[Lady Lindsey]

Honestly, I don't understand? I care about my T she is human and she personally has been through emotional hell this past month, but held it together and separated from her work and attended to her clients. I like that about her she is strong and caring and I care about her..... but!, I don't want her to care about me but at the same time I don't want her not to care about me either.
I don't want to be special to her, I want her to help me get better, after all that is what I pay her to do, help me get better! In fact when I feel she isn't helping me that is when I get frustrated and at times a little resentful that I pay her so much money, she should be able to fix me and send me on my way...
Ok, ok, I know the only one who can fix myself is me..... so why should it matter that I or any of us want our T to care about us? After all isn't it the ones who cared for us in the past the ones who have hurt us the most... I hate this needy thing, I pay her money, I wish I didn't care about her or care that she might care about me.... sigh... does that make sense??

[Asiablue]

Given that it's the people who've cared for you as a child that hurt you, your response to be cared for/about is natural. It's sounds in this post like you find caring and getting better mutually exclusive? Or paying and receiving care, mutually exclusive? Can't therapy be all these things? Can't it be a caring, nurturing, supportive and healthy relationship? A place where you can let down your guard, be vulnerable, and allow your therapist to make sense of your experiences and help you to heal from them?
Of course you want her to care about you, you wouldn't tell your inner secrets and hurts to someone who wouldn't treat them and you with care, would you?
Rather than thinking of yourself as needy, try thinking of yourself as someone with needs, we all have them, it's normal and good to have needs and express them. You are going to therapy to have them taken care of. Let your T care about you. It's healing.

[linuxensis]

Define care.....

there are levels of caring as there are levels of respect or love.....

As an analogy, a schoolteacher cares about his or her pupils, but on the level of their educational welfare and even physical and emotional health (as this can impact on their welfare). But s/he may not care about them as their natural born children.

I can't speak for all, but then by "caring" it seems to me people want somebody who cares about their condition and wants them to get better. This can be understanding what they're going through and seeking a resolution.

[HazelGirl]

What Asia said.

[Soccer mom]

I understand. I want my T. to tell me she cares about me but I dare not ask her to do so. Then, I can flip it and say how ridiculous it is that I want that - after all, I'm paying her and I'm just another client. This is an internal battle I've had the whole time and I'm not sure how to stop it or how she can help me stop it. I told her I want her to reassure me, comfort me, etc. She was disappointed that I couldn't realize all of that is happening in therapy. Maybe I don't see the non-verbal cues.

[granite1]

im completely confused about the care thing also. I mean I think I do want my T to care about me .who doesn't want someone you work so closely with to at least care enough to not want to hurt you. but im not so keen on wanting to be her fav or anything like that at all. I am terrified of expectations and with that would come huge expectations. I think at this point I am happy with the fact that she doesn't hate me or think I am completely horrible. I couldn't expect her to care about me any more then I care about myself.

Our unconscious doesn't forget. It will continue to seek the light.
If we didn't receive enough care, we will continue to seek it.
But, wanting to be cared about is to be human.
I'd be more concerned if I didnt want to be cared about.
I used to leak all over the place, wanting toxic people to care about me.
Now my desire is better placed.

[JaneTennison1]

I think most people want to feel cared about in one way or another. I work in customer service and half the fight is just having the customer feel that I actually do care and want a good experience. People want to feel care because they are exposing everything that makes them vulnerable and things that hurt.

It is ok to want to feel cared for.

[NowhereUSA]

Originally Posted by JaneTennison1

I think most people want to feel cared about in one way or another. I work in customer service and half the fight is just having the customer feel that I actually do care and want a good experience. People want to feel care because they are exposing everything that makes them vulnerable and things that hurt.

It is ok to want to feel cared for.

this is so true. when i worked in customer service, people also wanted to feel special.

i had clients as part of one of my jobs and some of them were so high maintenance. they wanted to be my most-awesome-client-ever for whom i did all the things.

so we all want and need to feel special and cared for somewhere.

also, i think with ts we share so much of ourselves that we want to matter. usually when you open up with this much stuff, you're hopefully connecting to another person in a deep way. it can make the t relationship difficult because we are connecting with them, but they aren't necessarily aiming to connect to us in that way, if that makes sense.

[archipelago]

Please forgive me if I am completely misunderstanding everything here, but I actually don't understand how anyone could go to a therapist who didn't care? It's all about our inside and very personal, sensitive stuff, that is often fragile and vulnerable. How could someone who didn't care be of any use?

