Your therapist loving you

My therapist has told me that she loves me, as unlikely as that might sound to us all.

I experience maternal transference and we have spoken about me loving her. She was clear that she did not love me and that she is uncomfortable with me applying the word love to her. She was also clear that this was not particular to her feelings about me and that she is also uncomfortable with the concept of love in her personal life. This obviously forms part of her work for her personal therapy, but it was painful for me and my shame surfaced. It is common for her to be transparent about her feelings and about her process. She discloses a fair amount.

In the last session, she told me that things have changed for her, that our relationship has developed and that she loves me. As easily as that.

I have worked hard at accepting the pain of loving her and that not being reciprocated (along with negotiating the potential retraumatising effect of being unloved). I have worked hard at maintaining trust with her and at appreciating the safe boundary of her not loving me. And now she's changed her mind and I am angry and suspicious. I don't know if the work is this difficult by design or if she is messed up and is mismanaging our relationship.

I posted about this on reddit a few days ago and the responses were exclusively cautionary or negative: that it is a red flag, that she is unprofessional, that she has breached boundaries by both telling me and by the way in which she told me. I figured that my learned friends and colleagues here might be more open to the idea of a therapist loving a client. What do you think? Do you want to hear this from your therapist, how do you feel about the idea of hearing it? Has your therapist said it to you and what is your emotional response?

I have a sense that I could feel comforted by it, but I actually feel uneasy.

I think the wanting to be loved is legit. As to where that love should come from is debatable.

Theres love, and theres "i wanna take you home with me" love. And then theres definitely not love.

Eta - good point, wildatheart. It reminds me that it was said that the best comedians love their audiences.

I think that many therapists work with love and do actually feel a deep love for their clients, that springs from inside. I experienced something like this myself once when I was working as a support worker, I felt a love for a client I worked with. I feel a bit sad writing this that I didn’t feel it for all my clients. I have googled therapy and love before and I have found therapists who write that they work with love.

My T signs her emails "Love, ***"

I know it's not the love I crave from babyhood. It's a respectful feeling of caring.

Whrn she first signed off using that I was all over the place yrs back.

I know her enough to know what is meant by it now, and It's enough for me now.,

My T has said he loves me. It's very well-established that it is an appropriate love. God knows I love him. He's like a dad to me. I literally forget that he's not my dad sometimes.

I don't know how long you've been working with this T, it seems like a while. It is very possible that her personal work has resolved whatever blocks she had around feeling and acknowledging love. It's also possible that her ongoing training may have shifted her boundary/philosophy around saying love towards a client. It is also possible that when you first approached the topic, she was unsure how it would impact you and your work so she was cautious with her response. This last one doesn't seem that probable given your other statements, but it is a possibility.

My T has never told me that she loves me. She's told me that she cares about me and when I said that she loves me, she said true. Having her say love towards me was a big issue for a very long time even if she wasn't saying I love you. There's lots of maternal transference going on; and we use lots of children's books to process concepts. There was a time that I couldn't even have her read I love you as part of the story and I would go in and put 'care for' over top of the word love before she read the story to me.

It would seem to me that she's not mismanaging your relationship given she's always been somewhat transparent about her feelings. I think it is a byproduct of growth within herself, yourself, and your relationship.

My former T told me she loves me on our last appointment. I had been in therapy with her for 10 years at that point and had told her several times that I love her. It's the only time she said it and I do believe she means it/meant it. It didn't mess me up. It just made me feel cared about as a human being. As much as I wanted to hear it earlier in our work together, that might have messed me up. It's one thing for them to care, but to love, I think that gets tricky. At least in my own messed up world.

My T has said that what ever feeling I have towards him no matter how big or strong are OK there are limits on expressing the emotions. He has said he loves me and I have said that I love him. All of this is very consistent with who he is and his values both personally and professionally so I am not worried about it. So, what concerns me is that your T has changed their views/values more than their use of the word love.

The idea, or even possibility, of a T loving a client? It's feasible.

However, as to the therapeutic value of saying it to the client? I don't believe this is necessarily the 'right' thing to do. Might create more harm as love(*) is a loaded concept and easily subject to misunderstandings or mind***ks.

(*) Even though there are different kinds of love but it is oh so easy for clients to affix their own meaning... or longing onto that term, in the therapeutic relationship. I don't believe it was wise of her to say it to you.

I suppose it's her apparent change of heart which feels tricky. She made it clear she wasn't a therapist who worked with love, or at least the word love, but now she is using it and I feel confused. Maybe it is nothing more than a semantic difference since she has always worked in a relational way. I don't know. I guess I just don't trust her.

In my more mature and emotionally open moments, I think I can view her expression in this way. Something about her expression feels reassuring that's for sure and I suppose I like that her growth has brought something new to the relationship. However, as you describe with blocking out the word in the books, "love" is also a difficult word to hear.

Yes, me too. It's one of the reasons that I didn't want to hear it from her and was finding it safe that I was who was doing the loving, not her. I didn't want to think about her feelings for me, not loving feelings anyway.

Yes, that concerns me too, but I suppose that people do change. If her self-exploration work has led to a shift for her, it makes sense that she has shared this with me (given her therapeutic approach). I don't disagree with you though, my instinct is to be concerned.

