I told my therapist I love her--in a platonic way

An expression of love like that does make you very vulnerable which is often difficult and painful for those of us with trauma histories.

Me and my T have said it to each other a lot. She started saying it before I did. We are both emotionally intense people with a wide view of what love is. I do struggle with what my feelings are, but T believes that love doesn't have to be romantic or sexual yet can still be very intense. She's absolutely fine with it and doesn't get scared by it. So I've started to accept my deep feelings for her and express them more.

I'm fine sharing them in texts but in person is another matter. Recently I did say 'I love you' to her in person and she responded with 'me too.' It was a very powerful moment and very healing. We have a very deep, loving connection, but somehow the words 'I love you' touch me in ways 'lots of love' doesn't.

Are you able to explore this with your T? I know it would be hard but might say a lot about your comfort level with emotions. It sounds like yuor T has a wide comfort level which is great as that may help you to be more comfortable with them over time.

In my case, it's because I've been lucky enough to work with therapists who left me in no doubt that they genuinely cared and cared a great deal.

Money is a fact of life, it doesn't mean they don't care: you can't 'buy' someone's love or care.

I'm sorry it sounds like you've worked with some inauthentic ts. It's never going to be healing when you feel they're not really invested in you. I hope you find someone genuine someday if you choose to try again.

Thanks, Lonelyinmyheart

I definitely do not have a big comfort level with emotions. I am often very cut off from them. IDK if it is depression or Schizoaffective or the AP's or what. Being able to talk more about emotions would probably help. Unfortunately T cancelled on me this morning, at 4:13 with a text, so we won't be discussing it this week. HUGS Kit

Oh I'm so sorry to hear that. It's devastating for me when my T cancels, especially when I needed to talk about something with her. I hope you get the chance to do that soon.

Thank you, Lonelyinmyheart. I am disappointed and a little hurt and sad. I haven't responded to her text yet because I don't want to respond out of a hurt place. In a couple of hours I will probably be able to respond out of a rational place. With psychosis symptoms and stuff going on, it's not a good time to not have an appointment, but I can't control what my T does so I'll just have to make do. I do see Pdoc this week so maybe that will help a little.

Oh, no - did she offer another date instead SK? That is a shame, especially after that last session..

Seeing you need the support right now, could you guys have a (quick) phone check-in instead at some other time?

On an unrelated note, I can't imagine a world where my T would ever use that word with regards to me.

Hi Rive. She offered next Tuesday the 19th. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for me so I asked for the 26th which is a long time to go without support. However, I did send her my copay through Zelle so I can text and email her if needed. Hopefully that will be enough.

If you can't imagine a world where your T would ever use the word love with you, I hope you have people in your life who say it to you regularly. You deserve to be valued, loved, and cared about.

HUGS Kit

Yes, that is a long time to wait... I hope you don't hesitate to reach out to her (maybe phone?) if/when needed so that you don't go it alone.

Thank you, that's very kind of you SK *hugs*

I've never said "I love you" to my therapist, but I have said something along the lines of having feelings of love. Same thing really, just feels less vulnerable/shame inducing saying it that way for me. He's never said that the feeling is reciprocated exactly but sometimes I think it must be. He has said that me using that word doesn't make him uncomfortable (I asked) and that giving and receiving love is part of therapy and is where the "cure" lies. I know some of you are probably rolling your eyes hard at that last bit, but that's okay; we're all different.

I really do wish he would just directly say that he feels love for me too. He doesn't need to say "I love you", but when he says what I've paraphrased above, it doesn't feel 100% personal but more like a generality about how he views therapy. Sometimes you really just need to hear it said.

You initially asked, has anyone been in the same situation. The answer is no, but if you would like to hear it, here is my story with regards to my love for my ex therapist. It took a long time for the feelings for her to develop. When I started in therapy I hardly had any feelings at all, except fear, hunger, hot, cold and pain. I had no idea what feelings were.

I knew logically when people might feel sad or happy or angry or content etc but I wouldn't say I felt them. We worked a lot on feelings. A lot. And I started to feel them, with her help and with her modelling and guidance. And then one day started to feel these things in my body when I would think of her. Like a warmth. A need for closeness. A calmness. Little by little I brought them up with her, as my shame would allow, and we talked about it, a lot. How I felt towards her.

