Hi MH,
As usual, what I’m saying is based on my (admittedly really excellent) experience with my therapist and I realize other people might not see it this way. Insert grain of salt here.
Your question highlights something that to me is central to the theraputic relationship. The goal for the client is to NOT act out our feelings but learn to speak about them. But since the focus in therapy should be only on the client’s feelings, a therapist may act, but not speak. So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a therapist loving their clients, it’s the expressing in speech of that love that becomes problematic. I am certain that my therapist loves me (in the sense of a parental/pastoral kind of love) and even more certain I’ll never hear him say it. I think experienced therapists understand that they may come to love their clients but they also understand a need to keep that love in check so to speak, for a number of reasons.
A therapist, while being emotionally available to a client (we need to be able to connect enough on that level to feel understood) but also retain a certain amount of detachment. They have to stand back far enough to be able to understand and analyze our behavior. If that wasn’t necessary then talking with our friends would do the trick. The therapist needs to have nothing at stake in the relationship from an emotional point of view. That way they place no expectations on the client and they have no need to lie, or manipulate because they’re not trying to get anything. It also allows them to say the hard stuff that may not be fun to hear. I’ve had sessions with my T where I’ve been so angry with him that I’ve told him I want to throw stuff at him. There are times where I really don’t like what he has to tell me, but he doesn’t NEED me to like him or approve of him, so he can go there.
I think this is emphasized during training, the necessity of a certain distant and when younger, inexperienced clinicians find themselves having intense feelings, it can be very upsetting, that they are doing something “wrong.”
Having loving feelings for a client also makes it more difficult for a therapist because in order to be effective, especially in healing from trauma, a therapist has to be willing to see you in a lot of pain. I think it takes an incredible strength to walk alongside someone, letting them come face to face with their pain in order to heal, and hold back from doing or saying things that would provide immediate relief in the present, but would not heal in the long run. Or even worse, hold out a promise of something that cannot be given because it’s too late. One of my strongest breakthroughs in therapy was realizing that I had spent my life searching for that person who would love me well enough that it would make the abuse vanish. And it’s not possible. While there have been many things my T has provided that have really helped heal me, there are some things that HAD to be mourned as the only way of healing.
Can I give an example? Like many trauma patients, I struggled with wanting to feel special and cherished. The truth is that every child has a right when very young to feel like they are incredibly important and special and cherished. That the universe DOES revolve around them. That someone is totally focused on us and our needs and meeting them. I hated my Ts boundaries and struggled with him having other clients because I wanted him to myself. If I couldn't have him to myself, I at least wanted to be special and more important to him than his other clients. And you know what, it would have been so easy for my T to tell me that I was indeed special and that he had a deeper relationship with me than other clients (I sometimes suspect this is true) and that certainly would have made me feel better in the here and now. But the loss of not having that as a child would still be there, not healed. So instead, he held his boundaries and let me recognize the hard truth that I'm not special (or if I am I'll never know that from him). I told him that I had to face that while our relationship is very deep and very real (both of which I wholeheartedly believe) he did not offer me anything different from what he would offer to anyone who came through his door. So I ended up going past what I wanted from him, to the pain surrounding that loss and feel it and proces it which is what has let me put it behind me. (Full disclosure: while discussing this he did tell me that he could understand the difficulty in believing it was love when it was offered to so many people but if you recognized that the source of that love was something deeper that flowed through him, you could accept it. Love is not a forbidden word for us.)
I also know that the relationship has to remain focused on the client. If a therapist speaks their feelings, good or bad, it brings their needs into the relationship. If we’re focused on being loved by our therapist, then we have to worry about losing that love. Love isn’t a feeling with my T, it’s an act. I don’t KNOW how he feels about me, but I have experienced that is there, dependable and he has told me that if I come in celebrating an accomplishment (that he also rejoices in) or if I’m sitting there with snot running down my face (which unfortunately he has seen more than once
) nothing changes in our relationship. He has also told me that he cannot allow himself to need me, because if he did then things would get very enmeshed and we would just repeat the abuse of the past.
This is so hard to put into words, but I have experienced it SO clearly, and I now know that those restrictions and boundaries are in and of themself an act of love on the part of my T, and a very sacrifical kind of love at that.
So a T has to both tolerate and understand the strong emotions that can happen to a client as part of the theraputic relationship and accept their importance in the client’s life. That can get scary, even for a T. Not everyone who goes into therapy gets nearly as intense as those of us dealing with attachment injuries. I am very blessed that I got a T who understands that, and while being careful to keep his feelings out of the room, was more than willing to hear all of mine and accept them.
In so many ways, I spent so much of my time with my T longing for and demanding things he could not give me, not because he didn’t want to, but because it was humanly impossible to provide them at this point in my life. I tremble sometimes thinking about what it took to hear that from me, remain non-defensive and refrain from behaviors that would have made both of us feel better in the short run. It was incredibly, breathtakingly painful at times. I have actually screamed and cursed at him at times because of what he would not give. It took me a long time to understand that I was looking straight into the face of love because it looked so different from the love I had always searched for. I am so grateful that my T has the strength to give me what I needed instead of what I wanted.
I’m sorry MH, this may not be completely on topic, I find myself very introspective about the relationship knowing I’m leaving soon. Hopefully some of this helped.
AG
So I'm not sure at all whether i'd even be able to believe that a T had genuine feelings for me, let alone understand what their motives are for freaking out about it all. 
