gone on vacation to Panama and i won't see her for 3 weeks. I don't even feel like going tomorrow. I feel horrible for being so selfish. . .

Ah, Peaches, it's ok. You weren't being selfish, you were being a CLIENT. I'm guessing you don't usually invest this much in making your feelings known, so what you did was part of good therapy.

It's ok that you forgot about this -- you have to avoid being overly concerned with T's personal feelings, as a rule. But perhaps this can give you some potential insight as to why she might be replying in a very by-the-book way -- she might be overwhelmed. Her not replying may simply be because she'd rather talk about this all in person.

From where I sit, this new information makes me think your sharing an "I love you" with her, truly a special gift even if not fully acknowledge as such, comes at a very good time.

[mcl6136]

Originally Posted by SallyBrown

Ah, Peaches, it's ok. You weren't being selfish, you were being a CLIENT. I'm guessing you don't usually invest this much in making your feelings known, so what you did was part of good therapy.

It's ok that you forgot about this -- you have to avoid being overly concerned with T's personal feelings, as a rule. But perhaps this can give you some potential insight as to why she might be replying in a very by-the-book way -- she might be overwhelmed. Her not replying may simply be because she'd rather talk about this all in person.

From where I sit, this new information makes me think your sharing an "I love you" with her, truly a special gift even if not fully acknowledge as such, comes at a very good time.

what she said! I think your timing might have been perfect.

[ChristineEsq]

Peaches,
I too can soooo relate to your post. I recall once receiving virtually the exact same response as the one you received from your T. Almost word for word, in fact. They must have a manual or something.

What this type of "clinical response" amounts to for me, however, is a waste of love or care on my part. Like I'm putting out all this energy and getting stonewalled and it really hurts. I feel like it should be spent on someone who cares that I love him/her and, ideally, returns the affection. But when I expressed just that to my former T (i.e., "I feel like caring so much for you is a waste because it seems like it's all the same to you."), she responded by jerking her neck back and saying, "Whoa...that is not true." I was so relieved and touched to get that reaction because I had tried so many different ways of getting past the textbook, automaton responses to how she really felt (if anything at all).

My former T was physically affectionate, however, whenever I needed that...perhaps that is why she thought I should've assumed that my feelings for her meant something.

That said, I think we clients are just not granted access behind those walls our T's put up. I had a very hard time adjusting to the psychotherapeutic relationship because that dynamic was so foreign to me at the time and I still believe that intense, interpersonal (and yet...not personal) psychotherapy is not for me, so I'm not going in that direction with my new T. But I do feel your pain.

[Kacey2]

Ouch Peaches. I feel for you. To put your bare self out there and to have a clinical response like that would hurt. Sometimes t's just miss the boat and it has huge consequences to the trust of the relationship. I am sorry that this is how she responded to you. I am wondering if she is uncomfortable with your strong feelings and if so SHE NEEDS to have her own therapy session or two. I am disappointed at how she can be so hot and cold at times. I hope she can repair this with you.

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by SallyBrown

Well said, pachyderm. Since so much of therapy is going outside of your comfort zone, it can be very hard to tell whether you're unhappy because it's working, or you're unhappy because it's not.

Ouch! How true.

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by ChristineEsq

I was so relieved and touched to get that reaction because I had tried so many different ways of getting past the textbook, automaton responses to how she really felt (if anything at all).

I think there's a profound insight here. T will always start with a textbook clinical response. What happens next depends on how you respond to that.

Does the patient sulk, cry, shout, demand to be loved? You can both learn a lot from that reaction (or so the theory seems to go). Because not everyone responds the same way. And later on, you may get a warmer response.

[learning1]

Originally Posted by mcl6136

I blurted out, I love you, to my cold, distant T after one of our sessions had been really productive and meaningful to me....(yes, recall that I called the relationship a real mixed bag).

He said nothing.

It floored me. It hurt me, and it freaked me out. I felt very NAKED. I expected....well if not reciprocation, then at least a response of some kind.

I thought it over and eventually realized that regardless of his response (or lack thereof), I still had those feelings of gratitude, warmth and love for him in that moment and I'd like to think it took real courage to express it.

That was mine. Nobody could take it away. Nobody needed to mediate it or mitigate it for me.

Caring for your T is a good and natural part of your healing process, it seems to me. It's beautiful ...and it's yours.

Just my two cents.

MCL

I think you were right to be freaked out. I don't get it how it could be okay for the t not to have acknowledged caring when she said "I love you" to her t. I mean, if we're supposed to learn how to act in real life by interacting with therapists, don't the therapists need to act like normal, healthy people, who have some feelings when someone says I love you?

I think it's nice mcl was able to be proud of acknowledging her feelings in that moment, in spite of the t.