When a t says I like you and respect you, do you believe them?

That one I see has said this sort of thing too. I don't find one better or more believable or more or less relevant than the other for me.

Though a therapist says, "I like you," or not, could be just how that therapist chooses to practice. Many refuse to say I like you whether they feel it or not, because of training or beliefs, same thing with "I love you." Some therapist may not say it because they realize that that client or certain kinds of clients cannot receive it or believe the therapist is being genuine. Or, it could be the types of therapist some clients are drawn to, or agency rules or regulations. There is a myriad of reasons why a therapist or a client may or not say I like you - and let's not forget cultural/familial reasons. And, sometimes maybe the therapist just doesn't really like the client.

I don't really see that "I like you" and "I love you" are interchangeable, either in use with a particular client or in a therapist's routine. I see love as more of a feeling that can be interchanged between people in therapy, it can either be expressed or not. I have felt love flow in the therapy room, but I don't think it's ever been expressed. I think I'd be fine if it were-- I just haven't ever felt the need and I suppose my various T's have not either. I also feel liking and respect more than I hear them from the people in my life; we just don't run around talking about how we like and respect each other. If I didn't like and respect the people in my life, why would I hang around them? I don't think every interpersonal emotion has to be gushed out-- although I am quite fine with therapists doing it or not as it fits clients' needs.

T has said he enjoys our sessions and I'm interesting.
Pdoc said he likes me and that he thinks I have a lot to offer and am interesting.
So... I'm either interesting or that is a word T's use to encourage self-esteem.
I'm not sure I'm interesting.

So hard to know if people are genuine in their opinions. I wish T's had little lights over their heads that indicate when they are being truthful or not.

Monalisasmile, good question to post. I totally trusted my T for about 2 years and then suspicions creeped in. Hard to explain, but my suspicions were valid and when I confronted T about them he did not persuade me of his loyalty to me (though he tried). I continued to see him because I wanted so much to believe in him. I needed him in my life. I needed HIM to believe in Me and like me. When I realized he didn't, there was no point for me to continue because my needs revolved around being loved. I understand that is not what others may need but this is what I needed from my T.

I'm thankful to WikidPissah who said:

[/quote] If you hang arund for a while, you will find that most T's say that to their clients. I don't think that it's disingenuous per-say, but I do know it's a tactic they use. I don't think a T would say it to someone that they didn't like or respect though.[/quote]

I've read other posts on PC and I can see how T's would use that as a "tactic" to "win" you over. Not everyone certainly, but I can see how that can be used to encourage a close relationship (especially somone with low self esteem). I should stop here. My situation is different from most since I wanted the closeness. Not sure how you know what's true or what's not. I know other people in my life who have "fooled" me for a long time. I trusted people with my love and they just used me. I won't allow T to fool me so I ended it.

I agree with this. I think that therapists would (for the most part) have not entered the profession unless they felt that they could generally find something to like about all kinds of people. I'm sure there are some who are not genuine, but I do think the majority try not to lie to their clients. It still took me 2 years to trust what my therapist says about me though, but I finally believe her.

Just to explain I meant Like not love their clients...opps sorry for any misunderstandings.
I don't think t had any tactics up her sleeve when she said it but like a lot of you siad it was in reference to the context which she was saying it.
She was saying it because it was followed by some hard things for me to hear - her being honest and she checked first whether it was ok for her to be honest with me because it might hurt me.

When questioned, my T said that she doesn't say things she doesn't mean. She would not flatter me insincerely. I trust her on that.

I would/do trust her.

I think when hearing that kind of statement from a T, we need to look at T's previous behavoiur and ask questions- Has T ever lied to me? Has my T ever been insincere? Do i trust my T?

If YOU don't like or respect yourself, it can be strange or uncomfortable hearing someone else say that they like and respect you, and that's when it may be helpful to look at the questions above and try to accept that you ARE likeable and deserve respect.

