In what ways does your T provide you with comfort

I'm sorry you are struggling so much with this. In my own therapy, I've never received any specific form of support other than through facial expressions or by saying something supportive like "I'm sorry this happened" or something similar. I've never had hand holding or any sort of touch at all and it would be weird for me if a T did.

I know it's hard to get used to but this T might prove to be a good one for you after some time. Didn't your ex T have loose boundaries before it all changed? I think these are the things that end up hurting clients. Looser boundaries like that may originate with the best intentions but go south when it creates dependency and the T can't handle it. therapy is the place to learn how to relate to other people in healthy ways. Even loved ones can't always give us the support in exactly the way we'd like it. It's important to learn how to best cope when people who want to help can only give so much - and that is often the case.

It may end up that it's not a good fit, but it may help to wait it out if you like her in most other ways.

Thank you. I can relate to everything you wrote.

I don't understand how a "higher level of care" (i.e. hospital, inpatient, outpatient, crisis house, etc.) would meet my needs of comfort or feeling cared for. Supervision doesn’t make me feel cared for, nor do groups. And it's not like I can afford it. My insurance will only pay for hospitalization or crisis house. There's not a lot of connections going on there. My hospital stay would only be 72 hours, and a crisis house stay would be 1 week. 10 days isn't going to magically cure me of neediness. It's only there to protect me from myself. Thanks to Latuda, I'm not in danger of harming myself

I don't know what to do with this T. I might be the problem. Or maybe she is the problem.

Honestly, I just want ex-T back. I want her to comfort me

T tells me hes sorry if i am struggling , tells me he cares, reassures me that he cares and hes not gonna abandon me. he helps me thru text if i am going through something difficult. sometimes we hug. hes very reassuring and compassionate, gentle... knows when to be serious and be silly. as far as expressions and tone of voice i do feel they they are different depending on the situation.

Tone of voice

I agree that the 'higher level of care' isn't going to be what you want / need either. Which is why I said it was understandable that you didn't want it. Hospitalization rarely makes people feel cozy all over.

However, you're not the problem so much as you are the client. So it's up to your T to find a way to make you feel better. It's not her job to tell you that you should feel better and then beam merrily until you submit to being magically okay.

And hey, maybe there is a T who can give you what you need. Maybe you can start looking for T's and just be upfront with what you need, and if they're not comfortable with that, then you don't need to meet with them. In the meantime, see how the current T goes.

Therapy is a place where you shouldn't have to worry about you being "the problem." I know you don't necessarily mean it that way, but just saying that anyway.

Time helped, like, majorly helped, with my T. It took me several weeks before I felt somewhat sure that we were going to work at all. After that, I felt that the fit was right in so many ways and we had so many promising things going that the issue of comfort was something I could deal with.

I think the thing about my T is that she is incredibly, utterly consistent. That's what has helped to create a sense of comfort and ease over time. I have sessions now where I cry and end up on the verge of vomiting, talking about traumatic things. And then I step out into the world, and a minute later, it's just back to baseline and everyday life. It's amazing. But it took a long time to build. I've been seeing her for two and a half years, twice a week almost the entire time.

I hope you get it figured out. This is rough stuff.

I think your new therapist is just what you need.

I believe a therapist should not "comfort" us- barring a death or something equivalent.

Guide, teach, urge, suggest, support, prompt our own decisions and choices that comfort ourselves.
We must learn to comfort and console ourselves. I do not believe that a therapist's comfort provides any real help. It's only a temporary band-aid. To help us get past a rough patch, in a pinch, but not really what we need.

We need to learn how to make ourselves feel better by ourself, I think. I paid my therapist to help me learn how to do that.

See... It doesn't matter what they say!!!!!! It's what we do for ourselves independent of their statements of support.

So, just keep forging ahead. Don't look for support and comfort because you can't count on it being real when it comes from someone besides yourself.