[Rapunzel]

The need to feel cared about and fear of wanting to be cared about, and everything else that goes along with this topic may be an issue central to therapy, especially for those of us who didn't get the kind of caring that we needed from our parents growing up. Being cared about is a basic human need, and if we did not get that need filled when we were young children, the need is still there and we are still looking for a way to get it filled. There are a great deal of ways that we might act out that need in unhealthy as well as healthy ways, in and out of therapy. And if caring was associated with hurting or controlling, etc., then it is going to be a lot more confusing to us now. A relevant topic to this is attachment theory. As children, we have to form attachments to caregivers or we don't survive. But those attachments may be secure or insecure. There are different types of insecure attachment styles. Insecure attachment styles in children that persist into adulthood are likely to translate into various personality disorders or other mental health concerns, and they will play out in therapy. It is worth talking to your therapist about.

I think it's important for T to not only want to work with you but to like you as well. I don't have to be buddy buddy with them but I want to at least feel like they want me in the door when I come in. I hated all those thoughts when I would see her and think, "she doesn't like me, she just thinks I'm another annoying client. I don't want to work with her." i don't know if that is really true, but making you feel comfortable and welcomed is just part of having a great therapist. Hope i helped

[Lady Lindsey]

Originally Posted by Asiablue

Given that it's the people who've cared for you as a child that hurt you, your response to be cared for/about is natural. It's sounds in this post like you find caring and getting better mutually exclusive? Or paying and receiving care, mutually exclusive? Can't therapy be all these things? Can't it be a caring, nurturing, supportive and healthy relationship? A place where you can let down your guard, be vulnerable, and allow your therapist to make sense of your experiences and help you to heal from them?
Of course you want her to care about you, you wouldn't tell your inner secrets and hurts to someone who wouldn't treat them and you with care, would you?
Rather than thinking of yourself as needy, try thinking of yourself as someone with needs, we all have them, it's normal and good to have needs and express them. You are going to therapy to have them taken care of. Let your T care about you. It's healing.

Thank you, I will take your advice to heart, you seem very wise

[A Red Panda]

I want my T to care simply because I've opened up with him a great deal more than I normally open up.. so if he didn't care about me at all, it would be incredibly painful to have my negative beliefs about myself validated by someone I feel is qualified. If that made sense?

Now, I don't need or want him to care about me the same way that he cares about his friends or family. In fact, I'd freak out if he did. I just want him to accept me and to care enough about that that I don't get massively hurt while opening up to him.

[JustShakey]

Originally Posted by A Red Panda

I want my T to care simply because I've opened up with him a great deal more than I normally open up.. so if he didn't care about me at all, it would be incredibly painful to have my negative beliefs about myself validated by someone I feel is qualified. If that made sense?

Now, I don't need or want him to care about me the same way that he cares about his friends or family. In fact, I'd freak out if he did. I just want him to accept me and to care enough about that that I don't get massively hurt while opening up to him.

It *is* incredibly painful to have one's negative beliefs about oneself validated by a qualified professional. And the painful need to attach to a caregiver who hurts is literally a physical ache.

Wanting T to care is a reach out-hold back affair. Attaching to a hurtful caregiver means clinging on as hard as you can, disregarding your own pain, because if you let go for an instant they'll be gone. A caregiver who doesn't hurt and doesn't disappear? It's confusing. A whole new experience. You're not sure they do care, because that's not how caring works, in your experience. You want them to care, but then you keep expecting them to morph into what you 'know' caring is about.
It's not so much wanting to be cared about as wanting to learn what it is to be cared about.

[Lady Lindsey]

Originally Posted by JustShakey

It *is* incredibly painful to have one's negative beliefs about oneself validated by a qualified professional. And the painful need to attach to a caregiver who hurts is literally a physical ache.

Wanting T to care is a reach out-hold back affair. Attaching to a hurtful caregiver means clinging on as hard as you can, disregarding your own pain, because if you let go for an instant they'll be gone. A caregiver who doesn't hurt and doesn't disappear? It's confusing. A whole new experience. You're not sure they do care, because that's not how caring works, in your experience. You want them to care, but then you keep expecting them to morph into what you 'know' caring is about.
It's not so much wanting to be cared about as wanting to learn what it is to be cared about.

Very well put

[JustShakey]

Thanks