But still I didn't attribute them to love and certainly didn't say it. I, like you, used to tell my Mum I loved her only for it to be met with silence. She couldn't or wouldn't say it back. I only assumed that she didn't feel it towards me, so in the end I stopped saying it. But feeling these things for my therapist had only shown me that I had never actually felt it in the first place. For anyone. I had never been that close, emotionally, to anyone. I had never learnt to love myself, even, but here I was learning how to do that and learning how to love another human being.

But even when I realised that love was what I was feeling, I didn't tell her. I daren't tell her, for fear that she wouldn't say it back. Just like my mother hadn't. I thought that that would destroy me and destroy the work that we had done together. Over time, as these feelings came, and went (as any feelings do), as we had ruptures and repairs (as any real relationship does) I realised that I had to tell my truth. I had to tell her, regardless of whether or not she said it back.

As others have suggested to you, we spoke about what feelings mean - though not love, so much. We did talk about affection though, as that felt like a safer place to start. I told her one day that I felt affection towards her, but she shied away from that, and certainly didn't reciprocate. This hurt me. It caused problems, but, as always, we talked about it, and we talked about what the word affection meant for both of us. It turns out that she did feel what I believed affection meant, towards me, it just wasn't necessarily the description that she would have applied to the word, if that makes sense.

In more time I came to believe that she did love me. Through her words and her actions and her consistency she had shown that she loved me, even if she wouldn't say it. So I made the move and told her. And as I suspected, she didn't say it back. Instead she said 'thank you'. This in itself caused problems, but as I have learnt, we can use these problems to explore ourselves and our relationships with others, and this is exactly what we did. I realised that I didn't want her just to take my love and... I don't know... dump it? I wanted her to really acknowledge it, to hear it, and to reassure me that feeling this way for her was ok. That is wasn't wrong or shameful or needy.

So we settled that if I said it to her again, she would say "I know you do, and that's ok. That's really ok". And say it again I did. I needed to. I needed to learn that it was ok to feel these things for other people, and that they could be trusted to respond in a caring and gentle manner. That I could still be seen and accepted. But she never said it back. Not until the time when she suddenly stopped working with me in the middle of a session.

That day I found I couldn't leave. I sat on the grass outside her house for nearly two hours, confused, hurt, lost. She came out after seeing someone and saw me sat there and came and sat with me. When it was time for her to go, we stood up. We held hands and she looked me in the eye and said "I love you too". I know that she was in a very strange place at that point, and I am sure she said it without her therapist hat on that day, but I am so vey glad that she said it. It helped me to see that I had been right. That my judgement of other people's feelings (something I seriously struggle with) was actually correct on this occasion. And that tiny moment healed another little broken piece of my heart.

I will always love my Ex T. Always. For what she gave me, for who she was to me, for the time and patience and dedication that she showed our work. Yes it is a conditional love. Yes it is a time limited relationship. Yes it is perplexing and confusing and downright maddening at times but at the very core of it, for me, has been the relationship between the two of us, and for me, and her, that involved love, in some way.

These things, if present in the therapy, in my opinion, need to be talked about. Not shied away from. That is where the true learning and growth comes from.

Thank you for sharing your story, Waterbear. HUGS kit

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lonelyinmyheart ... Money is a fact of life, it doesn't mean they don't care: you can't 'buy' someone's love or care. ...

How do you get past the "If this person doesn't get paid we will never see each other again"?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Waterbear .... Not until the time when she suddenly stopped working with me in the middle of a session. That day I found I couldn't leave. I sat on the grass outside her house for nearly two hours, confused, hurt, lost. She came out after seeing someone and saw me sat there and came and sat with me. When it was time for her to go, we stood up. We held hands and she looked me in the eye and said "I love you too". I know that she was in a very strange place at that point, and I am sure she said it without her therapist hat on that day, but I am so vey glad that she said it. It helped me to see that I had been right. That my judgement of other people's feelings (something I seriously struggle with) was actually correct on this occasion. And that tiny moment healed another little broken piece of my heart. I will always love my Ex T. Always. For what she gave me, for who she was to me, for the time and patience and dedication that she showed our work. Yes it is a conditional love. Yes it is a time limited relationship. Yes it is perplexing and confusing and downright maddening at times but at the very core of it, for me, has been the relationship between the two of us, and for me, and her, that involved love, in some way. These things, if present in the therapy, in my opinion, need to be talked about. Not shied away from. That is where the true learning and growth comes from.

Your post is touching, Waterbear. I'm trying to fully understand...why did your therapist stop working with you in the middle of a session?

