Attachment to therapist

I'm very attached. I haven't told him, but I'm sure he knows.
I told him I love him

I am very attached to my T. We talk about it a lot. It used to bother me, but I now understand that to move past my trauma, I need that secure attachment to him. I have phases when I worry he will abandon me, but I always tell him how I'm feeling & he reassures me & we find the root & try & put things into perspective in the present.

I'm attached too, never thought I would be, then a couple of months innit hit me hard, got me scared and got me confused! I don't like the feeling of relying and depending on another person, because in my experience you are setting yourself up to be hurt when feelings are involved!
I have talked in session quite a bit about it, minus saying the words attachment. She has taken it all in her stride, well appears to have, and that does somewhat reassure me, however I'm still scared of being abandoned.
I think I need to talk to her abit more about it in all honesty but i hate that I seem to need constant reassurance regarding this topic. Thankfully she's always been very patient with me.

I am certainly attached to him, but not to the point where I lose sleep over it or something similar.
He knows about it. He neither encourages nor discourages it. It's just the way it is, and if I feel the need to talk about it, we can go over it. But he does try to make sure that I do not feel like I need to worry about him suddenly abandoning me and can feel safe instead of just scared (the latter is usually the case with people I get attached to).

I really identify with you over the 'abandonment' issue. I've found telling my T just how I feel, really, really helps. It takes you to your 'original' abandonment, which is really painful, but does put it in the 'here & now' & shows you where that feeling really comes from.

Yes, looking at the relationship 6 years is a long time and I have told her lately that I feel I need more time for termination. It pooped up because she changes her therapy hours the next couple of weeks...her response was:

Therapy will end in 6 month, you will have the last remaining month to get over it and find someone new!

Honestly I would not well I would never choose someone again who is closed up, never says anything to anything e.g. weather, books, fav. color etc...and I would never choose someone who would practice attachment theory!

Hope you are okay

I suppose I am, but it's not something that's part of my therapy. My therapist makes it clear that this is her job and that she serves a professional purpose. So it gets painful, but that's just how it is. Knowing this does not make it any easier.

I should clarify by "losing sleep over him" I don't mean I'm sitting up all night dreaming of him but rather, I worry about losing him one day.... the "end" is always at the forefront of my thoughts. it terrifies me more than he realizes

The thing is one day he will hurt you by moving away, being sick or can´t see you anymore. I don´t think all therapist prepare their clients enough and I can´t stress this enough to bring this up a lot in session

I am hella attacked to my therapist and he knows alllllllll about it. He says it's normal and we are working with it

ya we have discussed it often, he reassures me that he wont terminate me, it only ends when I'm ready.....

and he has no intention of moving, he loves the area. he has been sick before but gave me the next day he had open, which was 2 days later.

i dont wanna think about one day of him never being in my life anymore but my stupid mind always does anyway. although he has also told me, i can always come back and see him. even if 5 yrs pass, he will see me again if i need it

Attached **** but I'm not opposed to attacking him at times. And he knows about that too

I am so sorry my experience is so different this what "we" should believe and feel in order to say everything and then once you said a lot like 5 - 6 years down the line they must and will terminate you, they are only human and get also attached and need to close off with someone.

Yes I am, and I love it. My T is very dependable and trustworthy and she definitely knows about the attachment and is open talking about it anytime. Sometimes I need some re-assurance and she gives it when I need, but not promising anything she can not keep. I can manage without her too, I am not jealous of her or want more of her than I can get. I mean I don't want to be her friend or child or something else. I am just very happy I have this wonderful, solid professional on my side and I am happy about the secure and feel good attachment in our great relationship.

I used to be extremely attached to my ex therapist.
I'm no longer attached to my current one. I'm a million times better and I'm currently on a therapy break and thinking of not going back because I no longer need therapy.

What happened in between? Well after being terminated I realized how absolutely unhealthy this all was. I think this is the main problem of a lot of people on this forum: they expect impossible things from their T. I see so many posters being all "I want to be my T's favourite!" or "I want my T to love me!"

Expecting love from a paid stranger is insane. Therapists have real people they care about, family, friends.
That doesn't mean they can't appreciate a client but expecting more than that is a recipe for disaster. It's perfectly normal to want love but looking for it in therapy is imo misguided and the source of a lot of pain. Look for love in your real life, with real people. But I guess that means reciprocity, give and take, etc. I think for some people love from a therapist is safer and more convenient because then they don't have to build real reciprocal relationships. Those relationships recquire time and effort. With a therapist they simply expect unconditional love without having to give anything back emotionally.
I know people will say "but my therapist loves me!" "But I'm special!"
Right. This forum is full of people who swore up and down that their therapist would never let them down and well, we saw how that turned out. What makes people think their situation is going to be different? It's pretty arrogant to assume that.

