[shamon86]

Or is it purely a professional relationship?

[spring2014]

my is purely professional and she is nice to me and friendly too .I would be lost without my therapist . she is my confidant as well as my therapist.








Diagnosis: Anxiety and depression
meds : Cymbalta 60 mgs at night
Vistrail 2 25 mgs at night for insomnia with an additional 25 mgs=75 mgs when up past 1:00 in the morning

We are not friends but we are very friendly.

[ChavInAHat]

My T isn't a typical T- I've seen a few and she is much more down to earth, funny and we have a lot of common interests.

If she wasn't my T, I could see her being a friend.

As she is my T, then it is purely professional with a few side discussions about Harry Potter

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[junkDNA]

no, not really. if he wasnt my therapist i doubt we'd be friends. since im a nut ball.

[JustShakey]

Same as Starry Night. He's like one of my best besties, but he's not my friend.
I could actually see us being friends in real life, had he never been my T. He does remind me a lot of some of my guy friends back in the day.

[unlockingsanity]

My T means a lot to me, but it's professional.

[nottrustin]

We have a very good relationship but I wouldn't say it is a friendship nor do I feel it is strictly business.

Purely professional for me. Personally, I do not want to be sipping a beer and wolfing down Doritos with someone who knows all that junk I've revealed in therapy. I don't even want to see my therapist outside her office in the community. I know she has a life outside the office, but I don't want to be part of it.

I remember being in the grocery store about eight or nine years ago and turning into an aisle and running into the therapist I was seeing standing next to his wife and debating the merits of different soups. As I was saying, "S***!" and frantically turning around to go back out the aisle, he looked up and our eyes met. Luckily, I didn't stay with him too long. It just feels uncomfortable to me to know that the person carrying all that gunk I vomit out, is standing in the grocery aisle examining Campbell soup labels. Not funny then, but pretty funny when I think about it now.

[JaneTennison1]

I could never see any T as a friend. I don't tell this stuff to a friend. I want T to be a T. Though we can be friendly.

[stopdog]

Definitely not friend and not very friendly.

[atisketatasket]

No. And I am not sure I would say I was friendly with either of them.

[ilikecats]

I don't think of my T as a friend, but I wouldn't say our relationship is purely professional either. It is professional, but not in the same way other professional relationships are. I feel like the relationship is more intimate and I feel closer to her than to other people I would say I had a purely professional relationship with.

[Pennster]

I think of him as being in his own category totally. He gets way more access to my brain than a friend would, but it's all very purposeful and feels like work to me. We're working together but it's in such an intimate way that I think there are more dimensions to it than the words "purely professional" would imply.

[Sarah1985]

I think of mine as a friend. Everything is professional, but she's like a good friend of mine, that I only see in her office

[stopchewinggum]

I see my therapist the same as someone giving me a root canal.

[magno11789]

No, I do not think of my T as my friend. We are friendly, but it is professional. I'm pretty sure if she wasn't my T we would not be friends outside the office.

[justdesserts]

We aren't friends and could never be, largely because of the social prohibitions between married men and women being friends, but our relationship is different from other professional relationships. He feels sort of like a kind brother.

My old T (30 years ago) I think of as a friend (not as a T at all anymore). My most recent is a very friendly professional relationship. How's that?

[Polibeth]

My T and I are friendly but we are not friends. If we knew each other outside of the T relationship I doubt we would be friends.

[1stepatatime]

Most definitely not. It would be weird to be friends with her. I need her there as my therapist, not a friend.

[Cinnamon_Stick]

Purely professional. I like it that way. We are very close and have a strong connection but I need her as a T, not a friend. I love how she is as a therapist.

[rainbow8]

I just looked online for definitions of "friend." Basically, it says a friend is someone with whom you have mutual person regard, or affection for. It doesn't say anything about "doing things socially with a person" or knowing about their life. So, by the simple definition my T is certainly my friend and most of us have that kind of T relationship, I think.

However, my T has said that we aren't friends, using the word in the way we usually think of friendships, as more reciprocal. We're closer than friends in some ways, I think. I'd never tell my friends what I tell my T. She sees me more often, I bet, than she sees her girl friends. Aside from that, we're very friendly with each other, and have common interests. I would love to be friends with my T but then I wouldn't have a therapist!

[wheeler]

I am just processing the ending of my last T, with whom I was very close. In doing this, with another T, I am realizing that many boundaries were blurred between friend and therapist.

I understand who T is. What role she plays in my life. I class get as a secure base.