The “L” word in therapy

I voted "Other".

My last T had a cushion in her office with the word "LOVE". She never said she loved me or even cared about me. But when I asked her something like "Do you care about me" early in the therapy, she responded something like "I could tell you how often I think of you outside of therapy, but how would you really know if I care or not?" Toward the end of our 6 years together I felt/thought the cushion in her office was very fake.

Eventually, as I have said before, she dumped me and . . .6 months later I got in touch with how rejected I had felt when I was around 5 years old. It was horrible, put me in the bed with depression for 3 days, took a month or longer to get back to some kind of normal, though I tend to be depressed and dysfunctional so that's not saying much.

I'm doing some better in general, more than a year after that realization.

So. . .it sounds to me like you may be getting close to some core stuff and I hope that you and Kashi can work it out.

I wish I knew what love was.
I laugh at the thought of t ever saying it to me, because one, i’m 100% sure she never would, and two, I wouldn’t believe her in the slightest if she did say it.
The closest she got was saying “I think you [go against boundaries] because you want to see that I care. But I think part of you knows that I do.”
Hmmm, I don’t know. I have a hard time believing that anyone would care about me. And if they do, it’s dangerous, because people who maybe cared in the past, end up not caring at all in the end. I don’t know what’s worse, that or not caring in the first place.

Maybe one of the problems with saying "love" is also that it could be seen as manipulative, making a client feel tied to the therapist or keeping them in therapy for "love" rather than for a therapeutic benefit.

In my regular life my "love" relationships are close family and long term friends, people I expect to know pretty much until we die, and I take care of them if needed like they take care of me, without expecting anything else in return. So to me therapy is not a "love" relationship because it doesn't have that free, mutual care (I don't take care of my T, he takes care of me but for money) and it's not supposed to last.

I have no idea what my T thinks about this, it hasn't come up at all.

Current t wouldn't say it. I've had former ts say it.

I'm kind of surprised at all these reactions actually. I don't think using the word "love" is really normal in a professional relationship. Same for implying that. And I wouldn't expect any T or other professional to really love their client. That's something for outside the office I think.

That said, my T has said something that roughly translates to "I care about you" but a little above that. It's a way of telling/reassuring me that she doesn't want me to be in pain either, as it's usually followed by "I don't want you to be hurting, but I still see options" or similar. She also says that I'm a wonderful person, and that she has something special/unique with every client. (The last was after I commented on how surprised I was when a former T remembered stuff about me I'd literally forgotten myself) I think she has affection for all her clients, she's the kind of person for that, and always appears genuinely happy to see someone. Says she's proud because of something I did (but often not for the right things, so it actually makes me feel less heard in a lot of cases).
But that's not love. Love is when you search for hours for the perfect birthday gift even after you've seen 10 things they'd also be happy with. This is a desire for my happiness.

As for pdoc - he doesn't talk about things like that, but from his reactions and actions I can conclude he also feels some level of care. He's very caring anyhow, always trying to make the best of a bad situation. Sometimes in creative ways: when on 'his' ward I was psychotic and didn't dare to drink. In order to prevent an IV he came up with the idea of eating lots of yoghurt to get some fluids into me. I imagine that if you're too scared to sleep in a room with a door, and have to stay on 'his' ward, he'll have the door removed before bedtime while sending someone to buy a cloth or curtain so you'll have some privacy in your doorless bedroom.

I know she wouldn't ever use that word, and I have never used the "L" word but she is well aware of my feelings

They make it all much more confusing than I think is necessary, and I think they inadvertently send the message the love is dangerous (rather than healing or normal or natural).

I don't disagree with you, and think that you're right that for many clients and therapists there is a kind of caution that is more like cowardice. I tend to feel that this is where Kashi is coming from. But I don't think it's a bad thing because I don't think he has the knowledge depth to handle the word appropriately.

