That would spook me. I've made more progress through learning how to feel safe attaching to T and having that accepted (and feeling like my sense of connection is reciprocated) than I ever had before. I've had other people (pastor, etc.) tell me it's showing up in other relationships too, my ability to get close to people. Obviously, a lot of the people on this forum were drawn to it for transference and attachment issues, so you may get a lot of positive responses regarding healing through attachment.

The only way to know specifically what your T meant is to ask her, but I know I myself would find it hard to feel safe asking more about it when I think she's judging my attachment as wrong. My own T has been fully accepting of the attachment, has noted feeling connected to me, but has also said some day, just like a kid grows up and doesn't need their parents all the time anymore, I will do the same. He said when the child moves out and begins their own life, they don't stop being connected to their parents anymore, but they just don't need them in the same way anymore. I don't think I would have the courage to do this work without knowing he believes we'll always be connected, even if I'm not seeing him or even talking to him all the time. I know life is unpredictable and our work might get interrupted before I'm ready, but his encouraging a sort of eternal, spiritual connection, has made me feel very safe to keep going forward, like I have a right to "keep" him in my heart even if he's no longer a part of my life on a regular basis.

Anyway, I think this is something that would need to be discussed with your T, but I find it hard to suggest doing that, because I know I couldn't if I were in your position. I guess the only thing I can say is that I need a T who is comfortable with attachment, and if it were me, I suppose I'd want to know as soon as possible if I were working with one who had the potential to retraumatize me through abandonment or rejection of my needs. Not that a T can't have boundaries on what they're able to provide or not, but I'd need one who feels comfortable with me feeling attached to them, who sees the work through the lens of a relationship, not simply a tool...

Kmay,
For people who grew up with secure attachment that may be true, but I honestly think that for people with insecure attachment it is important to attach to the therapist in order to heal. At least that was my experience. One of the things I was very grateful for with my therapist was that he understood how important he was to me and bore it well and responsibly. Attachment happens in most healthy relationships, although it can vary (I am much more attached to my husband than I am to one of my co-workers). I am wondering though, if she was talking about your therapist and not you? My T has been very clear to me that while there is deep caring and even love on his side, I am not as important to him as he is to me, nor should I be. He has to keep his needs out of our relationship and maintain a certain level of detachment to be of help to me, so there is an asymmetry in our attachment.

I can certainly understand why this was scary to hear. I think part of the safety of therapy is that we should be free to be whoever we are and express whatever feelings we have. My therapist was very clear that he had the boundaries and that my feelings could not always be acted on but they were always welcome. I know it will feel over the top scary but I think it would be important to try and talk to your therapist about how you felt about what she said and how scary it was to hear. I think it would really help you to clarify what she meant.

AG

Hi Kmay,
My T has always said that our relationship is important. It is the attatchment and trust I have in her which will help me to be open and honest and allow her to help me.
She knows how badly I reacted when my last T changed jobs suddenly and has also been very aware of how her current pregnancy is affecting me.
I have worried about spoiling our relationship by being too demanding and clingy. She wrote to me today that I cannot spoil our relationship by being honest about my feelings, including those about her.
She insists that I can tell her anything I feel about her and it is OK. I needed her to say this because I have been worrying so much about how she feels about me when i am angry or missing her.
I think you will have problems later if you are scared to reveal things to T. It would be good to try to clarify more while it is still early.

Good luck!

quote:

She said that we are not supposed to get attached. She said T's are supposed to be with us to move through the emotional pain together, to help us with coping mechanimism, tools to be able to process, ground ourselves, ect. And that then we move on and move forward.

Hi Kmay... I have read this a number of times and it is not clear to me. Who is your T referring to? When she says "we" are not supposed to get attached does she mean the T or the patient or both together?

If she means the patient TO the T then I see it as a possible stumbling block if the patient needs to work through attachment injuries. I have a T who works a lot with attachment and encourages it. I know in my own situation, that I would not be able to do the work if I had to be worried about my attachment to T being unwanted on his part. I do know that I am attached to him and he tells me he is attached to me as well. BUT, he is not attached to me in the same way with the same intensity that I feel the attachment. If that were to happen then it would definitely impede the therapy because then HIS needs would be introduced into our sessions and it's supposed to be about me, the patient. I believe that knowing this has made it easier for me to approach some difficult issues and to be pretty open to discussing our relationship as it unfolds.

