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Can a therapist develop feelings for a patient?
Whether you call it transference, countertransference, or something else, it’s not uncommon for therapists to feel emotions for their patients and vice versa. But it’s important to keep in mind that the therapist’s role is to meet the needs and goals of the client’s therapy, not their own personal or professional needs. Countertransference, or transference experienced by therapists, is also common. A therapist will have their own history of sadness, attachment wounds, and relationship issues in addition to their own history of hope, love, and desire to heal others because they are also human.The act of the client unintentionally projecting feelings about someone from their past onto the therapist is known as transference in therapy. Transference was defined by Freud and Breuer as the deep, intense, unconscious feelings that develop in therapeutic relationships with patients in their 1895 paper.The general theory is that, unconsciously, emotional feelings that you might have experienced or wished you could have experienced as a child are transferred from your parents or other primary caregiver to your therapist. Because of this, clients frequently have feelings for their therapists that are similar to how kids feel about their parents.Even if you don’t talk to one another in between sessions, your therapist still has a relationship with you. She keeps recalling significant moments from your conversations as the week progresses. She might even change her mind about an intervention she made during a session or an opinion she had.Additionally, therapists do not criticize or judge their patients. Through probing questions and attentive listening, they make an effort to understand the context of their clients’ actions. Some clients might feel cared for or understood by doing this.
How frequent is having a crush on your therapist?
It might surprise you to learn that what you are going through with your therapist isn’t unusual. In reality, what you are probably going through is something called erotic transference, which is when a patient has romantic or sensual thoughts about their therapist. As a result, clients frequently have feelings for their therapists that are similar to those that kids have for their parents. It occasionally has a romantic-like quality. The experience of therapy can be greatly improved by transference, which is entirely natural and normal.According to Waichler’s explanation of the reasons why patients fall in love with their therapist, The therapeutic relationship between patient and therapist is an intimate one. It’s not surprising that many people develop romantic feelings for their therapist given the intensity of the feelings and emotions that are involved in therapy.Curiosity is common, but if you find yourself crossing ethical lines and viewing their personal social media pages or repeatedly attempting to get in touch with them outside of therapy sessions, you may be forging an unhealthy attachment.What you are going through with your therapist isn’t unusual, which may surprise you. You are actually most likely going through a phenomenon called erotic transference, which is when a patient has erotic or sensual fantasies about their therapist and feels a sense of love or arousal for them.Once you’ve come to the realization that transference is extremely common and not a cause for embarrassment, discuss your feelings with your therapist. Although admitting your love (or whatever other emotion you’re experiencing) may be difficult, doing so can help your therapist better understand your problems and enable you to benefit from therapy.