Help! I Can’t Stop Thinking about My Therapist
Dear Obsessed,
Although I can’t know what is happening in your therapy and how this may pertain to your question, clearly this is an important issue, and I hope you will discuss it directly with your therapist. I can understand that perhaps you feel reluctant to bring it up, but the ensuing conversation might be very helpful, and it could move the work you are doing together toward a deeper understanding of your relationship with her and, most importantly, with yourself.
Any emotional reaction, especially one as pervasive as what you describe, contains clues that you want to identify and investigate. For example, at some stages of development obsession is quite natural, and your obsession might be pointing toward a difficult time in your life that needs work. Young children, for example, are obsessed with their caregivers, often their mothers. If this is the root of your issue, you might learn that there was a difficult experience in your childhood that needs to be looked at. Maybe when you were very young, a toddler or a baby, you had fears that your mother or another important person in your life might leave you, never to return—that you might be abandoned. Perhaps you did in fact lose someone you loved. Teenagers, even adults, are sometimes obsessed with someone they see as a role model. They are obsessed because that person is someone they want to be and knows things they need to learn.
An interesting aspect of therapy is an experience called “transference.” Transference means that the feelings you have for someone important in your life are unconsciously transferred to another person—in this case the therapist. We all have feelings like that; it’s quite normal. For example, people at work often relate to the boss as if the boss was their father or mother, and they might not even know it. Or your irresponsible coworker might remind you of your younger brother or sister. It’s helpful when we become aware of such feelings and then take care to recognize and correct them rather than simply reacting. Therapy can help you do that.
Let’s talk about therapy, some of its general goals, and how they may apply to your situation.
- Speak your mind to your therapist, without concern for feeling silly, looking stupid, being insulting, or whatever worries tend to stop you from speaking up. Honesty makes for a strong therapeutic relationship.
- There are many different kinds of obsessions—obsession with the Internet, with sports, with movie stars, with teachers, even with one’s therapist. A therapist, after all, is someone who is trying to help. It makes sense that we become attached to kind and helpful people. Who wouldn’t? Maybe, for you, this is a rare experience of being truly understood, you can’t quite believe it’s real, and you don’t want to let it go.
- The love and gratitude we feel when we are accepted and understood is boundless. Certainly, I feel greatly attached to my teachers, mentors, and therapists. The thought that these connections are partly real and partly transference is kind of sad. “What,” I might think, “you mean this isn’t real?”
- It is real, the feelings are real, but they are not to be acted on—they are to be explored with words only. These feelings and the therapeutic relationship are on a different and special plane, apart from the everyday world in certain ways. That is the tragedy, glory, and power of any deep therapeutic relationship.
How lovely that you have such strong feelings about your therapist. It means that you have been reached at a deep level, which has given you and your therapist a strong energic ground from which to proceed.
I hope this has been helpful. Please let me know what you think. Take care!
Respectfully,
Lynn
Lynn Somerstein
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Robert
November 21st, 2014 at 10:42 AMI am only guessing but my thoughts are that you feel this way because of the profound impact that this person has had on your life. You want her to be a part of that life even though you know that you have to keep it on a professional level. It could be time to cut back on your visits to her but I would at least have a conversation with her about what is going on so that she can give you some thoughts into the matter and show you how this either means that you are making progress in your life or how you still need help coping with certain issues.
Genevieve
November 21st, 2014 at 1:26 PMI know that if you are like me then I would be mortified to admit this to someone but at the same time it really does seem like that would be the safest thing to do in your situation.
candi I.
November 22nd, 2014 at 2:46 PMmaybe it isn’t such a bad thing if you never choose to act on any of it…
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