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Attachment in therapy - questions and fears

I *think* I might have found myself a new T to work with (fingers crossed) and am deliberately ignoring all sorts of negatives about him so as to let myself actually commit to giving him/the therapy a chance to work.

This guy is so totally different from all other Ts I’ve seen - where before I was looking for kindness, caring and warmth as ‘prerequisites’, this guy is pretty detached, cold, and the complete opposite of the ‘touchy feely’ image I’ve had in mind as necessary for me to trust. I don’t even like him very much. Roll Eyes

BUT the rational part of me is thinking that that’s not such a bad thing, because what I think I really need is someone I can trust to STAY uninvolved and objective, someone who is not going to become some fantastic all loving all caring figure that I’ll want to fall in love with me (fat chance anyway, but you get the picture I hope.)

That worries me though because I know I have huge attachment needs/issues and I’m wondering whether I’m just going along with massive defences here.

Reason I’m posting is that there are a lot of people on forum who have been, and even now are going through horrendous pain and damage because of having developed really strong loving feelings for their Ts (and whose Ts have acted in what I reckon are BAD ways of dealing with that love.) I’m going to call it attachment just for my purposes, I don’t mean to belittle anyone who experiences it as genuine love - it’s just that I don’t understand the concept of love in that giving way, because for me it’s all tied up with being needy and dependent and taking, rather than giving - so please no-one think I’m trivializing or denigrating your feelings for your Ts.

Anyway, I’ve read enough to get totally freaked out by the whole attachment thing - it seems to me that it hardly ever turns out to be healing but seems to cause so many more problems instead. I can understand transference (hell I know I do it all the time, even in real world on a daily basis) but that seems to me to be a different kettle of fish. I am terrified to get caught up in the maelstrom of loving a T - it seems to me that I’d just be pushing onto T my seemingly bottomless need to get the loving and caring I haven’t found all my life - so I’d just stay stuck in endlessly trying to get instead of being able to understand, deal with and resolve those needy needs and wants Confused

So what I’m wondering is what is it that makes you start feeling that way about your T, when did you realize it, what led up to it, did you anticipate it, did you feel ok about it, how did (or does) your T deal with those feelings, do you sense that it’s not ‘real’ at all or that it’s actually your own needs being projected (that’s a big one for me), and generally whether it’s a good thing or a problem?

Sorry about all the questions, I hope this is not triggering to anyone, but I’d really appreciate hearing about other people’s experiences and thoughts on this. And also, if anyone ISN’T attached to their T but is healing through the therapy anwyay, what’s that like too?

Thanks

LL
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