If you hang arund for a while, you will find that most T's say that to their clients. I don't think that it's disingenuous per-say, but I do know it's a tactic they use. I don't think a T would say it to someone that they didn't like or respect though.[/quote]

I've read other posts on PC and I can see how T's would use that as a "tactic" to "win" you over. Not everyone certainly, but I can see how that can be used to encourage a close relationship (especially somone with low self esteem). I should stop here. My situation is different from most since I wanted the closeness. Not sure how you know what's true or what's not. I know other people in my life who have "fooled" me for a long time. I trusted people with my love and they just used me. I won't allow T to fool me so I ended it. [/QUOTE]


something very similar happened to me. I wish I'd been together enough to know to leave like you did. I eventually learned the hard way. Although I admit that I think she really wanted to care about me/respect, she was triggered, didn't recognize it, and she couldn't maintain it. So I should have left when it could have been amicable.

I suspect like most things, it depends upon the issues that you bring to therapy. But for me therapy has never been about what my T says to me. There have certainly been moments where he's said something that has encouraged me to open up or to have some perspective, and whatever has gone on in the T room, it has had the very positive benefit of me largely stopping beating myself up all the time, for both real and imagined transgressions.

But for me therapy has been about getting to the place where I could see and speak the truth about myself and my experiences. I don't need him to tell me what the truth is or to validate that certain things are truthful, but he has cleverly created a space and a way of interacting with me that allows me to discover things for myself and to decide for myself what patterns are dysfunctional and how to change them. There have been times when I have had a hard time saying something out loud and he has reminded me that "the only person you ever really need to tell the truth to is yourself."

But my issues do not revolve around self esteem or other distortions of myself, and my history-- although it includes emotional abuse of the sort that made me doubt my perceptions and reinforced certain negative ways of thinking and behaving-- did not include emotional abuse of the sort that directly tears children down, such as the messages that they are bad, wrong, stupid, or general and consistent messages of put-downs, insults, demeaning. So I have not had to recover from that in the way that many people in therapy do. For the many mistakes my parents made, one thing they did not do was make me feel insignificant or demeaned. They always encouraged me to think that I could do anything that I wanted to, and this has certainly made my life easier in many ways, compared to what others have had to overcome. Having a healthy sense of self esteem and self mastery made it easy for me to pursue the studies and then the career that I wanted.

So reparenting is not something that I have sought or needed from therapy. My parents' parenting was not the problem in my childhood, except indirectly. If there hadn't been CSA and physical abuse in my family, I'd have had a great childhood.

It is difficult for me to understand how a T saying they liked or respected me would help or hurt me in any way-- for me. It does make sense to me that since I don't think (at least in my experience) that people generally say these things out loud, that I would be wondering about the motivations and the truthfulness of this when it is said to others.

But the piece that resonates with me is that what people say to us (that's nice) and how people acts towards us (if it's nice) can invoke skepticism about their reasons for saying it or why they are doing it. I met someone this summer, a girlfriend of a friend, and she is such an unrelentingly positive, loving, and affirming person that I kept wondering in the back of my mind (even though I felt no sexual tension whatsoever) if she was hitting on me. She couldn't go more than a few minutes before she was telling me something nice about myself, complimenting me on my shirt or my hair or my skin, or giving me a hug and telling me how happy she was to meet me or that I was there. After a few days of being with her and them, I realized that this is just totally who she is. I mean, she has her issues like everyone else, but there is just this core of her who is just not shy about either recognizing the good that she sees or saying it out loud. And she's really perceptive too, and her compliments are not generic b.s. It can be hard to take it all in.

I do realize, writing this, that I've always chosen reserved, cerebral therapists. I don't think I'd necessarily want a therapist who is effusive in her positivity directed towards me or who offered me multiple hugs in a session. My T's haven't ever been cold, but they certainly have not exhibited the warmth of others that I've interviewed. Maybe it would be good for me to work with someone who was, I'm not sure.

But my long-winded point here is that the other piece of what this thread is about-- trusting what people say-- also resonates with me, because I realize that this is just something that has recently changed for me.

