Secure attachment to T

It's 8 years! How can I still not have a secure attachment to my T? Also, does it really transfer over to other people in my life? I see that happening somewhat. I just don't quite understand how I'm supposed to get the secure attachment. I know T cares about me and it's genuine. But I'm still her job and she's enabling the connection to help me. She cares AND or BECAUSE I'm her job? Or both?

I can't speak to your experience, but I can share mine and hope it helps.

I have a secure attachment to my T. I've had to fight for it, but it's there. For me, it truly is the "secure base" feeling. I feel like the attachment itself isn't what transfers to other people, but I feel that because I have the attachment to her - that I know I have her to fall back on - I am more brave/feel stronger to explore things in my past as well as to take risks in getting closer to people in my relationship circles. If something goes wrong, I find myself running back to my secure base - to my T - for her comfort and help in figuring out what to do or how to fix it, but after I'm settled and feel better, I can go back out and try again.

I know all t/client relationships are different, so I can't speak for you and your T, but for me and mine...I think it's an AND situation. Would I be attached to her if I wasn't her job? No. Do I feel like she manipulated me by therapy tricks into becoming attached to her? No. I think what started as pure "job" stuff developed into a real relationship (within the boundaries of the T relationship). I feel like my T cares about me and I care about her. I DO feel like it is very real, it just happens within the boundaries of a specified type of relationship. I don't feel like I'm feeling 'real' things and hers are not. It's just a boundaried relationship. If you think about it, even friendships are a type of boundaried relationships. Even with my best friends, there are private things about my relationship with my husband that I do not share. There is a boundary there. Boundaries do not mean 'not real'. Paying is for the time and expertise, not the caring.

Good luck figuring it out!

Who says you don't have a secure attachment to your T? Attachment is just like everything else, it isn't either/or, but degrees that may ebb and flow over any period of time. Yes, there's a difference between a secure attachment and not, but it's not just a feeling in my opinion, it's also action. I think if you quit and restart therapy over and over, miss sessions when it's not part of your plan for yourself (i.e. because she didn't respond to your email or text or something), then maybe there's some insecure attachment at work. But I read a lot of your threads and I don't see how you are not securely attached, both in the warm feelings you have for your T and in your reliable showing up to therapy.

I don't get it.

I guess I'm confused. You have plainly stated you are not in this to "change" anything and that you have found a use, even if not what someone would say is conventional. She gives you warm feelings and you appear to find some things easier with her support. To me this all sounds like a good attachment or relationship.

As well even if some of what she does is because she is paid then so what? You enjoy it and she helps. It's possibly a better relationship than friends, why not enjoy it as it is?

More later, but T TOLD me yesterday that I don't have a secure attachment with her, but I'm getting there. I will have to ask her about it again. I felt bad when she said it yesterday but I know she is probably right.

If my T had said that to me, I'd want to know what a secure attachment looks like. I might also want to know how it would benefit me to have the "secure attachment" that T is looking for. How would I feel or behave differently, if my attachment was "secure."

I'm not sure a "secure attachment" is, like, an accomplishment. I don't think it is something you should feel bad about.

I do, generally, think that things I've worked on in therapy related to interpersonal issues do transfer over to other relationships. Or, said another way, my interpersonal relationships have improved over the course in therapy, partly because I've become more self aware and partly because I've been willing to do things differently with others due to my understandings about myself developed in therapy.

I tend to agree with Anne here: I don't see attachment as some "thing" to "get." Nor do I see the point in striving for it, even if it were possible to do so consciously. At times, it seems like more of a distraction for you from looking more deeply at yourself and how you choose to live your life. What is it that you think will be achieved by gaining such an attachment? What is it in your life that will be possible for you once this point is reached?

My experience has been that therapy only impacts life outside therapy when accompanied by steps taken outside of therapy. The t/client relationship can be the tool, but it isn't the goal. You've stated pretty clearly that you neither expect nor desire your life/self to change. Supportive therapy is fine, yet you seem dissatisfied with that as a rationale; so what is the therapy reward for you?