Thank you. She had had a bereavement two months before, and taken time off to.... Cope? Manage? She came back to work with the idea of having six months left before she wound down her private practice, but half way through the second session back apparently she just realised that she couldn't do it. That she shouldn't be counselling at that time. She couldn't keep what was happening in her life separate from the therapy. She just stopped working in that moment. We sat. Cried. Hugged. And said goodbye. Just like that, after five years working together intensely (twice a week and emails in between).
It later transpired that (I know who but I won't disclose) a close family member had passed away, another close family member had been diagnosed with cancer, another close family member was having unexplained seizures and another was in hospital having a spinal operation.
Looking at that it isn't surprising that she just couldn't cope. Therapists are human at the end of the day, and she needed to just stop and focus on family and her own survival.
But I couldn't see it at the time and she didn't explain it to me. It is only after, as I have shifted out of the role of client that I do understand.

It was never like that for me. With first T I saw her for free due to the situation I was in. Later on I did have to pay her but never had enough money so she often waived it. Eventually I moved away and she said not to worry and to just pay her some day when I'm earning more. She never asked for it. We kept in touch and she always said she was never abandoning me even though we couldn't do therapy anymore.

I saw second T at an agency, also for free.

With current T, I pay each session but we're clear that we'll always be in each other's lives, not as therapist and client but eventually more equal. That is never under question.

Maybe I have had unconventional ts or I'm just very lucky. First T said, once I started to pay, that I can't buy a relationship. I'm buying the opportunity for the relationship - the time slot - but I can't buy the love and care she gives. She proved that by never abandoning me. She wrote frequent letters over the years.

I see it that therapists need to earn money just as doctors etc do. It doesn't mean they don't genuinely care. I know there are limits to the caring but that's the same with any profession.

The way I get past it is that to me, love ≠ seeing each other. I can love people I no longer see or have an active relationship with. People die, people move away, people lose touch, relationships fall apart, and love can persist through all of that (although it does not always).

With therapy, I am paying for their time. If I don't pay, there is no time. But love is not the same thing as time together, and it is not something I can pay for.

^^^This^^^

Quote:

Originally Posted by Waterbear Thank you. She had had a bereavement two months before, and taken time off to.... Cope? Manage? She came back to work with the idea of having six months left before she wound down her private practice, but half way through the second session back apparently she just realised that she couldn't do it. That she shouldn't be counselling at that time. She couldn't keep what was happening in her life separate from the therapy. She just stopped working in that moment. We sat. Cried. Hugged. And said goodbye. Just like that, after five years working together intensely (twice a week and emails in between). It later transpired that (I know who but I won't disclose) a close family member had passed away, another close family member had been diagnosed with cancer, another close family member was having unexplained seizures and another was in hospital having a spinal operation. Looking at that it isn't surprising that she just couldn't cope. Therapists are human at the end of the day, and she needed to just stop and focus on family and her own survival. But I couldn't see it at the time and she didn't explain it to me. It is only after, as I have shifted out of the role of client that I do understand.

Wow. Good for you for working to come to terms with what must have been a terribly painful, confusing end to your therapeutic relationship.

i have been seeing my therapist for many years and we frequently say I love you when we say goodbye. Its never been an issue. I dont ever expect her to say it back, but most of the time she does

I think you were very brave Kit. I've always believed if you love someone you tell them.There's growth in being uncomfortable.

It gets easier. I told the new person I've been seeing too recently . He said it was because it was in part because it was a safe space.

I remember your story, Waterbear, and I appreciated (I don't know how to describe it adequately) that you eventually found out why your Ex T abruptly stopped work that day.

i told my therapist i loved him years ago. he said something about how love is a loaded word especially with what my former therapist had done to me, but that he cared about me very much. after 12 years of therapy with him i know he loves me and it's just something i managed to internalize after years of questioning his care

That's awesome, junkDNA thanks for sharing.

I've told my therapist that I love him more than once. It goes without saying that it's platonic. But what I needed to say to him was the "why" behind it. It's because of what he saved me from. I would have wrecked everything if I continued on the way I was, and he saved me from that. Even when it wasn't so easy for him to sit and listen to me. He helped me get over the misery that plagued me for years. I owe everything I have today to him.

Thank you ReddSkyes. My T has since told me she loves me a couple of times. I have only said it once to her. But it has been affirming. Like she is not taking away her care when I'm in a crisis or a bad spot. I definitely feel like my former T saved my life but I think this T might help me regain my life.