But the issue I see is that for a client who was exposed to situations, especially at a young age, in which love and abuse were intertwined, the word is a needless trigger, and it could be very destabilizing for a T to use it. It's just not as simple as talking it out and agreeing, as adults, on a definition because it isn't only the rational adult mind that comes to therapy. It's also unfortunate that some therapists lead clients to the simplistic conclusions that love doesn't equal abuse, and/or if there's abuse then there is no love. Such reductionist thinking can leave a client with an unhealed sense of self, and worse, a pervasive sense of being permanently broken and unlovable in a healthy way.

My former T was working within my paternal transference. Ignoring it would not have helped me because it was within me. Had he said he loved me, it would have introduced a lot of confusion and emotional turmoil in me that would have been an added burden, even though the transference clearly embodied the wish for paternal love. By not using the word, and by allowing me the time and space to feel his caring in safe and appropriate ways, he made it possible for me to work out the deeper contradiction that my father both loved me and abused me.

This opened the door to experiencing in a deeply emotional way that I could tolerate the capacity to feel contradictory emotions and remain stable. This is a core developmental learning that was short circuited by abuse at a time before I had the cognitive capacity to understand it.

The conclusion of our work left me able to feel love for myself and others and accept love in the ways that would have occurred naturally if I'd had healthier parents. And it allowed the paternal love between us to continue beyond therapy.

In my experience, when "love" enters the picture in therapy, you are in the deepest of s**t. Sets the stage for all manner of bizarre rejections, humiliations, equivocations, and obsessive fantasies and preoccupations.

Also, is the therapist supposed to love every client, and equally? What does that make the therapist, if they tell each person who shows up and pays money that they love them? What if they do not, but say it anyway, because it's soothing, and because it pays the bills? What if they say they do, but it comes out feeling like the weirdest and most ambiguous clinical "love"?

I think many people with problematic attachment issues can distinguish the difference between love intertwined with abuse and the parental love they seek from the therapist that was not given unconditionally by the parents of record. I know the OP has no children, but for many of us that do we were able to give to our child, niece/nephew the love we so longed for, and many still do, from the parents; love me no matter what. I could easily give love to young people and really old people and see logically what the experience would be like on a cathartic level for myself, but there was something in my makeup that said it was reserved for others. I could not take love from the therapist (stand-in parent), lover or others that sought closeness with me. I was not and could not be lovable.

It was my former therapist that pointed out that irony to me. I give love, but stop myself from taking it in. Two dilemmas were how to let myself be worthy of the parental love I craved and where doe I get it from.

My sense is the OP, along with many other posters, knows on a cut level (child level) exactly what the love is they need. Unfortunately, so many therapist are stumbling around in the dark because they have not resolved it for themselves. When the love is there in front of us the next hard part is letting go of the logical and negative life history to allow the child to come and drink from the fountain whenever she is thirsty.

While it might be possible for some clients to discern in the way you describe, the process is not so easily controlled that what appears to be a stable situation then becomes unstable. Emotions are fluid and not entirely conscious. There is little way for a therapist to know without question who such clients might be. More importantly, many therapists simply do not have the theoretical knowledge necessary to guide such work safely. But that doesn't seem to stop many of them from giving clients the feelings fix that can lead to a bad outcome.

BTW, I'm not referring to "problematic attachment issues."

It turns out that my L word upset with t was not as it seemed. I don’t want to publicly put too much identifying details on here about t, but tonight revealed that the issue was not what I thought it was. It was not about whether t loves me or clients or not. It wasn’t about liability or safety in therapy. It was very much about t’s own issues, FOO related. Very enlightening. I see it from a new angle.

Growly. Thats great. At least you feel he loves you and cates. I dont even matter to mine anymore

Hope session 2 is good

Thanks for the update on this, growly. I wonder just how much a therapist need to have their stuff together to practice? I know they run the gamut in terms of their own mental health problems, but what happens when they run up against their own stuff as kashi did and they don't share what's going on and just leave it to the client to think it's about them or their own wrong interpretation?

I wonder why he sort of challenged you to ask all of us about this if his reasons for not saying that he loves you are purely his own foo issues? Was he thinking people would reply that their therapists don't say that phrase for a similar reason?

