Strong feelings for T needed to work through the hard stuff?

I’ve discussed on here previously strong feelings I have for my T, maybe not “love” or whatever but a feeling of being so happy after seeing her that I feel my heart swell. This is matched by a sense of sadness and longing because even I know that these feelings aren’t really about her, I feel so connected to her (or whatever she represents) that sometimes it hurts to know I’m “just” her client and that she is “just” my T.

I’ve had Ts before for whom I have had no feelings for whatsoever. None, at all. It was absolutely a professional relationship at both ends. I didn’t think of them outside the room, I didn’t care who they were or what they did, I certainly didn’t long for them, and I didn’t feel slightly like a jilted lover. Having said that, in those cases therapy didn’t mean much to me. I had some current issues and went for 6-12 weeks to sort them out. Then, bye bye, I was gone, never to return and never to think about T ever again. Now the T I am doing is really intense and bringing up a whole lot of full on stuff and I wonder if these strong feelings are a direct product of that. What do you think? Do you think that the intensity of the feelings is directly connected to the difficulty or intensity of the work? Is it better to have these sorts of feelings than none in order to work through the difficult stuff?

Well, I don't think a patient needs to feel in love with a therapist exactly, but it is true that a patient who cares what his/her therapist thinks and maybe even wants to please the therapist is more likely to follow through on the therapist's suggestions, do homework, and cooperate more in general. So, I agree with your general observation from your own experience.

I do not think it is necessary at all. It may work for some clients, but certainly not all. I don't have strong feelings for the therapist I see one way or the other but that does not mean therapy cannot be useful to me. For me, it is not a situation where cooperation, as I understand the term, with the therapist is something that would even come up.

I don't think that strong feelings are necessary to the work, but I do think they can be triggered by the nature of the work. At that point, they become a part of that work.

Whether they become a productive part or a destructive part depends very much on the relationship between the therapist and client, the type of therapy being pursued, and the therapist's ability and comfort level.

Aha! I think this is what I mean. Thanks FKM.

So maybe the feelings are there because of the work (ie they are strong because I am working through childhood trauma and relationship stuff) so they have arisen as a result - ie not about T but about something in me. But this is why I wonder if these feelings are a sign that things are working, that I am working through stuff, because maybe they wouldn't be there otherwise... Whatever it is, the feelings are weird.

I think it sounds like therapy love - which means it's a good, secure attachment - and wouldn't personally worry about it.

This might help:
You and Your Therapist: Part II. Therapy Love | FEELING UP IN DOWN TIMES: Psychology in real life, for the good life...

I don't know, but I think that T's should go out of their way to not encourage the situation where the client wants to please the T or cares about what the T thinks. I think that T's should encourage clients to please themselves, not the T or other people, and to otherwise follow their own internal compass, not the T's. That is why it is important that T's be non-judgmental as possible, so clients feel free to develop their own sense of what is right for them. Also, I think that it is fine to give homework to clients, but if it doesn't work for a client, a T should be fine with that and not communicate that the client has somehow failed. And I'm not sure how "cooperation" works in therapy-- I am not really looking for advice from my T, and on the rare occasions he has offered it, I've told him to stuff it (and he's fine with that). But if I felt that my T was trying to get me to cooperate with him in some way, as opposed to driving the bus of my own life, I'd be out of there without a look back. He has said that he sees himself as like an accompanist for a musician, it is his job to follow me, cooperate with me, not the other way around. So my experience of what kind of therapy I want is the complete opposite of some model where I somehow get to where the T is.