Part of it is that where I most don't trust what people say is when they want to do nice things for me-- I recently had a birthday, and I think I pissed off quite a few of my friends to whom I said after I was invited somewhere, "don't feel obligated to do that." I mean, what a tool I was, responding to a sweet invitation to go out to dinner or to have a small party, with "don't feel obligated." Even though I *felt* they felt obligated, I should not have *operated* as if this were true. I should have kept my mouth shut and simply said, "thank you. I would like to do that." Except for the one offer of the party, where (instead of being honest) I just didn't respond to what dates worked for me. I'm aware of this now, and maybe next time I'll behave differently. I think birthdays can be sort of triggering for me, evoke childhood stuff that is not yet completely put away. And I was having an old school Jewish evil eye issue about this birthday, my first after a health scare in the fall. I thought, don't act too loudly in your celebration of still being alive, lest the cancer g-ds come back to get you. I know my bubbe would be proud of me, though.

But outside this context, where I slipped backwards into not trusting what people say to me, I think that I feel much more confident lately that I can and do trust what other people say. It feels good not to feel the need to be so defensive all the time. Putting up walls, cringing and flinching when people try to come near me, it wasn't a pleasant way of being in the world, nor was it peaceful or nourishing to me. Lowering my defenses has been peaceful and nourishing, and it is probably the first time in my life where I've walked inside my life without being afraid much of the time. I think in part I have learned that trusting what people say doesn't really harm me, even if it turns out that they are dishonest about it. Whatever I do in terms of how I treat people or how I am with people, it isn't dependent on what they might really feel as opposed to how they behave.

Anne2.0, your post has So much honesty and expressed so beautifully. It brings tears to my eyes. You've made wonderful progress. Thank you for sharing.

Do you really mean this?

Just kidding.

Thank you.

I personally don't think the word "love" belongs in therapy. I know I'll catch flack for saying that, but I don't know that you can love some one you see 1/168 of a week. Seriously. Even after years. But that's just my opinion.

I have clients. I care about most of them. I will do everything in my power to see that they get what they need. But love? At the end of the day I go home to my H (whom I love romantically) and my kids (whom I love maternally) and my dogs (whom I cherish). See what I mean. We need to keep this t relationship in perspective. The biggest problems come when people put too much into it. People want to be t's favorite, or their friend. We need to remember that a t helps us BECAUSE it's their job. Which is better than a friend, because it makes that one on one time more important.

Have you every heard about the cobbler's kids shoes? He spends all day making and fitting the best shoes for his customers, but his kids shoes are in need of repair. T's aren't t in their relationships. They screw up, just like you and I do. THey are experts at ADVISING, not necessarily DOING. I would much rather be the client than the kid or lover...wouldn't you?

Wikid - you won't get any flack from me about the love thing and I also agree they are just as likely to be screwed up as everyone else in their personal lives. They are not super human people even when they are relatively decent at their jobs.
I don't, however, think they are experts at advising. I don't think they (or at least the ones I see) are supposed to give advice. I don't need their advice. I certainly don't think they are experts at advice.

I don't see how much time you spend each week with someone matters at all in whether or not you love them. I have dear friends that are far away that I haven't spent physical time with in years, but I still love them. I don't love them more when I spend more time with them.

I don't agree that going home to your family means that you can't love your T or anyone else outside of your family. And I don't agree that loving your T means you lack some perspective on the relationship, or that you're putting too much into it, or that you want to be a favorite or have T as your friend. These assumptions or judgments that you are making do not hold for me and I doubt that they hold in the universal way you suggest.

My version of love is broad enough to include feeling non-romantic and non-maternal and non-friend love in the T room and with other people as well. I also have experienced love with clients-- I have felt love from them and I have felt love flowing from me to them. It doesn't mean that I want to have sex with them or make them my friends or act any differently with them other than as their lawyer. It doesn't change the way that I do my job or anything remotely like that. It's just a feeling, sometimes exchanged, and there isn't anything wrong with it. Some people may not want to experience love in these contexts, and I don't have any problem with it, but I certainly don't feel there is anything wrong with just welcoming love wherever you find it. In some ways, non-romantic, non-maternal, non-friendship love is just a pure feeling that doesn't mean you have any obligations or have to do anything in particular in your role. It just exists in the space between people, and for me it has been a pretty cool experience. To me it seems like the only problem about love is the way that some people define it or how they misuse it. But the feeling itself isn't a problem, and sometimes it just appears even when you don't expect it.

