Can I hug my therapist? Brief period of transference in past

i will try and make this concise as possible!

Since this is a long post, the short question is: Can I ask my therapist for a calming, comforting hug during difficult sessions despite the fact that I have admitted and we have talked about transference in our working relationship during one session? Note that this session resulted in an understanding that I was very grateful for my T as a professional, but the transference revealed a close friendship that I desired and have since found.

Started seeing T beginning of this year. Daily panic attacks and lethargic depression. most frustrating was the depression did not seem to have a trigger, and it forced me to drop out of school. i was so consistently lethargic that i wasn't even suicidal at all, just lost and without sense of direction due to my inability to find the factors in my depression.

My progress with this T, in short: i have almost eliminated panic attacks, identified newly appropriate and evolving goals as far as productivity and future education, and reached almost all of the small goals along the way including working part-time, then full-time, and getting back into school starting with one class.

At beginning of therapy, needed to focus on safety and basic needs. Beginning a couple months ago I started to desire meaningful relationships as I felt fit to hold up my end of a friendship of any degree.

At this point my very close friends were all far away, many at school. Started to realize i am thinking of my therapist too much outside of therapy-related thoughts. it was not sexual nor romantic. I wanted to know her outside of therapy because we shared the few interests she had revealed to me, and of course she is kind in the therapeutic setting, the extent to which I actually know her. I was just barely ready to meet new people and put myself back out there, so that lack of a very good friend in close proximity created transference.

Although I was just slightly worried about possibility of termination or messed up dynamics in future sessions, I knew the only thing to do was come clean to T to ensure I did not let these new feelings get in the way of having fully effective sessions.

We talked through it and it went very well. I was able to identify the reasons for my projection of my T in my life as anything other than a T. Sure, I do have reason to believe she's kind and caring away from her profession, but that's not for me to actually find out, and I'm just happy to have her as my T. The other role I wished she could fill was just a close friendship I felt the need to pursue. I have since done so, becoming closer to long-time friends and meeting new people in my renewed social comfort. Just one session was enough for me to mentally organize those feelings for T, and we continued productive therapy twice a week.

Recently, as in the last week, I hit a very low point without any identifiable cause, and I felt suicidal more than ever before, despite all of the progress I have made since barely being able to leave my house pre-2014.

The past couple sessions, I had an itching urge to hug my T simply for comfort as I stumbled through my feelings and the terrible emotions that dominated my recent thoughts. With the established transference history in mind, I just couldn't ask for the hug. I am still in the midst of a downturn in mood, although it's slightly better, and if I feel the need for that comfort next time we meet, I still do want to ask my T for a hug. I have never really had this feeling before, but a comforting hug in those moments where my mind is all over the place seems like it would calm me and allow me to collect myself.

Anyway, any thoughts on if I should avoid asking for the comfort-hug? I guess it depends on the T, and my instinct is asking wouldn't hurt, and that the answer could be yes or no. Also, since I left such a long post (sorry!) I'd love to hear any other thoughts anyone has on anything I've described.

Thanks!

I would tell her how you feel (rather than ask for a hug), that way you can talk about your wish for a hug in a more abstract way and she can either let you know a hug is ok, or talk about why to her it doesn't feel right.

Whenever I've ask my T a similar question (i.e. "Do you like me", "Do you care about me", "Can I have a hug?", "Do you love me?", "Do I love you?", "When is your birthday?", "What's your daughter's name?"), she ALWAYS asks me: "Why do you want to know that? How will an answer be beneficial to you?"

Her question, though frustrating, helps. It helps me understand myself. So I think not only should you ask (if that's what you really want), but you should discuss everything that you wrote in your post: why you think a hug would help you, what you are currently experiencing/feeling, etc.

Thanks for the input! Just to clarify do you mean start out by explaining that I feel a hug would give me comfort? Or are you suggesting that I explain how I feel in a broader sense before even bringing up a hug? I know my post was long so I just wanted to understand which of the feelings I mentioned you think I should start with.

