What does the therapist get out of the "therapeutic relationship"?

Sense of purpose? Finding meaning in life?? It's a job.. All in all. Most people find their work fulfilling and receive a sense of purpose from it

Yes - but in most jobs, people actually do something. Therapists, from what I have seen, just sit there and have people them credit for no good reason.

I think they find it fulfilling because they get love and gratitude without having to do anything and when they don't - they get to blame the client.

I don't agree that is the case across the board

True, but pushing it back further, there is still a why question as to why this particular thing gives him/them a sense of purpose. I mean, why not wielding a jackhammer on a construction site instead?

Eta: if most people find their work fulfilling, then saying "my work is fulfilling" is kind of meaningless without a broader context.

I know of other jobs where people don't do much--doctors and lawyers do stuff people can do on their own or where they do do things, they get it wrong and eff people up in ways a therapist can't even touch. I think the only professions with close to anything of a guarantee are trades--plumbers, mechanics, electricians.

I think it's what people are drawn to that gives it meaning to them or that they find fulfilling, so it's a personal thing.

And money. They get love, adoration, and money to just sit there indoors with little to no math or heavy lifting.

But the profession itself has created a "wounded healer" theory that applies to a decent number of therapists. So there seems to be a type, at least one type, that is drawn to the profession. My point is, even if individual reasons might be personal to them, we can still build a general theory.

Eta: also having been screwed over by both a doctor and a psychiatrist + two therapists within a year or so, I find the latter's behavior much worse. Only death or disability (of one sort or another, from opioid addiction to the loss of a limb) could have made the doctor's behavior worse than theirs.

I don't see the question is being who can mess you up more a therapist or some other professions. My point was that other professions actually do stuff (operate on you, give you shots, file lawsuits, draft documents, etc) and therapists do not do anything other than sit there. Whether those other professions do their stuff well or not is a whole other question. ( i'm not even arguing that I shouldn't be able to give myself my own inoculations and that more people shouldn't represent themselves in court -when I see someone wants to go pro say I say have at it and god knows, I do all sorts of stuff that the medical profession goes out of its way to try to prevent)

The first one I see has admitted she wants to be loved more than once and more than one context.

Current T said it's because she likes to listen to people's stories. And, she also said she has family of origin stuff. Plus, she has Alice Miller lying around. So yeah.

Having said all that, I think there is a certain tendency (in general among Ts) to want the relationship to be as smooth as possible and avoid conflict or take on any real blame. In this, I don't think they are any different / more enlightened than the general population.

My T does a lot more than just "sit there." When we do EMDR, she has to know when to stop and start the buzzers by closely observing my movements. Same with SE. She's very aware of my body language and notices how I'm breathing or fidgeting. She has used touch in various ways, and has set up fingerpainted and other art supplies. She lends me books she thinks are helpful and emails links to articles sometimes. She doesn't just sit there and listen to me though often she does. She and I have a partnership to help me.

As far as what my T gets out of it, she wants to help people in their individual journeys through life. She has suffered losses herself so she understands grief. She mentioned once that her own stuff was part of the reason she became a T. She's a very compassionate and upbeat person who tries to help others see the beauty in life. I know she's happy when I make progress so I think she feels good when she makes a difference in someone's life.

The "boxed in" comment in context is just baffling to me. I'd have sat there wondering if the T had somehow failed to understand what I was asking.

I have actually said the words "Jesus, [T's name.] Write that down somewhere. Prominently" in response to his forgetting something and did not have to hear about how that made him feel about our relationship.

I'm not really a T expert from personal experience, but from what I've read here I get the sense some just can't stand being put on the spot. Nobody likes to **** up, but maybe some get so accustomed to retreating into therapeutic distance or working ****-ups into convoluted psych theory that they really can't stand their own ****-ups.

Uh my t does heavy lifting - he pulls me out of the stupid chair at the end of session, and helps me off the floor when i break one. But i figure thats on him. So yeah.

Well, how do you do therapy, @@? Arent you one of the "im not here to have a relationship" cohort? But i think your t IS there to have a relationship, and she is telling you how she FEEEEELS. But you dont want to let her have feelings, you want her to be a vending machine. You put in a quarter, she remembers this fact. Only you are allowed to have feelings. Or maybe not even you.

Other people really are not that "official". Even ts. We can treat them like non-humans, but that is just perpetuating what has been done to us. The plan in t is to learn to treat people like humans.

I have seen nothing that would lead to the conclusion that the point of therapy has to be to treat people like humans. I doubt this is an issue for most clients. It is not a problem for me in real life and I have not seen it as a problem for most people I come into contact with.

I think that is making a huge assumption that all people hire a therapist for the same reason.
They can have their feelings - but not on my time or dime.

I can understand being hurt that your therapist forgot that. I would have felt hurt too.

Therapists, even good therapists, sometimes forget seemingly important things. My therapist forgot that I no longer drink alcohol, for example. Even though we had discussed how difficult that was for me.