I think the best course of action for you to take is to ask your T to clarify what she meant by that statement and to tell her how you feel about it. I hope it works our for you.

Hugs
TN

(((kmay)))i'm going to say what others here have...talk with your T! communicating these types of concerns to our Ts is critical to the therapy, i think.

therapy to me became more and more anxiety producing over time. in retrospect, going to therapy felt as though i were going to court, guilty before proven innocent. that was my transference in full-blossom. i never talked to T about those feelings (he knew about the anxiety (hard to hide ) but not the feelings of being judged) because all i felt was anxiety, and i din't know at the time what was driving it. i'm sure one of the things was something that T said to me (normal people probably wouldn't pick this up, but hyper-vigilants such as myself...): "people with anxious attachment can make the relationship with their therapist their ONLY attachment. and that's NEVER a good thing". of course, with him labelling me as anxiously attached and letting me know that out of shame (MY take) i shouldn't become attached to him, i wanted to flee. i didn't want to disappoint him by becoming attached to him (which i already was).

you wrote

quote:

I am nervous now that I should not be feeling any type of closeness with her. That if she thinks I am getting "attached", that she will terminate me

talk to your T. don't flee like i did, cuz this is an opportunity for you to find something out about yourself and heal.


P.S. his comment "that's never a good thing" ... who knows what that means to him? perhaps he had a client that was needy and lonely to the extreme and he WAS their EVERYTHING? so that's countertransference, and something that HE needs to work on... not me or you

I totally understand your fears and it would bother me severely.

I agree with what TN said above.

You will need to talk about this with your T and get her views and ask her to clarify.

I generally believe that any T who does long term therapy with clients - accepts that attachment happens and embraces it - so maybe ask T about that too.

THis is a really important conversation you have to have. My T and i talk about our attachment all the time - it is part of and integral to our therapy.
SD

Hello All,

I remember the time I gave in and became vulnerable with my therapist. That was the beginning of my transference with him. A lot of healthy work was done within that relationship and as I began to heal and look to transition out of therapy I clung to him with all that I had. Open and honest communication with what is happening will help your therapist help you to detach in a healthy way. It is a very delicate issue and needs to be done therapeutically where the client is able to detach without feeling abandoned. Keep the open communication with your T and see how he/she is able to walk you through this. It really does take a therapist who is willing and able to walk through this with you because there are a lot of emotions around this alone not to mention transitioning out of therapy. I have two more sessions scheduled with my therapist and 95% of me knows it's time but there is that "little girl" in me that wants to hang on for dear life...

Hope this helps

Hey Guys,

I wanted to thank you all for your responses. I'm sorry it took so long for me to get back to this.

Anon -

quote:

The only way to know specifically what your T meant is to ask her, but I know I myself would find it hard to feel safe asking more about it when I think she's judging my attachment as wrong

That is exactly how I feel I have wanted to ask her about it. I can't seem to open my mouth up much at all lately. Good thing she is not one that let's us sit in silence...well at least not for a long time.

AG - I was thinking about that too. About the insecure atatchment. Of course, she didn't know (and still really doesn't) much about me when she made that statment. She actually didn't know a thing about me. So I'm not sure if that's good or bad that she said that so early on lol..

Starlight -

quote:

I have worried about spoiling our relationship by being too demanding and clingy. She wrote to me today that I cannot spoil our relationship by being honest about my feelings, including those about her.

- That is exactly how I feel...the part about spoiling our relationship. How did you tell her that? You concern about that? Did you open up the topic or did it come out during conversation? It feels like I don't know how to even explain myself properly these days I don't feel any courage to talk about how I feel...or any right to do it..