I have attachment towards my T, but it's not secure. I used to. So I know in my experience that how my relationship with my T is seeps into my "real life." If I don't feel connected with her, I find very little (if any) connection IRL. It sucks.

Thanks. Your post makes sense. That is how I usually feel about my relationship with my T. She has told me many times it is real, but I start to question it when she brings up how the goal is to have that kind of relationship with people in my life. I know my relationships with friends are deeper since therapy. I want that but want to keep T in my life too.

Thanks, Anne. My T explained that a secure attachment means the person knows the other is there for them, there are good feelings of love and caring, and they can hold onto those feelings. She said more but I forgot. Maybe I should record my sessions or at least when she's talking because I forget so much. I will ask her exactly why she thinks my attachment to her is still insecure. Maybe because when she does or says something that triggers me, I worry that our relationship changed in some way.

I do enjoy my relationship with my T but I didn't mean I didn't want to change anything about me. I think I posted that I didn't want to give up the way I feel about my T. Stopdog is the person who says she has found a use for her T that is unconventional. I would never make such a statement! I start questioning my therapy when I read too many negative threads on this forum. T tells me not to read them, and that she will not abandon me. If she retires or moves, she will give me plenty of time to discuss it with her, and she won't cut off contact.

I think secure attachment was discussed in other threads and I wondered if the heartmates feeling was what it feels like. I know T talks about not having a secure attachment to my mother, so I assumed she was trying to enable me to have one with her so I could gain more of a sense of Self. I'm pretty sure it IS a goal, at least for me.

I didn't bring up secure attachment. My T has talked about it as a goal because I didn't have it with my mother. I obviously am not writing clearly enough on here. I never meant I didn't want to make any changes in my life. I just don't want to think of my relationship with my T as merely a business arrangement. I want the heartmates feeling, which probably brings me back to wanting and needing a secure attachment to my T. She wants me to carry it over to others in my life, like my friends.

I'm sorry you don't have a secure attachment to your T. I wish there were a way for you to regain it. Does your T know that you still feel awful about her taking things away from you?

I don't think I have a secure attachment with my T. It's probably as close as it's ever going to get. But hey, that's my attachment style. I'm aware of it so I can mitigate the way my patterns of relating negatively impact on other relationships. I'm okay with not having a secure attachment.

I don't understand the "heartmates" thing. Seems childish. Or like trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. Anyways...

I think you do have a secure attachment to your T. I think you are actually insecure with yourself. Those insecurities you project onto your T when something triggers you.

I can finally say I have a secure attachment to my T. Of course, I have insecurities due to my past, and I too get triggered and project it onto my T. She knows this. She just reassures me, has me recount our times together, and reminds me it was all in the past. Then I go back to feeling secure with her again.

I guess you need to separate the past from the present. Old you, new you. Triggers, reality. If you're not triggered, you trust your T, right? And triggers come from the past. So the reality is that you do trust your T.

I never understood what attachment styles were until therapy with this T. Then I read the book, Attachment in Psychotherapy. My T talked about my early attachment issues when we discussed my problems in relationships. She told me my attachment to my mother was probably if the type called preoccupied, not secure. She may have implied, or directly told me that having a secure attachment to her would help me have a better sense of self and make up for what I didn't get as a child.

I just read the article Stopdog posted in the "sticky" section of this forum. I usually don't read those articles. This one is excellent! I see that my T is doing everything recommended to enable me to have a secure attachment style rather than preoccupied. The article states that our brains can be changed, something T has told me for years. Her focus on mind/body stuff and mindfulness/meditation is recommended. Preoccupied attachment goes along with anxiety, and that's me!

Thank you. I agree with most of your post but no disrespect-- I am going to believe my T when she says I don't yet have a secure attachment to her and not anyone in this forum! I trust her but I can still have preoccupied attachment.