I took BayBrony's advice...sort of. After another email to and from my T, I became very upset. So I called my fiance and asked him to call her He left her a msg, but she called him back a few minutes later. She told him to tell me to call her. So I did...

We talked for 10mins. She said that if I ever need a response that is more than an acknowledgment of the email, I supposed to call her. She said she's afraid of misinterpretations with emails, but if I call her, she can provide me with more support and comfort. She told me that rightnow there are no boundaries with calling and if I ever call her too much, she'll let me know. She even said I can call her again today if I need to.

We talked about the book triggering me since it was the cause of all the drama this week. She told me to put the book away, someplace where I won't see it. She said keeping it out right now is a constant reminder of ex-T which I can't seem to handle.

So all is well atm. She did help me calm down. I have to be honest, but when I listened to her on the phone, I was able to detect changes. Maybe I need to pay closer attention to her to notice her expressions. They might be minor, but if I can recognize them, it would help me a ton. Well for now I'm content with T. I got enough comfort to feel like everything is stable.

Thank you all.

I'm not sure there's a clear answer. Do you "click" and are you comfortable with her?

In general yes. I don't have anxiety when I see her, and I haven't left her office worse. She nice, kind, and fairly intelligent. She has made some compromises for me like sitting in the chair closer to where I sit. I'm just missing that deep connection. She says it's okay and it will happen over time. She would rather me go slow so that the relationship is her and me and not her, me, and ex-T (my phrasing, not hers). I was just too emeshed with ex-T and it's hard figuring out what's reality, what's projection, and what's comparison.

When I saw another new T for two weeks, I knew right away she wasn't the right fit. I didn't trust myself the first week, but I was sure after the second.

This T I have liked since day 1. That's why I'm constantly questioning myself. I'm so used to ex-T's boundaries and ways. I have to learn to stop comparing the two and accept new T for who she is: boundaries, expressions, and personality. But like some have stated, maybe it's a good thing that the boundaries are different. It might trigger the feelings of loss, but maybe the relationship will last longer.

My T tells me that she cares very much about me. I can see it in her face and the way she acts in sessions. I can see it in the way she responds to my emails. I can feel how much she cares when we hug at the end of sessions. I am someone who needs touch to see if someone cares and to feel cared about. Recently she made me a recording and one of the things she said was how much she cares about me.

I'm glad it worked. It's how my T is. She is afraid of being misinterpreted over email but she will happily reassure me on the phone. And she says if I call too much she would take be upset with me, we will just need to figure out together why my needs aren't being met if that is the case and how we can work on it

Judging by her response on the phone side of things, sounds like she's actually pretty cool with offering support and comfort. I am glad you sound happier!

My T tells me I'm important to her, that she cares about me, she has even, a few times, told me she loves me. We don't talk on the phone...I'm really not much of a phone talker anyway, but I am free to Email or text her whenever I want.

I'm going through a particularly hard time in therapy right now, worst it's ever been (I started a year ago last May). There was a time T would come sit by me, rub my back, hold me, play with my hair, all while I cried, and I miss that very much. So much that it really hurts, and I'm afraid hinders my therapy. I don't feel as safe in there and connected like I once did. I would give anything for her to offer that just once in awhile, reserve it for when I'm really in a bad place. Even in my life outside of therapy, I have deteriorated since then. I feel worthless, unimportant, unlovable. I don't get support at home, or with my family, and I learned to really appreciate it. I have all these hateful feelings for myself now that I didn't have before she took it away. And yes, I feel very pathetic for how I feel. She NEVER should have offered that if she didn't intend to continue. I feel like I don't deserve to feel comforted and cared about. If I told her just what I posted here, it wouldn't change anything. But we have talked about this topic at great length. She has not offered this to me since mid February. And it still hurts very much.

The way she looks at me and the tone of her voice are the biggest too. Then I guess some of the things she says are also very comforting. That's all that I really need/want from her so it works for me.

He doesn't give me any comfort. Past T's were a bit better, saying "I'm so sorry to hear that/you went through that" and hand on the shoulder or knee. This one just sits there and gives me tissues, waits for me to calm down then keeps talking.

