Did I pick another emotionally unavailable woman in my therapist?

I have attachment issues. As with most folks, we can embody traits of all attachment styles, but my default mode is fearful avoidant.

I have a tendency to pick emotionally unavailable women in both a platonic and romantic way. If I can only get them to love me, then maybe I'll be worth something and ya know the rest.

Within the past month and a half, I realized that I had developed an attachment towards my former therapist. Now, after a therapy session gone wrong, I'm hunting for someone new; during that time of attending sessions, I had started to wonder if I just chose another emotionally unavailable woman, by way of her profession.
Although she admitted that she had told another therapist that she and I would be friends if I wasn't her client and disclosing the area where she lived and pondered if we'd get to run into each other (we lived in a mile from each other), we are not friends and will never be.

I'm not angry at her, but it's beginning to dawn on me that while I was worried about her well-being when she was sick, she knew I was struggling with panic attacks and saying things like, "Oh yeah, that's right...you had a panic attack last week didn't you?"

There I was, so worried about her, while I was an afterthought to her. And I get it...but why on earth did I think I was a special client to her?
She has an entire life I don't know about and will never know about.

It's no one's fault, of course. I'm just wondering, didn't I pick another emotionally unavailable woman to become attached to? I have people in my real life who I keep at arms length. And here I am, truly concerned about her. Doing my care taking thing that I do during those rare instances when I do get attached.

She fits the bill. The usual emotionally unavailable women I choose are all successful, fiery, ambitious, outgoing, charismatic, and very attractive. All are in leadership positions at their job. And all, emotionally unavailable to me.

I need to find a therapist to help me work on this.

Perhaps you should choose a male T?

Def been thinking about it

But don't you want a T to be somewhat emotionally unavailable? If they are sharing their feelings all over the place and getting too personal, you run the risk of your therapy being about them and not about you. In this sense, your T's lack of boundaries meant she was too available and thus not sufficiently focused on you and your experience. Good boundaries would prevent you from even being in a position to know enough about your T's life to worry about her. Nearly all of the time and attention during your sessions should be about you and your issuss. Plus, did she even bother to wonder how you felt before blurting out that you would be friends in a different context? That just seems so bizarre. Your (ex?-)T sounds kind of narcissistic and doesn't seem to have a good handle on how to put a lid on that in order to do her job.

Certainly, yes. I guess I find it funny that I did it again. I think this is why I'm leaning towards choosing a man for my next T, preferably one specialized in LGBTQ.

My friends and family call my former T seductive and egotistical; they kept saying, "It's like she wants you to want her in that way because she keeps your mind associated to her in a sexual way by talking about the strip club with you." At first I disagreed, however, I can see their point...now.

I told my former T, "I can't tell my mom that I'm emotionally attached to you as my therapist in any way. She'd get jealous."
Her reply was, "Oh, you can't tell her about us?"

The use of the term "us" had me stuttering. In the context of admitting to being attracted to a woman who looks like her and having much guilt and shame over the possibility that I might be attracted to my former T (because I was very sexually attracted to a woman who reminded me of her), I took the "us" comment the wrong way. It actually made me feel uneasy.

After a grueling session of discussing my strong sexual attraction to this woman who resembles her, she ended the session by telling me how she enjoys to go to strip clubs (for kicks, she said) and that she would have to visit the one I was talking about and asked if I had been to another local strip club that is all nude rather than topless. She told me I should read the Yelp reviews, as they were hilarious- including one where a guy wondered if he was gonna get "murder-raped" in that sketchy location. She asked me if it was alright if she took the her therapist business partner, someone I know as well. By this time, I was attached and in full care taking mode. I implored her to take some guys with them, because the crowd at the strip club could be rowdy.

In the next session, she ended it by telling me that while she was in school and working as a bartender, she had been approached by a strip club owner who saw her and offered a tryout to work the pole. "I could have had a much different career, (my name)."

At the end of the session after that, when I tried to separate the two women, she brought it back together. To her I said, "Well, maybe you and this woman don't look too much alike apart from your hairstyle." She laughed. "(My name), you know that we have much more in common besides our hairstyle!"

I stuttered and stammered. I kept having visions of this other woman who is a stripper and I've seen nearly nude and has performed lap dances for me in a very intimate setting. I then saw my former therapist this way when she said that. All I could think of to say was, "Anyways...onto a different subject." I was uncomfortable. And there were other examples, but those were within the past month or so.

Then again, I thought I was just reading too much into it. It was always very friendly between us.

i have issues with women, which is why my T is a man....

i would suggest it, best therapist i could of asked her, he is great.

I think being emotionally available is not equal to oversharing. Being emotionally available means (they way I understand it) that the person feels comfortable with his/her own emotions and thus is also comfortable with the other person's feelings and is able to go along with them, is able to empathise with a wide range of feelings including anger and rage. It doesn't necessarily mean sharing any of his feelings. In this sense, I would suggest picking someone who is emotionally available, although I don't have any good guidelines of how to spot one.

Oh, and I also have issues with women, which is the reason I have always (meaning twice) picked male therapist.

Sounds to me like she is too available. She shouldn't be disclosing she would consider you a friend, or wondering if you might run into each other.
My pdoc is unavailable. Shares zero about what he feels about me/us. Never speculates on a relationship outside of therapy. Certainly doesn't share where he lives.
Keeps an absolute no contact outside of therapy.
He is the only Pdoc/therapsist out of 17 I have seen that I feel absolutely safe with.

I wonder if a male T would be more advantageous at this time in your life.while you get the ground work laid. Maybe once you have better coping mechanisms you could consider facing your relationships with women.

I know I am incapable of working with a female T.

Def thinking a male T would be better for me.

I have read your other thread as well. To me, the primary issue that appears with this T is not necessarily around emotional availability, but maturity. She also sounds inexperienced in a few ways. Perhaps an older man who is interested and skilled in LGBT issues? You could also tell him about the attachment stuff in your first consultation, see how he responds to it. That is what I would do at least.

From your description, I have to say that your therapist is not handling herself very professionally. She shouldn't have discussed with you what goes on in her imagination in regards to her relationship with you, as well as what she has been discussing during her professional consultations with a colleague.

I am not in a position to form an opinion on whether the situation with this therapist is a continuation of your life pattern of choosing emotionally unavailable women. Knowing a little bit about how human mind works, I can assume that it's possible that this is the case. At the same time, not knowing you personally I'd be irresponsible of me to state definitively whether this is or isn't the case. And, I don't think anyone can make that judgment on this forum.

Whether this is the case or not, what I CAN say is that it's unlikely that this therapist you are currently seeing will help you understand the particular life pattern you are talking about. If such pattern exists, with the therapist like the one you've described, it would be acted out once again rather than understood and put into perspective. So, if you want to understand this particular dynamic in your life, the better choice of a therapist would be someone who, by design, would not be able to become a part of this pattern. In this case, that would be a male therapist, as someone here suggested.