Attachment to therapist

Jul 31, 2017, 11:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stopdog

I don't think the forum pathologizes normal human behavior nearly as much as I think therapists are the ones who do.

I agree with you there, but it's so many of us here that feed off of it. We have the perfect opportunity on forums to affect change, but we miss the opportunity. One example is the phrase, computer stalking. Looking up available information on the computer about a therapist has become a pathology. It boggles my mind.

Mike_J · Jul 31, 2017, 01:41 PM

I have proposed to my therapist, does that count as being attached? And I'm such a great guy can you believe she turned me down? She was polite about it but still.

BudFox · Jul 31, 2017, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stopdog

I don't think the forum pathologizes normal human behavior nearly as much as I think therapists are the ones who do.

When things go according to their liking they use words like "attachment" and "transformation", and pat each other on the back for being so totally amazing.

When things go badly they call it "transference" and blame the client's pathologies.

lucozader · Jul 31, 2017, 02:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Myrto

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.

Myrto... You've been very kind to me before regarding my feelings about/attachment to my T, and I guess that's partly why I feel kind of hurt by this. Your tone comes across as quite judgemental to me.

It's great that you escaped from attachment as you did, but you can only speak for yourself. You can't tell us what is happening for us. I don't expect my T to love me, or want to be his favourite - at least not on any rational level. I'm not demanding anything from him. I am well aware of what his role is and what he can and can't provide me with. Knowing that doesn't change my feelings.

It's also not the case for me that I am attached to him because I am lonely or unfulfilled in my life or relationships. I have plenty of loving relationships with friends and family. My life is busy and interesting. My reasons for being attached are different to yours, and I expect everyone has their own particular reasons. I don't relate to your theories about not being able to handle a give/take relationship and I'm somewhat offended by that assumption.

DodgersMom · Jul 31, 2017, 02:44 PM

Myrto...

I just am curious why therapists are not "real people"?

Yes we all know they have lives outside us, people they care about etc... that still does not make many of our feelings any less real.

This forum overall is very negative, I've brought up many of my concerns related to this forum to my T... he is always telling me to make sure I bring stuff up, He is not every other therapist, every story is different. I need to focus on our story. So that's what I am trying to do, and what everyone should do.

It comes down to the client and their T..... how they feel about this, how they work it out,etc is up to them. Every one of us will have a different way things unfold...

I am 100% sure my feelings are real. I don't have to KNOW someone extremely well to wish we could be friends. Hell, I've known people for years who are friends to a degree, and I don't know that much about them. Sometimes we just hang out for game nights etc.

Anyway this thread turned really sad.... it is starting to come down to making people feel bad/wrong for having attachment issues and that is not ok.

junkDNA · Jul 31, 2017, 03:15 PM

I don't feel bad about it

Myrto · Jul 31, 2017, 03:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lucozader

Myrto... You've been very kind to me before regarding my feelings about/attachment to my T, and I guess that's partly why I feel kind of hurt by this. Your tone comes across as quite judgemental to me.

It's great that you escaped from attachment as you did, but you can only speak for yourself. You can't tell us what is happening for us. I don't expect my T to love me, or want to be his favourite - at least not on any rational level. I'm not demanding anything from him. I am well aware of what his role is and what he can and can't provide me with. Knowing that doesn't change my feelings.

It's also not the case for me that I am attached to him because I am lonely or unfulfilled in my life or relationships. I have plenty of loving relationships with friends and family. My life is busy and interesting. My reasons for being attached are different to yours, and I expect everyone has their own particular reasons. I don't relate to your theories about not being able to handle a give/take relationship and I'm somewhat offended by that assumption.

I'l sorry you feel jugded by my post. I can assure you I wasn't thinking about your case when I wrote my post. None of it applies to you. But you can't deny that several people on this very forum ARE expecting love from their therapist and want to be their favourite. My point is that it's very likely that it will end badly. Sure there are exceptions. But they're that: exceptions. A lot of people in therapy tend to lack other sources of support and are pretty isolated. This isn't a judgment: I used to be that way too. But relying solely on a therapist for support and emotional needs often leads to dependency and even enmeshment. Again, you only need to read this forum to see plenty of cases like that.

Myrto · Jul 31, 2017, 03:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DodgersMom

Myrto...

I just am curious why therapists are not "real people"?

Yes we all know they have lives outside us, people they care about etc... that still does not make many of our feelings any less real.

This forum overall is very negative, I've brought up many of my concerns related to this forum to my T... he is always telling me to make sure I bring stuff up, He is not every other therapist, every story is different. I need to focus on our story. So that's what I am trying to do, and what everyone should do.

It comes down to the client and their T..... how they feel about this, how they work it out,etc is up to them. Every one of us will have a different way things unfold...

I am 100% sure my feelings are real. I don't have to KNOW someone extremely well to wish we could be friends. Hell, I've known people for years who are friends to a degree, and I don't know that much about them. Sometimes we just hang out for game nights etc.

Anyway this thread turned really sad.... it is starting to come down to making people feel bad/wrong for having attachment issues and that is not ok.

