Anyone know a real, live person who has actually healed attachment difficulties?

I am in the process of leaving T and I think I am having problems which I call attachment but I don't know if it's the attachment you are all speaking of.

Are you ok? I know you are very attached to this T

No, I didn't mean the attachment with your T, but there has been debate regarding 3 typical attachment problems, which you develop as a child: secure, ambivalent and avoidant attachment, which then screw you in your adult life...

According to the description of all three, I come to the "ambivalent attachment" category...

I think I will have to leave her soon because therapy is too hard for me at the moment. The only regret is that I will never see her again.

Sorry things are not easy with your T, I know you've posted here before about your relationship. I'm guessing that leaving her will be a really hard decision, and will be really hard to carry out.

All the people I know who've seen a therapist don't get nearly as entrenched as I have. They go, they talk about their problems, and they don't think much about their therapist between sessions.

Oddly, in my early 30's, I started seeing a specialist my age regularly for a medical problem. I was very vulnerable at the time, and really appreciated her help, but didn't get attached or think much about her between appointments even though our contact could be described as intimate. Now, somewhat older and at a different point in my life, attachment bubbled to the top as a problem. Big issues with both my T's over the past 2 years, and working through it with T2. I don't help myself by being transparent with my feelings in therapy, so it's a long, slow, painstaking process. The shame of being attached and feeling love for a therapist is so difficult to work through.

Do you feel shame in being attached to your T? My T suggested that to me, that I feel shame about it, I don't think I feel that, it feels like a positive thing.

I do feel shame. The therapy environment is contrived, paid, time-limited and professional.

The power differential is also hard. Loving someone that may not love me back in the same way. It seems like setting myself up for failure. My T has shown me in a lot of ways that she really cares, but I can't let it in.

I have always felt shame about feeling attached to my Ts. I used to call it "that baby stuff" when I was seeing my first T many years ago. I did not want to admit that I had strong feeling for her.

I didn't think I was ashamed of my attachment to my current T until recently when I painted a picture of a child part holding her hand. Part of me is ashamed that holding hands is part of my therapy. My T reassured me that doing this work with her is something to be proud of, not ashamed. That helped.

I'm ashamed that I would love it if my T held my hand when we worked through difficult stuff. It must be really comforting. Even in the presence of my T I feel so alone on the chair with my pain.

At least we can admit this, if for me, only here

I didn't comment about this when you first posted about it in another thread, but the painting seems so emotionally open and honest! If my inner child is still in there, she would bee holding Ts hand too.

I know such people and I think it's always about realistic improvements given what you come in with. If you come into a repair shop with a car crumpled into a ball, can't expect the car to be fixed to look better than new! The goal might be to make the car drivable, a huge achievement, if the person can make it.

Same with patients and clients. Some people have endured such horrors in their childhood that to me it's a fairy tale when I see them in person actually married, holding a job, having a group of friends and people who care about them and receive care from this person too, managing setbacks successfully, and keep going. I don't expect this person's life to be just as would be with someone growing up in a home with a loving family and secure attachment. And it isn't. But what he has accomplished, after psychological and physical abuse, living in a war zone, abject poverty, being abandoned and rejected by family, drug problems, false imprisonment, torture...to me that's miraculous. And he's not the only one.

What's his secret, this one married guy with children and a home to his name, now in his 60s? I think he came to accept what happened to him, having dealt with the resultant anger for a long time. He was able to step out of the victim position, something I still struggle with. He was helped by having a good social circle, which he himself tried to create around him, people who were hopeful and worked hard. He did not let the past limit him too much, though he accepted the limitations he had. Yes, sometimes he cried and felt upset about his life. It was so unfair. But where there was freedom, he opened his eyes to it and saw the potential and used it to motivate him.

Of course if you ask him, he won't say it like that. He will say he just looked at the day he had ahead of him. Try to make the best of it. Then he had hope, he had faith, he had something...that the next day could be different and perhaps better. He once told me, The sun rises, regardless. There are different ways of seeing this. Maybe you have to try to have an artist's eyes. You have to want to see beauty.