I meant explain how you feel a hug would give you comfort.

If you approach this with your t, I'd be interested to hear how it goes. I can't bring myself to ask my t for a hug. The idea alone triggers vulnerability issues for me.

Most depth psychotherapy involves transference, it's certainly not a reason not to hug. What matters is clarity, purpose, consent and that the therapist believes it won't be harmful and is within the scope of their practice.

I don't see her until the beginning of next week so I don't know how I will feel and if I will need that comforting hug but I will ask if I feel like it. So I'll update accordingly.

It will all come down to your therapist and whether or not they are comfortable with it. There's no text book formula of if this then hug if this then don't hug. My therapist hugs me despite my "admitting" to intense transference so anything can happen. There's nothing wrong with transference by the way, wouldn't it be weird if you had no feelings?? You sound ashamed of it, and you shouldn't be , or maybe I'm just misinterpreting you.

I didn't mean to come across as ashamed. It was just hard to talk about with her at first. I'm actually grateful I felt those feelings because I realized I desired some closer relationships. That said, I'm not scared to say I'd still love to know my T outside of her office because my impression of her through her profession is obviously very good, but that just isn't in the cards

I think it's like anything else. Some T's won't mind a hug....perhaps in the open hallway. I would feel very creeped out to hug my T with the door closed. Just me.

I know it's been a while since I posted this, but today I saw my T for the first time since then. I've been in a much better place and our session was good, but we still talk about the hard things and when I had the urge to hug her I just couldn't ask still for some reason. One day maybe I'll work up the courage

Gwheatcubs, I am going through almost the opposite situation. My T has stated she is "a hugger." Ive seen her hug patients in the waiting room. We have talked about touch in therapy....and much of me feels I would very much like a hug, too.

But we've also talked about how I was previously "molested" by a PDoc. My PrevT would not touch me on purpose because of my previous PDoc abuse. I feel that current T would be open to hugging if we established it would be helpful and something I wanted.

I don't know what to do.

I finally worked up the courage to slip in a request for a hug as I was walking out the door today. I was totally rejected and I didn't see it being this hard but I think I made it harder on myself because I took months and months to get the courage to ask. If I just asked when I first wanted to get a hug I'd probably would've been fine with no.

I respect her boundary there, though, but the way she denied it was belittling: "uh...that's not really a therapy thing" as if I'm dumb enough to just go with that response.i had to run to class but we're talking about it next week. The other time she treated me like a foolish sheep , two weeks ago exactly, in short, when I asked why she said "good to hear the music thing is actually real" in response to my mom talking about it as a serious hobby of mine, her original explanation was as if she was pandering to a stupid person with easy BS cop-outs: "it's always good to get a third party perspective." Failure of a deflection.

To make things worse, I feel like last week was one of our best sessions ever in a breakthrough, because she not only fully explained herself for those comments but even gave further examples of times she's realize that she could've been more thoughtful and those times didn't even bother me. Sure, the denied hug makes me sad, but not the slightest bit angry. Her response as if I was born yesterday makes me mad especially since it's the second time

"Not really a therapy thing...." ugh... BS. If she doesn't want to hug, fine, but she sure could have found a nicer way to say it! More like she just doesn't hug clients in general. I, too, have a very hard time asking for things. But my T has always had me initiate things...like that first hug (we hug at the end of every session), and once I was pretty upset, and rather snotty-like I asked her "can you come over here or is that against the rules." Her response was "I was just going to," and she sat on the loveseat with me and held me. I initiated that invitation as well, so she's also done that since. If a T won't hug, personally, I'll see a different T.

That's awesome! Yeah, it's been rough, but it's sobered me up, brought me down to earth and I realized, while we planned to work on other things, all that's really necessary is being consistently safe and stable. I can't keep paying for less urgent reasons. In the meantime, I know therapy can help me when in crisis, but I've lost faith in long-term therapy. It's all too calculated and fake to me