Is attachment to your therapist normal, and what does missing them or wondering about their life mean? A guide to understanding and raising these feelings.
You count down the days to your session. When something happens during the week, your first thought is "I must tell her about this." When your therapist goes on summer holiday you feel a pang; in the evenings you wonder what kind of life she has, whether she is married, what she does at weekends. Perhaps one night you find yourself searching for her name online, then feel embarrassed and put the phone down. Attachment to a therapist is something many clients experience but rarely put into words. Most people feel ashamed of these feelings, wonder "Is something wrong with me?", or fear that if the therapist finds out, she will pull away from them. In this article I look at why attachment to a therapist is so common, the forms it takes, when it deserves attention, and how you can talk about these feelings in therapy.
Is Attachment to Your Therapist Normal?
Yes, it is extremely common and understandable. To see why, it is enough to look at the nature of the therapy relationship. Once a week, regularly, you meet someone who gives you their full attention, listens to you without judgement, stays with you in your most difficult moments and does not bring their own needs into the relationship. Many people experience a relationship like this for the first time in therapy. It would be more surprising not to become attached to such a relationship.
The therapeutic relationship is regarded as one of the most important factors in whether therapy works. Working with a therapist you trust enables you to enter difficult subjects and find the courage to try out change. So a certain degree of attachment is not a side effect of therapy but part of how it works.
What matters is not whether this attachment exists but how it is experienced and how much pain it causes. For some clients, becoming attached to their therapist is a warm and reassuring feeling; for others it comes with intense longing, jealousy or fear of abandonment and makes life harder.
The Different Faces of Attachment to a Therapist
Attachment to a therapist can show up in many different forms. Recognising them helps you make sense of your own experience.
Missing them and waiting for the session
Thinking about your therapist between sessions, missing talking to them, counting the days until the session. This is the most common form and is mostly harmless.
Curiosity
An intense curiosity about your therapist's private life, their family, where they live, what they are like outside your sessions. Because therapists generally share little about themselves, this gap is filled by the client's imagination. In online sessions this curiosity sometimes turns to different clues: the bookshelf visible on screen, a painting on the wall, a sound in the background. Looking at the therapist's "last seen" status on WhatsApp while messaging about appointments and wondering what they were doing at that hour is also a small habit many clients are embarrassed to admit, but it is actually very common.
Seeking approval
Striving to please your therapist, completing your homework perfectly, being a "good client", hoping to see a look of approval on their face. Sometimes this effort can even lead you to hide how you really feel in therapy.
Jealousy and wanting to be special
Feeling uncomfortable when you see the next client in the waiting room, not wanting to think that the therapist works with other people with the same closeness. The question "Am I just like the others to her?" often comes to mind.
Fear of abandonment
The therapist going on holiday, a session being cancelled or the end of therapy being discussed can provoke intense anxiety. Some clients struggle to trust the relationship fully because of the thought that the therapist will one day be gone.
Admiration
Idealising your therapist, thinking that they know everything, never make mistakes and have a perfect life. Sometimes this admiration may also take on a romantic colouring; this too is a human experience and can be talked about respectfully in therapy.
The attachment you feel to your therapist is not a weakness but a sign of your capacity to form relationships and of what you need.
Where Do These Feelings Come From?
How intense attachment to a therapist is relates closely to a person's past relationship experiences. Early attachment experiences shape how a person approaches closeness, separation and trust.
For someone who was not seen emotionally enough in childhood, whose needs went unmet or who received love on conditions, the therapist may be their first experience of unconditional attention. In this case, attachment to the therapist is a long-unmet need coming to the surface. In people with an anxious attachment tendency, longing and fear of abandonment may be more pronounced, while in those with an avoidant attachment tendency, feeling attached may also bring an urge to withdraw. You can find more detailed information about these concepts in the article on attachment styles.
It is also common in therapy for familiar feelings from the past to be directed towards the therapist. For example, the effort you make to win your therapist's approval may be the same effort you made as a child to win a parent's approval. In psychotherapy this process is called "transference", and it is one of the most valuable materials of therapy. I discuss this concept in detail in the article what is transference.
Let's say someone whose mother was frequently in hospital, and who spent their childhood anxious about "when Mum will go away again", is shaken far more than expected on learning that their therapist will be on leave for three weeks. This reaction is really less about the therapist than about that old anxiety coming back to life. Being able to talk about this in therapy opens a door to understanding separation anxiety not only with the therapist but in other relationships in life too.
When Does Attachment to a Therapist Become Difficult?
Attachment itself is not the problem; but in some situations it can take a form that makes life harder and causes pain. The following signs show that these feelings definitely need to be discussed in therapy:
- Thinking about your therapist takes up a large part of your day and makes it hard to focus on your work or relationships.
- You experience an intense emptiness, helplessness or feeling of abandonment between sessions.
- You constantly follow your therapist's social media accounts and cannot stop yourself searching for information about them.
- You hide what you really feel in order to please your therapist.
- The possibility of ending therapy throws you into panic.
- You feel inclined to present yourself as worse, or to delay getting better, so as not to lose your therapist's attention.
The last point is especially important. Sometimes, without realising it, a client may resist change because they fear that if they get better they will lose their therapist. This is an entirely understandable dynamic and can be resolved once it is talked about.
How Do You Tell Your Therapist About These Feelings?
Voicing feelings of attachment to a therapist is deeply embarrassing for most clients. Worries such as "What will she think, will she find it strange, will she see me differently now?" are common. But therapists are used to these feelings and see them as a valuable part of therapy.