Yes, exactly! I have worked closely with a small number of individuals in a supportive (not therapeutic capacity) and I have felt a form of love towards them. However, I have never shared that with them because I judged them to be too vulnerable or exposed to be able to process what I would be telling them. I guess I am a mess, but I am able to process things (albeit slowly) so maybe she used her best judgement.

The one thing T and I never discussed in the 10 years we worked together was out feeings for each other. I definitely loved her and I am quite sure she loved me as well. I never wanted to or felt the need to share those feelings, though. We had an amazing relationship and I am pretty sure we both knew where we stood with each other.

My T has also told me this and I believe her. She believes there are many kinds of love, and psychotherapy love can be genuine and legit.

My very first T from years ago also told me she loved me and again it felt very genuine and reassuring.

Obviously there's a time and a place to say such an emotive thing, and it's completely dependent on the therapy relationship. There are no rights or wrongs or ethical issues if it emerges from the healing space. I had a very deep bond with T1, and I am developing a very strong and powerful bond with current T, so it felt very healing to hear the words from both of them at different times in my life. Both said it in very different ways, not using the conventional 3 words, but it was clearly said nonetheless.

I think if it raises more issues then it should be discussed in therapy. In my case it was never needed to be talked about because it pointed to something more powerful than words and it was sufficient enough to not need further discussion.

I don't mean to be inflammatory, but how did you know where each other stood if you didn't discuss your feelings towards each other throughout the 10 years? This feels like the kind of nuance and sensitivity which is really difficult for me to grasp.

I suppose what I am questioning is the nature and validity of the "healing space". Who decides what that is and how are the parameters negotiated?

If it wasn't said in those three words, how did you understand that it was being said?

I like words and I find it difficult to understand that something other than words might be sufficient to describe our experiences.

I think I love my T. I wish she loved me. I think that's a combination of transference and loneliness though.

I have not used the word love to describe how I feel about her. I have said she's important in my life, and I may have said I care about her. I shy away from talking about it much. I feel shame for loving her and for wanting her to love me.

I also know that, at least right now, if she said she loved me (or touched/hugged me), it would freak me out so much I'm not sure I could go back. I have not quite said that to her, but I included in a note I gave her in session once that I both was wanting a hug and aware it would completely freak me out if she were to hug me.

my therapist and i say i love you all the time. but we have known each other for nine years and are very close after all this time and all the intense trauma work we have done together. sometimes i say it first , sometimes she says it first.

These days, when I say "I love you" my therapist often replies "I love you too". It developed over time, and I knew he loved me long before he said it. It's an important part of why therapy works for me.

Well that's just it, no one can decide it, in my view it's an intuitive thing that emerges from the space created by that T and client in a certain moment in time. Obviously Ts get it wrong all the time when they misread the situation, but I feel that oftentimes these things emerge when there's a deep connection there and it just enhances it. No one can scientifically study that, it's a deeply personal thing.

Well to give an example, I gave my first T something I'd written as a child, involving someone called Amy. At the end of the session after she had read it, we had our usual hug (T always hugged me at the end) and while hugging me she said 'Do you know what Amy means?' to which I replied no, and she said 'Amy means loved'. Then she hugged me even tighter and repeated 'Loved.' The way she said it, the way she held me at that moment, said it all. Current T was even clearer but I don't feel comfortable sharing that just in case, God forbid, she reads here, as it's something I imagine she might do.

I like words too, but some things go beyond words. I find that words can over-analyse and take something away from the feelings and the space that exist. It is very hard to explain if you haven't experienced it. For me, knowing I am loved fills a need and I didn't need to talk about that at that time. I might need to hear it again, I might crave a discussion about something else involving it (and probably will) but in that moment, there was no need for anything to add to it.

This is just my experience though! Yours is unique to you. We're all on different journeys.

i saw your post on reddit and was one of the members who contributed to the responses to your OP. from what i read, many who did respond to you were coming from a place of concern, including me. this was especially true in regards to how your T suddenly changed her tune about loving you when prior it was clearly a 'no go' zone for her to discuss or acknowledge. it's this kind of 'flip flopping' behaviour from a T that sends up the red-flags. my T 'flip flopped' a lot in the relationship with him and at times failed to recognise how damaging this inconsistency could be to the trust and the sense of safety in the relationship.

one thing i have definilty learned after many years of therapy is to listen to and honour what my gut is trying to tell me. i reckon that your gut actually knows you quite well and is trying to convey something important here and perhaps this is exactly what you need to be bringing to therapy and discussing honestly with your T so you can have a better understanding of what your Ts feelings of love for you actually mean, not only for you, but for her, your therapy, and the relationship.

i personally believe the topic of love in therapy is ok to acknowledge and talk about openly and honestly, especially in regards to how intimate the therapeutic relationship can feel and become...but what needs to be clear is that the therapist is not expecting (consciously or subconsciously) to get their own needs met by this 'loving' relationship. that is where a lot of the damage and harm can come from and is what the people on reddit were trying to warn you about by sharing their experiences with you.

No . He said that love is a difficult and loaded word especially given my history he said I care about you very much

I think he loves me . We've been meeting for 9 years. And his actions show me that he does

Of course I would love for him to say it. But I know I won't be satisfied. I'm never satisfied. Anything he does extra is never enough for me. I've discussed that with him