You chose the right counselor, you dealt with your initial issues and now you are in love with your therapist. If this has happened to you, you are not the only one. Many people fall in love with their psychiatrist or psychologist during their treatment.
A good therapist will provide a safe haven to reveal your deepest secrets and will accept you no matter what. It makes sense that that safety and acceptance can be attractive to you, especially if you don’t get it from other people in your life.
Developing romantic feelings during something as intimate as therapy is not strange. In fact, it is so common that there is a psychoanalytic term for it: transference. This is a psychological process in which you project feelings, thoughts or desires originally directed toward someone from your past onto your therapist. This can include both positive and negative emotions.
What is transference?
Transference is a term often used to describe feelings in love with your therapist. But the definition of the term is broader than that. Depending on who you ask, “transference” can mean any of the following three things:
1 treatment relationship
Therapists, by agreement, may refer to transference as a general statement about the strength of the therapeutic relationship. In this definition, a “good” or “positive” transference means that the therapist and client get along reasonably well. A “negative” transference means that conflict or blockage gets in the way of a good working relationship. It is not uncommon for a supervisor to ask a trainee “how is the handover going?” and the trainee responds “good,” without much explanation.
2 psychoanalytic
The classic use of the term transference comes from psychoanalysis and includes: “the redirection of feelings and desires for someone from childhood that are unconsciously transferred to a new person.”
This means that transference occurs the moment you project feelings about someone else, especially someone from your childhood, onto the therapist.
There are three types of transmission in this theory:
- Positive
- Negative
- Erotic or sexual
The most well-known example is sexual transference and falling in love with the therapist. But you can also transmit feelings such as anger, malice, distrust or dependency.
Although transference as a term is used in the context between a counselor and a client, its mechanics apply to other situations as well. In fact, you project feelings from your childhood onto other people even outside of mental health care. A boss at work reminds you of your grumpy grandmother. The man next to you on the train reminds you of your school friend Stef, so you make a joke that Stef would appreciate, much to the dismay of the train stranger.
3 feelings of infatuation
Yet another way the term transference is used refers only to loving feelings. It is then short for what therapists call erotic or sexual transference, the phenomenon in which you develop romantic feelings for your therapist.
Working with transfer
Expressing your love for your therapist may be easier said than done, but it is important to talk about it. Your therapist can then help you explore these feelings, and you will likely grow through this process and learn from it.
Maybe you always fall in love with people who are unavailable, and your therapist is an example of that. Or maybe you’ve never had this warmth and acceptance from someone before. Your therapist should help you understand these feelings, and once you get a better handle on what is going on, you will likely experience personal growth as a result.
How does your therapist respond to transference
Your therapist may even already know that you have feelings for him or her. Even if you don’t, an ethical and well-trained therapist will be open to discussing your feelings toward them. Therapy is a safe place to discuss interpersonal processes, and much personal growth can come from that. Your therapist should treat this news with dignity and explore it with you.
It is crucial to know that romantic relationships between therapist and client are inappropriate, and it is up to your therapist to maintain this boundary. Therapy is largely one-sided, unlike most other relationships in your life. By sharing your emotional experiences and sometimes secrets with your therapist, you are opening yourself up and being vulnerable, which is often important to get the most out of the process.
Disadvantages of working with transfer
Transference can sometimes be an obstacle to therapy. You may feel the temptation to break off the therapeutic relationship altogether, avoid the feelings, or become cranky and withdrawn during sessions, which hinders progress.
Instead of connecting with the person across from you, you treat your therapist as if he or she were your mother, or your school rival, or an idealized object of desire, when in fact he or she is none of these. It prevents you from really connecting with the therapist in a meaningful way.
Benefits of working with transfer
Transference in therapy can also be incredibly helpful, pointing you in the direction of unhealed wounds. The nature of transference can provide important clues to your problems and can help resolve deep-seated conflicts in your psyche.
For example, when you do not feel loved or accepted by important figures in your life, a therapist can act as a kind of substitute for a relationship you are missing in your life. Therefore, being in love with your therapist is not at all a bad thing. Indeed, it can even help point out what is going wrong in relationships in your life or offer you an exercise in how a healthy relationship and distance and closeness works within it.
Dealing with transference
As magical as the feeling seems, transference is really nothing more than a signal of a relationship problem. You learn more about yourself as you work on your relationships, and transference allows you to understand a lot about your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, relationships and fantasies. But intense attachment can also feel uncomfortable and difficult to discuss. How can you best deal with this?