Therapists are not real people to me because they're not part of my life. That is why I go to see a therapist: because they can be objective about my situation and have no stakes in my life. For some people it can be a relief to not have to care about your therapist, to just go in, talk and then leave. If you think your feelings are real and are happy with your therapeutic relationship, then why care about what I think? I guess I'll stop posting about this because 1) people don't want to hear about it and 2) it's really not much skin off my nose what people do in their therapy. All I was offering was a warning, based on the many hurt people of this forum.

DodgersMom · Jul 31, 2017, 04:55 PM

^ I was more or less wondering why you said that, it made it seem like they are not humans worth feelings etc... and they are, just as much as everyone else.... don't much care what you think on it, just wanted to know what you meant by that specific part

stopdog · 09:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Myrto

Therapists are not real people to me because they're not part of my life. That is why I go to see a therapist: because they can be objective about my situation and have no stakes in my life. For some people it can be a relief to not have to care about your therapist, to just go in, talk and then leave. If you think your feelings are real and are happy with your therapeutic relationship, then why care about what I think?

I completely agree. I have no idea why people (anywhere - not just here) get defensive and personally worked up just because someone has a different view. I don't mind disagreeing and discussion - but if you are going to get all upset because I don't believe what you believe, it seems a waste of energy. Why bother at all with what I believe - it has no bearing on any other person here.

I also think it prudent to remember therapists are often ****ed up people in their real lives. There are certainly plenty of examples in their own literature on this.

stopdog · Jul 31, 2017, 08:51 PM

There are books on attachment -but they are from the therapist's perspective

precaryous · Jul 31, 2017, 09:08 PM

I don't feel attachment is a disorder.

And I don't believe looking up the therapist online necessarily is a pathology.

Pennster · Aug 01, 2017, 08:13 AM

I feel attached to my therapist, but this feels totally normal to me - I'm attached to several people in my life. It's not something I worry about. Though I have worried that he'll die suddenly as I've had several traumatic losses in my life like that.

He's totally a real person in my life, just like everyone else. For me, paying him doesn't make him unreal. (But then I've never understood the way people talk about school for example, as not being "the real world". Every aspect of my life is real to me.) I have a lot of friends and loving family members, but I look for something different from my therapist- I have a lot of grieving and trauma to work through, and I need real help with that from someone who understands how that affects the mind, and who can help me navigate through the pain of this without getting caught up in it personally.

To answer the OP, I've never felt the need to tell him explicitly as I think it's pretty obvious. He has written about attachment in his books as being a normal and natural aspect of human relationship.

WrkNPrgress · 09:19 AM

I have a bit to say about this as I am just now realizing how deeply attached I am to my therapist. She moved away this week and It wasn't until I knew she was leaving that the reality of this attachment hit me. I've always knew I had a crush/attachment/transference but it didn't bother me because I figured I knew what it was and why. I knew I was in a thirsty place becaus of my relationship and needy because of my Mom, etc. I figured I had it all figured out. Ha! We talked about it a couple sessions before our last. I told her that I was attached and this seems to be a pattern of me 'obsessing' over other people in order to avoid looking at myself and my own life —

But man does the reality of it all come home when that person goes away. You can't protect yourself by intellectualizing this stuff. I am learning a lot and the loss of this person and that grief has really struck a chord - that ties directly to the core 'hurting' parts of me. This is the grief that ties all the way back to my childhood, disconnected mother, and premature infancy. So yeah, it's so cliché. Textbook and T used to say, "You need a mom" when I felt broken down, and "this is your Mom/Grama" when I felt criticized or depressed. All of this was discussed before. But where as before it was more of an academic exercise. Now I can really FEEL IT now. It's clear as day.

It's a big lesson and a very hard one but I'm growing from it. I am determined to see how this affects all of my relationships in life. How it affects my self-worth, and all of these core issues that I feel have held me back my whole life. I am determined to learn as much as I can from this pain and grow stronger because of it.

So yeah, attachment happens. How it affects you and what you learn from it is hard but if you can make it a lesson, that can be real change.

WrkNPrgress · Aug 01, 2017, 09:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BayBrony

I also don't get finding everything in yourself. Not everything can be found in yourself. For maternal approval you need a mother figure
For warm sibling like bonding you need close friends
To experience care taking you need to take care of someone or something
We are social creatures and are fulfilled by relationship
My T and i are working on the maternal thing right now. The idea as she puts it isn't to mother myself all the time. It's ok to get maternal care taking or approval from others.
But i need a strong enough sense of myself and my own self worth to take the nourishment from the approval etc, WITHOUT being broken or crushed by the inevitable rejection or indifference out there. To know I am worthy of love whether this maternal person loves me or not

I don't want to be finding everything in myself all the time. Then what is the point of sharing life with others??? But i also want to love myself no m atter what the other people do

This is so perfect. Thank you. I was just trying to figure this out for myself. Where the line is between healthy 'need' or attachment and how much of this I can learn and internalize for myself.

I feel like sometimes we hear the goal of therapy is to get to a point where one is totally self-sufficient and doesn't need any external validation or support - but that's simply not human. It seems the goal is more about how to relate to the people we do have in a better way.

thank you

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