His tone of voice, the way he looked at me and what he said or emailed me were all things that would comfort me. Now I'm not in therapy anymore, I sometimes miss that kind of comfort. It's hard to get it elsewhere, even from my husband. It's different.

I think one of the most difficult aspects of changing therapists is these differences - you get used to some things and then the next therapist has different ideas, different boundaries, a different approach and personality - and if your former therapist seems to have given more, you may feel rejected.

But I would also consider the fact that this is a new therapist. I don't know your history with your ex-therapist, but personally I wouldn't expect any therapist to touch me for comfort in the beginning. Touch is such an intimate thing, and in a therapeutic relationship even more delicate than usual, so most therapists won't accept things like these from the very start - at least that's the case with most therapists I know. The most difficult part is that some therapists would never do what the old one did - and it feels so much like rejection, even though it isn't.

Perhaps it might help[ you to think of it as an advantage you now have - you know what's out there and what you need. Perhaps this new therapist is giving you a chance to get a feel for how important each of those needs for contact and comfort is; try to negotiate what you need and, if your needs and the therapist's boundaries are incompatible, perhaps look for a better-suited therapist, always remembering that you do know what it is that you need.

There are also many ways to bring comfort. My therapist does hug me, but when I first read the title of your thread, the thing which came to mind was how excited my therapist was to receive my good news even between sessions. His encouragement to be myself and try for what I want is comforting to me. His trust and confidence in me and his words of appreciation are comforting. Yes, of course his hugs are comforting, but so is the fact that he thinks of me between sessions and tells me he cares. Sometimes just the look on his face as I reveal something important is comforting. There are many, many ways to bring comfort - even just listening or paying attention. But I think it all comes down to what comfort means to you, as well as perhaps being willing to expand your repertoire for ways in which you feel comforted. I feel comfort is something done in relationship - it's not just the therapist's job to do this or that, but the client also needs to be open to receiving what the therapist is available to give. It's true, though, that some therapeutic relationships, just like any other relationships, may just be incompatible.

My T does not provide comfort or reassurance. I'm sure it might be nice in the moment if he were to do that, but it would not be helpful in the long run for me. (More to the point, I have never done anything to merit it.)

She's done a number of things during the past two and a half years that I've found comforting. She'll give hugs on request (sadly they're virtual hugs as we do distance therapy), she'll say comforting things, send me songs to listen to during or after session, let me talk to her if I'm having panic attacks or want more contact during other tough situations, read to me, and reassure me that she's there for me. Oh and she also says a few extra-comforting things in particular, such as saying she'll hold onto troubling things for me or early on, that she was holding my tears, etc.

I must have write something wrong because people keep assuming I equate comfort with touch only. I don't. Touch is extremely important to me though. But my T already said she will hug me...when I'm ready for hugs.

My issue is the non-physical comfort. I wasn't able to find comfort from her due to the lack of her changing her demeanor. But when I talked to her on the phone on Monday, I finally felt comforted by her voice and words. It was what I was wanting and needing from her. And now I know I have to call (not email) if I need comfort

I don't know, I think she just loves me, and I think I feel it.

We've never really done touch. I guess I'm afraid it wouldn't be innocent. Maybe she is too. I got hurt when she got too close once and some non verbals happened and she freaked out and backed off. As a survivor of csa Im not that good with this stuff.

But there are ways of caring that you can't see or touch, and she does those, and that's what matters I think. She's always there, she's always good to me. It takes work and commitment to feel it as opposed to a hug or something but for me, it lasts longer and it's more secure.

(she expresses it thru action more than overt displays of feeling though. I used to ask her to show it more but I think it was better for me to have to think about the fact that it was there even when I couldn't see it)

This is sweet....great way to explain it! I do believe it's something you just "feel," too, it doesn't have to be in actions or words. I know my T loves me. Even through the tough times, I feel it, and she's said it.

that feeling is priceless!