TN - That is a great question. I guess when we were talking, I automatically assumed it was me she was referring to (my best quality...anything that sounds negative is automatically about me right? ). As I am recalling the conversation though, I do think she was referring to ME not becoming attached to HER. I remember that we were talking about how I had become so dependent on old T, that is was actually causing me harm. I don't know...I hate this. I know I need to just talk to her about this. I don't know what happened to me. I can't even articulate myself properly these days. Well, I do know what happened. I got retraumatized. I guess I just didn't realize it had affected me so badly until recently.

CD,

quote:

therapy to me became more and more anxiety producing over time. in retrospect, going to therapy felt as though i were going to court, guilty before proven innocent.

- I can really relate to this. So then, what happened? Are you still with that T? How did you work through it?

SD - Yes, the more I re-read what TN said, I started to wonder if I had done what I always do and taken something she said and interalized it as my fault? Maybe I didn't even hear her correctly.

In Transition -

quote:

It is a very delicate issue and needs to be done therapeutically where the client is able to detach without feeling abandoned

- I think this is my biggest fear. I was already afraid of getting attached to her bc of what happened with my old T who I was so attached to....it ended upbrubtly. So I guess my mind tells me, she is right. Don't get attached, b/c being attached always ends badly b/c one day therapy will end. So it will all end bad. I know rationally, that if the detaching is done in the proper way, then it won't end badly, but I have no experience with that so I guess I don't believe it. Does that make sense?

RT - Thank you. I appreciate your feedback. I guess I have to muck up the courage to talk to her about it somehow.

Thanks again everyone.

Hi Kmay,
The bit about me spoiling the relationship came up in one of the hundreds of conversations about her pregnancy. I was upset and told her I wished she was not pregnant and felt angry with her. I told her I felt ashamed for not being happy for her and resenting her. We have had some very open conversations about our relationship because her pregnancy has affected me deeply. I had a traumatic pregnancy and 12 week premature birth with my son and this has brought back so many feelings.

I feel so jealous and mixed up about it especiallly now as the birth is only 2 weeks away. But she has been ghreat and accepted all my feelings and has said she thinks the whole experience has depended our relationship.

She is quite ok with me being attached and thinks it is an important part of my therapy.

I feel embarrassed about it, but iot also feels nice.

here's what i did, kmay ... i fled, coward that i am. i haven't seen T in 7 months and i think about him every day.
it was more than just that, though ... and in recent days i'm thinking i may return if he'll let me, which i think he will. the whole aspect of getting close to somebody knowing full well you'll have to terminate sooner or later. that's something i really struggle with. and the fear of failure, and the concern that i wasn't changing fast enough for both T and i, and wondering "do i really wanted to change?", and was the part of me that didn't want to change afraid of failure, etc. etc. i tend to overthink things and not take them for what they are. i have to make everything more complicated. hmmmm. maybe that's one of my defenses my T was talking about in our last session together. interesting thought.

how's it going, kmay? have a session since? talk with her about it?

CD,
I could have written what you just wrote. lol.
Yes, I had a session with her on Thursday last week. I went back and forth so much with it (in my head) going, not going, going, not going, never going again...yada yada...you get it.
I went. We talked about it. I told her I was afraid of getting attached b/c of what she has said. I told her that I think about her during the week between sessions when I am triggered and calms be a bit, but that I also feel myself scolding myself for getting too attached by doing that. She explained by saying that the idea is to think of her, but that eventually it will be "thinking of her and then thinking of the tools we have learned to know how to handle the situation myself" vs "thinking of her and it calms me, but only b/c I am going to immediately call her to have her get me through it (which is what I did with old T)". She did sort of backtrack and say its ok to get attached, but not to the extent that it becomes detrimental to me like it did with old T. I think overall, we are just riding a very rocky boat together as we navigate what happened with old T.
Also, she is basically letting me run the show. She says that I have to be in charge of my therapy. I have to set the next appointment unless I let her know I want a speific date and time each week. This is so foreign to me b/c old T would tell me "ok, I want to see you next week, when can you come in....or Ok, we need to see each other twice a week now, ect"....I feel very lost. I am still very push and pull with it all. We'll see if I go to my appointment this week.
I know one thing, I am in a narly, narly place.