My recommandation would be to focus on creating a life that you want to live in instead of focusing on the relationship with someone who is paid to listen to you and who will stop seeing you once you stop paying. People here seem to forget this is a business relationship.
Therapy can absolutely be helpful as long as you come in with realistic expectations.

Ya know what? I was one of those people and all I have to say to you is:
You're 100% correct and it's the exact thing I've been trying to work on as far as establishing the life I want with the people I want

And I do agree on the "safer" aspect.

I think it would be more ethical if therapists stopped using the word "attachment" to refer to therapy relationships. It's emotional dependency with a paid actor. They like to associate therapy with the sanctity of parent-child and all that, but that's really nuts.

You must tell your T just how you feel. It's painful & if like me, you will cry, but talking about it really does help. You still need to work on your abandonment feelings & your T will support this with you. Your T will not rush you, so try not to catastrophising ( which I did!) Just keep bringing it up, as you feel these things.

Yep, I am attached to current T -- I've told her but she said it's hard to see it because I've been actively looking for other therapists. I don't think the one precludes the other but I haven't bothered to debate her on the point.

According to her, therapy is nothing but attachment -- giving people the sort of emotional experience (of being seen and "delighted in" [her favorite phrase]) they didn't have as a kid.

I don't buy all that -- for obvious reasons, there is only so far she will delight in my utter awesomeness before kicking me out when the next client comes in and so on.

But, I do think there is something to be said for having a connection -- attachment bond of sorts if you will -- to a therapist which allows me to say most anything (and I do think I can say most anything, as long as I'm okay with whatever whacky response she comes up with -- we can muddle through the weeds, as she put it).

At the same time, I don't think my attachment to her blinds me in any way to seeing her flaws as a therapist -- gawd knows there are enough of them as I never tire of pointing it out -- and consequently, looking to see if I can find someone who's sort of more skilled / a better fit for me.

So, as of now, if things were to not work out with her or we reached an impasse yet again, I do have another therapist who I've spoken to briefly, who I could easily see myself working with -- it'll be different and I'll grieve the loss of current T but it won't be impossible for me to do what I need to do in order to take care of my interests.

To sum up, yeah, I'm attached but not (at least I hope) in a way that blinds me to doing what is best for me (and not sticking around in unhealthy or at least unproductive situations).

I think the problem begins with therapists. Their behavior is endlessly ambiguous. Their mixed messages confuse the s**t out of people. It's a business relationship, but they really really do care about you and understand you, maybe more than others in your life. Some of them even profess to use "love" to heal, or to re-parent your wounded child. Then in next breath they caution you to not get the "wrong idea", I'm just your therapist. For fk's sake.

I agree people should not have the expectation that a therapy relationship will fill some intimacy void in any real way. In fact there's a good chance it will worsen that feeling. But therapists need to stop manipulating the masses with their freakish marketing and messaging. The whole freaking profession needs a thorough house cleaning and gutting. Most of them should close up shop and get a real job. Leave a few to counsel people in crisis. I digress...

That is extremely unrealistic for anyone to expect from some some clients. And I'm not talking about people with psychosis necessarily.

Honestly you seem bitter and resentful towards people who have good relationships with their therapists

Like I said, I *enjoy* being attached. I don't suffer from it. I don't have unrealistic expectations, I don't agonize over it, it is not ruining my life etc etc. I enjoy liking my T, trusting her and believing she is committed to our work together. Such relationship helps me tremendously to talk and process things I want to, trauma included. My relationship with my T and being attached to her has made me much stronger and happier outside therapy. Why it is such a bad thing to someone?

It really took the painful stuff of this implosion of my 'relationship' with t, to be able to see it for what it was on my part - emotional dependency - absolutely. Funny I guess how it (my attachment to her) worked for a long time - I made some really significant changes to myself during the almost 6 years and was feeling good enough to want to end, then after we started that working towards ending in November, it all imploded and apparently I have quit (with the exception of perhaps going back for one closure session), and I'm at a loss what the hell happened. But, the upside is, I now see how emotionally dependent I had become on her, which was definitely NOT healthy, and that comes from this insatiable need inside me for maternal approval, that I was getting from her as well, instead of learning to find that inside myself, bla bla bla, and I wish she had seen it and been able to work on it with me.

Incidentally I recently ran across an online quiz about "Childhood Emotional Neglect". I took the quiz and yeah. Describes me pretty well. Not something my t ever talked about. It's like, that emotional neglect on top of the other 'stuff' growing up, paved the way for this to happen with t.

Anyway I'm reading a book about healing from it now. It's interesting.

I've very much attached to me T. Without that attachment, I don't think I could trust her, and I don't think that I would be able to access the emotions and feelings I've been numbing for as long as I can remember.

She uses that attachment as part of the healing process. We talk about it as needed, but it's not the main focus of my therapy at this point.