About heartmates being childish. I think it's child-like, not child ISH. Again, my T is helping to provide the same, secure feeling I didn't have as a child. I asked if she would have chosen a different word ( I told her the suggestions from my thread); she smiled and said "I like heartmates."

So I will ask her next session what it will look like when I have a secure attachment to her. She told me some of it on Wednesday but it did seem like I feel most of what she said. Hence my questioning about secure attachment. I'm glad you have a secure attachment to your T.

i disagree w Scarlet in that if you are not secure with yourself, you still can be secure with others. I feel like that is a basic premise in attachment. My relationship with my best friend is about as secure as I can imagine it being. I pretty much know that she won’t ever stop being my friend, but even after 18 years (OMG), 7 of which we lived together, I still can jump to the place where I have finally pushed her over the edge and she will be done with me. That is my insecurity talking. Mine is fearful-avoidant, so i default to that when I am worried about our relationship. I know there are many different types of relationships one has, and differing levels of attachment security depending on that relationship, but i think the more vulnerable you are in a relationship, the easier and quicker you can devolve into your insecure attachment patterns.

Rainbow-i agree that you aren’t secure in your attachment with your T. If you were, you wouldn’t always be so preoccupied (used this term specifically ) with all the minutia of the relationship with your T. You wouldn’t spiral down just bc she said she has a family thing and won’t tell you what it is, or feel left out bc you didn’t know her boyfriend’s name. You wouldn’t constantly agonize over the feeling like you pay too much, or any of the other things that makes you think the relationship you have with your T is anything “less than.”

If you were secure, you wouldn’t be so triggered and looking for reasons to make sure your relationship is “real.” If she said “I need to cancel next week, I have something to deal with my family,” you may be a little disappointed or worried that something might be wrong, but you also would understand, and deep down you know that when you see her next, she will still be the same T for you.

ETA: Someone should count how many times I used the word relationship!

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Velcro, I think you know me better than I know myself! Thanks.

Thats what i wanted to say about the other current thread, when it got to - does your t owe you an apology for cancelling a session? Once youre secure, it does seem inconsequential - like minutae.

I am one of those who do not believe in realistic "working" on attachment issues using the relationship with the T as a model, but that may reflect either my own attachment issue or just a personal opinion/preference, or both.

What I wanted to say though, exactly based on my personal opinion, is that I think developing normal, constructive, healthy attachments in therapy that can be similar to wanted forms of it in everyday life is probably extremely challenging for those that do not come from a largely secure, kinda effortless base in that area already. I think this because the relationship with a therapist is a designed one and so different from any other, so limited in comparison. I actually feel that those, like you rainbow, who are trying to develop secure attachment with a T when it is not your default base, deserve respect even for taking that challenge and the effort, regardless of the outcome.

In my experience, the supposition of a secure attachment to a person I saw for one hour per week, who initially agreed to interact with me only because I paid her, who had dozens of people like me coming to see her, and whose behavior was so ambiguous that i was perpetually asking whether it was real and what it meant... was total absurdity.

And if I had continued for years and still did not feel secure, it would have had everything to do with the fact that, by definition, it was not secure, even though all insinuations were that this feeling of insecurity was evidence of some attachment "disorder", which is the worst sort of gaslighting.

Absolutely the right perspective. I would do the same in your shoes-- it can be interesting to obtain the opinion of internet strangers on the internet, but none of us have your experience with your T. Just wanted to say that there was a time on this forum where you might have been peeved with people who criticized your T or told you something you didn't want to hear. Being able to respectfully disagree with people is progress for everyone. I think it's a huge thing (but maybe that's because I have a smart teenager who likes to argue with me about all the things most important to me).

Which one? I peeked. Stopdog has shared several.

Attachment Informed Psychotherapy. It's the 5th or 6th article, posted in 2015!