Sorry. I am sick and lying around with nothing to do but ruminate and this just came up for me.

I do think that you will be able to land on your feet through all of this, and I admire you for consistently asking for what you need from therapy. It gave me courage to be clear with my therapist about the answers I'm seeking. My needs are not related to the therapy relationship, but about my past, so it's different. But the way that you keep drilling down to what you need and making it clear to your therapist has helped me do the same, although around a different focus, and it is getting things back on track. So thanks for your openness.

I am today thinking that the FOO issues are a big part of why he doesn’t say I love you to clients. But th liability dangers and misunderstanding dangers are still a part of why he doesn’t do it. But the FOO reasons make me believe the other reasons are a bit of a smokescreen- he tells himself and is clients that it has professional purpose. It’s a little disingenuous but I guess he needs to believe that just as I need to believe the FOO issues are the bigger reason

Being direct is terrifying but it does seem to cut to the chase. I’m trying to make a habit of being direct about what helps/what hurts.

I think he knew that the majority of ts won’t say this to clients. Yes the poll proves that the “no’s” have a slight majority but a nearly equal number was “not certain/unknown”. And to me the “yes t has said this to me” was higher than I expected. I didn’t get a chance to tell him about my poll

This thread is so interesting as we are all as human beings desiring of honest love in our lives -be it another human a pet or .probably most difficult of all.for ourselves
I personally would not want my t to say he loves me-however by telling me that he feels privileged to have met me feels extremely authentic and probably rates with a few other things said to me by non family or friends as being a game changer-it also has the benefit of not needing to be analysed to death .repeated constantly.or having extra words added e.g. especially privileged /even more privileged as the relationship progresses-it it quite simply is enough

Anyone else find it incongruent for the therapist to say they would be honored to hold the place of ‘mother-figure’ for you...yet say they are unable to tell you they feel ‘love’ for you..or use the word, ‘Love’ in reference to you. ?

It’s messed up that the therapeutic relationship can foster an intimate relationship between therapist and client. It can reveal the client’s unmet childhood needs for maternal or paternal love..The therapist says she is ‘honored’ to take on this maternal/paternal role- yet we are told the client can’t *have* the love of the therapist.

Mine made it sound like I do have a certain love from him but it can’t be put out there verbally in those terms. I find in convoluted and confusing. Yet hugs have been an ok substitute for saying the words? I’m still not 100 percent ok with this but I’m trying to work with it. If he did not care about me that would be a dealbreaker and I’d walk away.

I said "Other". She said one time not long ago that it's her job to "love people's shadows" but that, and her response to some of my "I love you's" of "There's a lot of love in the room" is as far as she'll go with the "L" word.

I'd go bit further and say therapists have no business playing playing this game. Inducing people to seek love -- of all things -- from a paid consultant, to the point where they ask for it by name, only to be handed some sort of rejection, along with a bunch of absurd clinical jargon. I think it's wildly irresponsible in most respects. Also cold-blooded.

I think it might also be helpful to consider the connotations of the word "love" in Western culture. I think the love that many clients want to feel and receive is a child's version of love (not speaking of erotic transference as that's a separate issue entirely). But when an adult says to another adult, in an atmosphere that is emotionally charged with very fluid feelings, "I love you," it carries connotations beyond a child's perspective. Those connotations are active unconsciously regardless of what the rational mind perceives.

Love carries mutual responsibilities, yet in a therapeutic relationship, the client has no emotional responsibility for the therapist. For either person to try to make that relationship mutual is a distortion to some degree. I think it's very much a dance, in that some occasions of mutuality can be boundary transgressions that open up great moments of potential healing (and the literature supports this). But each occasion has to be considered within context, and that demands that a lot of variables be thoroughly understood. A T who is juggling his own issues and engages in this way is introducing a high level of risk into the therapy.

Well put. When i was in the middle of all this with my current t, i told him i felt that boundaries and laws were there more for his benefit, his safety, than mine. Cuz i can SAY stuff THIS week, and definitely not want to be held to it by NEXT week.