Realize that it is normal
Some people are ashamed of loving, sexual, or otherwise “inappropriate” feelings toward their therapist. But most therapists, especially those interested in relational issues, are not afraid of such feelings and even assume that some kind of transference will occur. Most therapists feel comfortable talking about it.
Talk about it
Talk about the feelings and confusion. Usually this is all that is needed to make these uncomfortable feelings manageable and even lessen. If you have trouble bringing it up, start gently, such as: “I’ve been feeling a little uncomfortable here lately and I think it has to do with our relationship.” With such a conversation opening, the therapist will need to know how to handle the issue going forward.
Find out why you feel this way
Transference reactions usually indicate a deeper issue or unfinished business from the past. Try to find those. Does the psychologist make you angry because he reacts to you as your father? Identify that and discuss what role your father played in your current issues. Do you feel strongly about your relationship therapist? Review what role he or she plays in your life and what of that you miss in your current partner. If you understand the underlying issues that trigger the transference reaction and work on them the transference reaction should lessen.
Find the differences
If you really feel the need to end the transference pattern, you can try to actively separate the person in front of you from your memory. Is your therapist really like your mother? Probably not. Is he really your ideal lover? Probably not either. Make a list of all the ways in which the person differs from “the template” and then discuss them with your therapist. You can also ask if the therapist is willing to provide more information about his or her life to help further differentiate the two.
Consider how you want to relate to your therapist
If you focus only on how you don’t want to feel you are very likely to make the feeling worse. Instead, think about how you do want to relate to your therapist, how you would like it to feel, what you imagine your professional relationship would look like, how close or distant you want him or her to be. And then practice that.
Stop therapy or see another therapist
In general, transference is a good opportunity to practice feelings and running away when it happens is a waste of that opportunity. That said, there are good reasons to seek another therapist if you are suffering from transference:
- You are in therapy for a problem unrelated to relational problems and transference is getting in the way of this therapy:
For example, you have a huge fear of spiders, but you, your partner and all your friends have a fine relationship. The therapist looks like your very first girlfriend and you fall hopelessly in love, but you have no reason to give your feelings about your very first girlfriend a proper place and you really need to get rid of that fear of spiders. In this case, it is an excellent idea to leave the transfer and find another therapist. - You can’t talk about the transference
You are so in love that you are afraid to talk about your feelings and the communication paralysis persists even after trying all the above tips. Therapy ends up at a standstill. You can then choose to take a break. You can choose to go to another therapist, work on your transference issues and then return to this therapist. Or you can discontinue therapy. - Your therapist does not respond well to transference
Therapists, if all goes well, have the necessary tools to deal with client transference. But therapists are people, too. Not everyone knows how to respond appropriately or act in a way that makes transference constructive rather than negative. You are ultimately responsible for your own life, feelings and behavior. You are also responsible for leaving when a situation becomes emotionally unsafe, even if it is a situation with a licensed therapist, psychologist or psychiatrist. You can stop therapy whenever you want.
The opposite direction: countertransference
Countertransference also sometimes occurs in response to transference, in which the therapist transfers his or her own internal conflicts onto you. This process can be functional in therapy: many psychologists openly share their own feelings with the people they treat and can use countertransference in a conscious way to understand the differences between their own experiences and the experiences of the person in therapy.
But countertransference can also be harmful when the therapist projects feelings that are misplaced, such as feelings of anger, disgust or romantic feelings, or when a therapist uses someone’s therapy to satisfy his or her personal psychological needs. Countertransference is particularly harmful when the therapist does not recognize it as countertransference.
For example, a problematic example of countertransference is when in therapy you project your issues with your father onto your therapist, and he projects his issues with his own child back to you. If the therapist reacts to you as he would react to his own child, by controlling more and more, for example, and in doing so fails to recognize his countertransference, this can have a negative impact on your therapeutic relationship and make the unhealthy relationship patterns you have with your father stronger instead of healing.
Similarly, if you are in love with your therapist and he or she takes advantage of your feelings for her or him and reciprocates such feelings in any way then this is a very clear ethical violation. If you suspect harmful countertransference in your treatment you can notice it in a session, if it is safe to do so. If that does not feel safe, consider another therapist. You can stop therapy whenever you want.