I also think that when you open yourself up in therapy, and your T responds with tenderness and understanding compassion, that it's easy to feel love. Again, I'm not talking about romantic or any of the other kinds of role-based love. The way I'm built, intimacy and love pretty much go hand in hand-- both when people are intimate with me and when I'm intimate with them. I've had a number of surprisingly intimate moments with all kinds of people that I haven't expected to-- from clients to a couple of government workers who cleared major red tape for me-- and I have felt the exchange of love during these times. Love based on mutual intimacy is a different animal, and having a relationship with reciprocity invokes a different kind of love-- but to me this is not the only kind of love that exists.

Thanks, anne, that makes me feel better.

Anne, thank you so much for your beautiful posts. They are both honest and beautifully expressed:
don't agree that going home to your family means that you can't love your T or anyone else outside of your family. And I don't agree that loving your T means you lack some perspective on the relationship, or that you're putting too much into it, or that you want to be a favorite or have T as your friend. These assumptions or judgments that you are making do not hold for me and I doubt that they hold in the universal way you suggest
I couldn't agree more with what you said above.
I have heard that from a therapists point of view that negative transference from a client is easier to work on than positive transference because thats when the real client emerges. If the client puts their t on a pedalstal and agree with everything their t says, then it harder for the t to see the real being.
I am not sure how I feel about t, I would like to believe her but I just don't she asked to read some of my stories before, I reluctantly let her because I thought things would change after this and they did, she knew I was a writer even before I came to her and ever since I showed her those stories she changed towards me. It is not like any other t relationship I have had before and in a way I want to just melt before and her and show her my vulnerable side but I can't

It may be a matter of semantics. I rarely use love to describe anything outside of extremely close friends, my parents, or my partner. I feel warmly towards some others and have shared intimate and important situations which are meaningful, and I am glad of it, I just don't consider it love as I use the term. The experience may well be what would be called love by others.

In some ways, non-romantic, non-maternal, non-friendship love is just a pure feeling that doesn't mean you have any obligations or have to do anything in particular in your role. It just exists in the space between people, and for me it has been a pretty cool experience.

This is what makes it all work for me.

Love attached to roles has baggage, both good and bad. But love experienced in this space apart from role responsibility is mutually freeing and secure. It is exactly what makes my continuing relationship with my T possible, and allows the existing boundaries to be liberating, rather than confining.

I do think it's possible for a therapist to have love for each other, a respecting love, like that of a friend or someone close other than a partner!
I have never experienced it before so it is quite new to me.
T knows that I admire her greatly and have nothing but respect for her so I think that I am having a problem accepting it because maybe she is just reciprocating the feelings I give to her back to me.
We had a slight rupture last month and it was my first time back with her last week. She never mentioned liking me before so that's why I find it so hard to believe now.

I have been fascinated reading the replies and seeing how you all feel about your t s liking you and one thing is standing out that a t relationship is really like no other. A t doesn't give much in the relationship but we give all of ourself on return for someone to listen with empathy. It's a really strange relationship

I agree that it is a relationship unique in its characteristics; but I don't think it's true that Ts don't give much in the relationship. While some may not share a lot of their life info, I think we can know their characters. We can know their emotions. We can know their trustworthiness and constancy. We can know their willingness to extend themselves for our benefit. They show these aspects at every opportunity in many ways, big and little. We can know them very well in the ways that most matter.

I agree with the above but I also think it has a lot to do with how good they do their job as to how much they give.
I have had three ts all very different two gave a lot of themselves and the other one well I knew nothing about. She gave nothing of herself just turned up and we sat in silence, sometimes she challenged me- I went to her at my worst, I was in crisis thoses were the times when she should have sat with me and been there instead of challenging me because she made me feel ten times worse. I never knew she had any emotions only anger. So I guess a lot of it has to do with the t themself.