I guess it's hard to know what to think of your therapist's "boxed in" comment without knowing more about tone of voices and how it all went down. If you were really angry and/or emotional about her forgetting, and basically told her "you have to remember this no matter what in the future or our relationship will be destroyed," I could see the therapist feeling like they were being set up for an impossible standard to meet. Because people are human. They forget things. It just is going to happen.

What if you had just expressed your hurt feeling about it being forgotten without explicitly saying, "Don't forget in the future." Why did you feel the need to say that part of it?

I have had people make the "walking on eggshells" comment to me. I guess I can only say how I reacted, which is to try to be non-defensive and really listen to it. That's how I was coming across to them, like I might blow up at any moment. More than one therapist has had that reaction to me. So, you know, it's useful information, potentially.

For the original question, my therapist has said that he feels it's an honor to walk with clients on their journey, so to speak. I think he really does feel that way. He feels special when a client shares with him things so private that very few people or no one get to hear. From our relationship, he says that I'm a light, that I'm enjoyable to be around, that he looks forward to our hour.

He doesn't seem wounded to me. He seems very balanced and stable. He never gets angry. He has never expressed that I have any kind of negative effect on him, THANK GOODNESS, because that would totally destroy our relationship.

I do not recall asking for advice from anyone in the OP. I asked a theoretical question.

And - I don't think the woman gets to burden me with how she feels. She was hired to give me support through the divorce and the Smaug complaint. I use her for support for the divorce/healing from abuse and she decides to forget a key fact about me that is painful and then pretend she didn't? Uh uh. She doesn't get to do that.

And you know what? I do treat people like humans. Remember we first became friends on here because I thanked and hugged your posts when other people didn't? And you said no one had done that for you before.

I treated two loser husbands like humans. I did nothing to merit some rather inhuman treatment from Smaug. 2 and 3. And I did nothing to deserve CW trying to shift stuff onto me. But by all means, blame me. Like this wasn't painful enough already.

So with all due respect, una, you are way out of line here.

I made it very clear in the op that I did not ask for promises. I did not say it angrily. I pointed out to her I had not asked for a promise; she agreed, and it still made her feel boxed in.

My objection to walking on eggshells is that therapists use the same phrase to describe abusive relationships.

But all this is in the op. Maybe you should go back and read it. Note the absence of any request for advice for my situation.

I did read your OP. Even having read the OP, I felt the tone of the exchange was not conveyed.

You said I should "note the absence of any request for advice." Actually, I didn't offer you any unsolicited advice.

Basically, I tried to empathize with how hurt you felt, asked a question about how you responded, and shared some of my own experience with "walking on eggshells" and having things be forgotten by therapists.

And you seem pretty angry at me. Your response was to get angry at me.

True. I let my anger at another poster carry on over to you. I apologize.

But, I did not ask for any advice at all. I asked a theoretical question. Which is what most posters have responded to.

And what irritated me about your response was you made assumptions about me. Do you think I haven't thought about whether the walking on eggshells comment applies to me? Yeah, I have. It is one of my greatest fears that I will turn into future ex. I made it clear that I was not interested in the substance of the comment, but whether a therapist should even be saying it since they usually use it in one context.

ATAT, whilst I believe there is no such thing as true altruism, and I think that - as many others have said - therapists get satisfaction from working with clients in various ways, just like any person doing a job that they enjoy does...

I don't believe the therapeutic relationship should ever be about the therapist and their needs, and I don't believe they should ever share their feelings and thoughts unless it is intended to help the client in some way.

I'm horrified by what CW did. I would be furious - in fact, I am furious, on your behalf. Your request was totally understandable and the only appropriate response, really, would have been to accept it and apologise for forgetting something so important to you. To make it all about her is... well, it's utter bulls**t. Seriously unbelievable that she could try to make you feel that it was somehow unfair to her.

My Pdoc, works specifically with addicts, so had a seriously tough job cos most of us are seriously damaged goods.
He is eternally inquisitive about the human condition, he never gets bored of trying to understand the complexities that put us where we are.
Outside of that, once he clocks out I know he doesn't give his job a second thought.

I like that, the fact that he can compartmentalize so well means he never gets burned out, muddled, he never gets bothered if I skip appointments, and never gets stressed or upset, with my persistent intellectual arguments, and avoidance in quitting my habit.

I like the comments, like yours and AY's and I think LT's, that suggest some therapists get some intellectual satisfaction from the job - not in the sense of they know what to do and the client doesn't, but in the sense that they're curious about human nature in general.

And compartmentalization is a very good thing in a lot of service professions.

While I am a giant fan of compartmentalization - I am not sure I would give that as the reason why one of those people would not be bothered by a client. I consider them not getting bothered as being evidence of decent boundaries and recognition of autonomy - the client's life does not belong to those people - what a client chooses to do or not do is up to the client not a therapist. I think it is rare to find a therapist who can do it.