[Pain94]

Do you ever wonder if your T or Ts would care about you if you were not in therapy with them and you had met some other way?

Would they have befriended you? I struggle with this even though I know in T I have my ts undivided attention for my time during the week. It would not happen that way as a friend.

I ask him stuff like this, it feels like I'm accusing him of not caring..

Thoughts?

[Waterbear]

I don't think it would have happened and I don't think about it very often but sometimes, sometimes I just wish deep down to the bottom of my very core that she could be more to me. But that is just the hurt a d the loss talking, stuff I haven't really worked through yet, and if it were different then it wouldn't be what it is now, undivided attention and unconditional positive regard. That's important.

[thesnowqueen]

I asked my T if he thought we could ever have been friends if we were closer in age and met in different circumstances. Well, actually i said I didn't think he would want to be my friend even if - etc etc. He thought about it and disagreed which made me feel really good. However, I tended to idealise him and feel bad about myself so I often doubted it anyway.

[stopdog]

No - I don't find either of them that interesting or nice nor would we have anything in common.

I honestly don't think either myself or my T would have cared that much about each other had we met any other way. I had absolutely zero feelings towards him for the first year I worked with him. That's been really perfect for me actually, because the feelings i have for him now can be clearly viewed as transference and not confused with any other feelings I might have.
As for how he would feel about me, well, we really have little in common on the surface and the things we do have in common we never would have found out about without the T relationship, so I doubt he would have felt much of anything.

[AllHeart]

Originally Posted by Pain94

Do you ever wonder if your T or Ts would care about you if you were not in therapy with them and you had met some other way?

Would they have befriended you? I struggle with this even though I know in T I have my ts undivided attention for my time during the week. It would not happen that way as a friend.

I ask him stuff like this, it feels like I'm accusing him of not caring..

Thoughts?

No, we wouldn't have become friends had we met pre-therapy. I would have judged her to be an elite snob, she would have judged me to be an immature jokester. We wouldn't have even made it past a "hello."

So, had my t and I met in some other way besides therapy there wouldn't be that special therapeutic relationship that exists between us now. There wouldn't be any relationship, period. And that makes me very thankful that I did meet my t in therapy, and not in the "real world."

[therapyishelping777]

Definately not, have super different personalities, though, he is a very funny, smart and caring person.

[rainbow8]

Even if we met in an art class, I doubt that we would have become friends. She leads a different kind of life from me. We have some common interests, but not enough. I am grateful that she's my T though often I wish my relationship with could be more than it is.

[1stepatatime]

As much as I like my therapist it would be really weird to be friends with her.. She's my therapist.. There's needs to be a boundary

[Bipolar Warrior]

I find it very easy to connect with people, but very difficult to stay in touch with them as it becomes too much for me with my disorder and my studies etc. I have friends that I sometimes don't see for months, which is very sad.

That being said, I have so much in common with my university therapist that I think we could have had some sort of relationship had we met under different circumstances. We have had conversations about it, and she says she felt connected to me in our first session. I felt the same way. In fact, I was so comfortable with her that I felt like I could challenge her and argue with her in the third session, and she seemed to appreciate it. In our fourth session she said she wanted to be a source of unconditional love for me, which at the time I thought sounded completely mad, but looking back now I think we both knew what we were about to get ourselves into.

With my private therapist I'm not really sure, because unlike my uni therapist I think she has a "therapist persona" and is quite possibly a different person in "real life". I also don't really know that much about her, but we do seem to have the same opinions on a lot of things, and I know we grew up in similar families and that neither of us want to live our lives like that. So I think we definitely understand each other.

[Salmon77]

I think we'd have been friendly acquaintances but not close friends, if we'd met in school or something. I don't think we really have a ton of common interests.

[Sarmas]

My T and I are very different and she hates my daily activities and habits. I thinks she generalizes and stereotypes and then places me in that circle. Sometimes you can hear it in her tone of voice as well. It's almost as if she had some unresolved issues and my lifestyle triggers it. Just my thought.

[ruh roh]

I don't befriend anyone, so I guess this would be no. But I think we would get along well in a non-therapy setting. I like her, and we have similar views on some things that are really important to me and seem to be equally important to her.

But it sounds like you mainly want to know if your therapist cares about you as a person, not just as a client? In my case, I think that's too hard to ever know.

[speckofdust]

I think my T and I would get along well and could have fun if we hung out together. I doubt we would have met outside of therapy, though. Just don't run in the same circles or live in the same part of town. I sometimes wish I could know more about her as a "regular" person, but I know it can never happen, so I don't think about it much.

[Chummy2]

I don't really wonder about that. But I don't think me and PrevT would be friends. She's only 3 years older, but I think we're very different. I don't know much about her, what she likes and such. She seem much more out there. She talks easily. I've seen her interact with the other T's who works at the practise and it looks so easy. I'm not like that at all. Say if I had met her in school, we could have hang out in a group while at school, but just me and her, no.
I wonder how she was as a teenager and as a student. I wonder if she was one of the populair girls or even a bit of a mean girl or that she was just kind to anyone.

And I don't think I would be friends with current T. She 13 years older than me.

[Pain94]

Thank you for the answers. Struggling with those questions. Wrote him an email, sent and then re read it. Scared for the response. I know he cares, but it feels vulnerable to it is wonder if it is just because I'm a client.

[CameraObscura]

I don't think so. We're different ages. If we met through some group or something, I think we'd get along well in context, but probably not become close friends outside of that.

[ThisWayOut]

We might have met up in certain circles, but I doubt we'd be friends. While I like and respect my t as a t, I'm not sure we'd mesh as friends if for nothing else than the age gap (over 30 years).

[Bipolar Warrior]

I'm actually a bit confused now - I'm not sure whether the question is if I would like to be friends with my therapist, or if my therapist would have wanted to be my friend? Or if I think we could have become friends under different circumstances?

My university therapist is the same age as my mother, so I'm not sure we would have been friends, exactly, but I think we would have gotten along well, and could have had some kind of relationship, like if we met through riding or something. I've always liked to spend time with people who are older than me, as I feel I can relate to them more than my peers.

I can't really think of a reason why I would ever meet my private therapist in real life. She's maybe 15 years older than me or something, but has two children and a completely different life. Pretty sure we'd never have met if she weren't my therapist. My response to the poll was with my uni therapist in mind.

I don't think that my T and I would have had a close relationship like we have now if we had met in other circumstances. We might have enjoyed chatting about things, but we would have been like two ships passing in the night, barely noticing each other.