Some ways of raising the subject:
- "This is hard to say, but I've noticed I think about you a lot between sessions."
- "When you said you'd be going on holiday, I felt a real tightness inside. I'd like to talk about that."
- "There are things I'm very curious about you, and I feel embarrassed about it."
- "I noticed I felt jealous when I saw someone else in the waiting room. It seems silly, but I wanted to say it."
After sharing something like this, the therapist will usually respond with curiosity and compassion: When did these feelings start, what do they bring up for you, how are they connected to other relationships in your life? The therapist often will not answer questions about their private life in detail; but this is not a rejection, rather an effort to keep the focus on your experience.
Having this conversation is itself an important experience. For someone who has learned all their life to hide their needs, being able to say "I've become attached to you" and not being rejected in return is a corrective relational experience.
How Can You Cope With These Feelings Between Sessions?
Talking about feelings of attachment in the session is the most important step; but the six days between sessions also have to be lived. The following may help you get through this time more easily:
- Name the feeling rather than suppress it. Instead of saying, "I'm thinking about her again, how ridiculous," try saying, "I'm feeling longing right now, and that's telling me something." Criticising yourself does not reduce the feeling; it only increases the shame.
- Keep a notebook. Write down the things you want to tell your therapist. This both lets you feel the emotion is flowing somewhere and clarifies what you will talk about in the session. Some clients write these notes as short letters addressed directly to their therapist and find this comforting.
- Hold on to a sentence from the session. Remembering something your therapist said that did you good is a way of carrying their support outside the session. It is one of the first steps towards turning the therapist's voice, over time, into your own inner voice.
- Nourish your other relationships. Meeting a friend, phoning an older relative, joining a course. The therapist should not be the only safe relationship in your life; one of the aims of therapy is to spread this sense of safety to other relationships.
- Set limits on social media searching. Curiosity itself is natural; but constant searching can turn into a cycle that feeds anxiety. When the urge arises, noting it down and bringing it to the session is one way of breaking the cycle.
- Plan for your therapist's absence in advance. As holidays or periods of leave approach, discuss together what you can do during that time, whom you can reach, and in which situations you should seek urgent help.
In cities like Çorum, where everyone knows everyone, you may also run into your therapist at the supermarket, at a wedding or at a school parents' meeting. An encounter like this can unexpectedly intensify feelings of attachment. Talking with your therapist in advance about how to handle such situations makes things easier.
The Therapist's Boundaries and the Ethical Framework
When discussing attachment to a therapist, it is also important to know the therapist's responsibilities. The therapist tries to understand the client's feelings and use them for therapeutic purposes; but they do not change the framework of the relationship by reciprocating those feelings.
Some basic elements of this framework are:
- The therapist does not form a friendship, business or emotional relationship with the client outside sessions.
- Contact between sessions is generally limited to arranging appointments, and this is made clear from the start.
- The therapist shares aspects of their private life only in limited situations where they believe it will benefit the client.
- They do not interact with clients on social media or accept follow requests.
These boundaries do not mean coldness or distance. On the contrary, it is precisely these boundaries that make the therapy relationship safe. In a relationship with clear boundaries, the client can express their feelings even at their most intense, because they know the relationship will not be damaged by them.
If you encounter a situation in which these boundaries are pushed or broken, for example if your therapist suggests meeting outside sessions or takes the relationship in a personal direction, the responsibility lies with the therapist, not with you. In such cases it is appropriate to seek the opinion of another professional.
How Can Attachment Be Healing in Therapy?
The secure bond formed with a therapist continues to do its work after therapy ends. Over the course of the process, the therapist's voice gradually becomes part of the client's own inner voice. Thinking in a difficult moment, "What would my therapist say if she were here?" turns over time into "What do I think about this?"
In cognitive behavioural therapy, the therapeutic relationship is seen as a collaborative working foundation; client and therapist work almost like a team. In schema therapy, the relationship is given a more central role: within boundaries, the therapist tries partially to meet emotional needs that went unmet in the client's childhood. In this approach, the client's attachment to the therapist is used as a means of healing old wounds.
Attachment also plays an important role at the end of therapy. A planned and careful goodbye is a way of experiencing that separation does not always mean abandonment, and that a relationship ending does not erase its value. This experience can be carried over into other relationships in a person's life.
In individual therapy with adults, feelings about the therapeutic relationship are as important an item on the agenda as the problems that are brought. Talking about these feelings helps therapy deepen.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it wrong to look up my therapist on social media?
It is a very common behaviour and there is no need to blame yourself. However, what you find may affect your fantasies about your therapist and your experience in therapy. Talking with your therapist about having done this, and about what you felt, helps you understand the need behind this curiosity.
Would it be strange to tell my therapist I've become attached?
No. Therapists are used to these feelings and see them as a valuable part of therapy. Sharing them often marks the beginning of a new and important phase in therapy.
Do therapists become attached to their clients too?
Therapists also care about their clients and are affected by their progress. However, this care stays within a professional framework, and the therapist is expected not to bring their own needs into the relationship. Therapists usually work through these feelings in supervision.
Will this attachment make it harder for me to end therapy?
It may, but this is not an obstacle; it is something to work on. Planning the ending gradually, talking about feelings of separation in sessions and knowing that you can come back in future if needed all make this transition easier.
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Eda Erkan Alapala
Klinik Psikolog. İstanbul Kent Üniversitesi Klinik Psikoloji Tezli Yüksek Lisans mezunu; bilişsel davranışçı terapi, çocuk merkezli oyun terapisi ve çocuk-ergen psikoterapisi alanlarında eğitimlerini tamamlamıştır.
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