Many people seek counseling due to some sort of crisis within their lives. They seek out someone neutral, objective, like a counselor, because their family and friends provide advice based on emotions and the connection with the person.
Once in counseling, you may start to have feelings for your therapist. This is very common. You start to feel like you really could like being friends with them. You feel like the therapist understands you and really listens to you. They may laugh with you n sessions, they allow you to cry when you need to. They accept you for where you're at. As a result, you may want to see your therapist over lunch, at a coffee shop, etc.
The California Association of Marriage & Family Therapists (CAMFT) establishes the Code of Ethics. They state, therapists should not engage "in a close personal relationship with a patient" as it may skew the therapy. Is this person now your friend or your therapist? How do they maintain that professionalism? Are you now paying your therapist or a good friend to help you? It can all become confusing and counterproductive.
Another issue is your relationship wasn't based on the makings of a friendship. Counseling is a business transaction with personal impacts. How much do you know about your therapist, really? Friendships are struck based on commonalities, such as interests, likes/dislikes, and personal experiences. How much of these things do you know about your therapist? Probably not as much as you think. Therapists don't disclose too much about themselves during your sessions. They can be likable people, but it doesn't mean you know that much of their lives outside the office.
CAMFT recommends a 2-year waiting rule to be extended to all types of relationships with clients, including friendships. There are several reasons for this. First, you may decide to return shortly after ending the therapy, which is common. Second, there is a belief that if a client and therapist want to engage in a relationship (friendship or otherwise) outside the therapy, 2-years to determine if a friendship could really sustain beyond the parameters of therapy.
If you have additional thoughts about becoming friends with your therapist, I recommend to discuss this directly with your therapist. It would be a good process for you in figuring out what characteristics you need for friendships as well as keeping the therapist in their role and allowing them to do their job...to provide you with a safe, valuable service.
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Yes, I believe your correct and I know about the code of ethics provisions with my head.
But my heart tells me this woman is the sister I never had.
She listens to all my problems without judgment and knows me the best
My cat gives me unconditional love but doesn't listen, but my therapist does listen! So they're somewhat equal, and I love my cat like my child!
Erica,
This is very common to experience such emotions with your therapist. She is able to listen and respond to you in ways that many people can't, and that's an attractive quality to seek in a friend.
Remember this, you are paying this therapist to listen to you. You are paying this therapist to search out answers with you in response to your needs. You are paying her to establish a safe place where you can feel vulnerable so that you may work on establishing your own safe haven. It sounds like this is what you're looking for in a good friend, which isn't a bad thing, as it's helping you define your needs.
I suggest you process these needs with your therapist. I also have 2 cats. While they are comforting, you're right that they can't meet all of our needs!
Good luck to you...
Jodi
Unfortunately, I never got to process these feelings with my therapist. Once I told her she withdrew from me and stopped responding to my needs in therapy (not communicating about the obvious negative reaction my statement seemed to cause) as well as became hard to contact outside of the therapy session when I had emergencies (deaths of 2 family members) and failed to provide for continous care in her 4 week absence).
Everything went downhill from there, leading to 2 suicide attempts on my part and 30 days out 45 in locked wards and complete kidney failure as a by product of the depression I felt in reaction to her (mis)treatment of me.
I have been terminated and been loudly accused of harassment and disallowed from intensive day treatment services and drop-in center privileges and volunteering opportunities because of the likelihood of interaction in those places.
PS Small world: You practice in Brea, which is near Whittier, where I grew up. You studied Psychology at CSUF, where I studued Psychology as an undergrad.
My soon to be ex-therapist and I have graduated over the years from traditional CBT approach, to more of an academic supervisor/mentor relationship, and will be finishing sessions shortly. We have actually connected on the level of an academic friendship - mainly intellectual, discussing research and so on. That has happened as I have done a lot of delving into research myself in overlapping areas and can pretty much hold my own in academic discussion with any professional psychologist. I'm also a professional in my own field, a field which makes it likely that I will be having these sort of academic discussions with psychologists.
He's no longer in that traditional helping role, and that has happened gradually, as I've mastered those techniques myself. I definitely don't see him as some sort of unconditional emotional support giver, but as a person doing a job, ie to teach me CBT approaches to handle the OCD, which he has done. I have paid him to do that - but then I would also pay a family friend who happened to be a plumber if my tap needed fixing. I know some of his faults as a person, he knows some of mine. He's not some idealised figure, but a person, like myself.
We've discussed the matter of friendship after the cessation of sessions, and we've both agreed to be friends with boundaries appropriate for academic colleagues, ex-supervisors, etc. This is a sphere which both of us inhabit anyway. We will make sure there is an appropriate gap between therapy and talking as academic friends. That future role does not involve having him search out answers with me in response to things in my life, or being some sort of 'eternal therapist' for me. It is simply an equal exchange of ideas between two people who enjoy talking about ideas. And it's understood by both that this means that any future client-therapist role for us is completely out of the question.
I can understand that post-therapeutic friendship is not always possible, due to ethical reasons. But I really do think it's ridiculous that 2 people at the same university, with similar intellectual interests, and who enjoy talking to each other on that level should be looked on with suspicion - or prevented from doing so - simply because one of them happens to have consulted the other regarding CBT at one stage in their lives.
There are certainly cases of abuse out there, but there are post-therapy friendships out there which do respect boundaries, and which do work in the long run. I do find it interesting, however, that these perfectly ordinary friendships seem to get hidden behind the 'once a client, always a client' rhetoric. In no other area of life does the 'once an x, always an x' format hold. People change and move on. People work in offices together and become friends. Friends may become business partners. Or one may work for the other, etc, etc.
I do get a little bit annoyed that for however long I remain friends with my ex-psychologist, I will be expected to justify that in the eyes of 'once a client, always a client' belief holders.
My soon to be ex-therapist and I have graduated over the years from traditional CBT approach, to more of an academic supervisor/mentor relationship, and will be finishing sessions shortly. We have actually connected on the level of an academic friendship - mainly intellectual, discussing research and so on. That has happened as I have done a lot of delving into research myself in overlapping areas and can pretty much hold my own in academic discussion with any professional psychologist. I'm also a professional in my own field, a field which makes it likely that I will be having these sort of academic discussions with psychologists.
He's no longer in that traditional helping role, and that has happened gradually, as I've mastered those techniques myself. I definitely don't see him as some sort of unconditional emotional support giver, but as a person doing a job, ie to teach me CBT approaches to handle the OCD, which he has done. I have paid him to do that - but then I would also pay a family friend who happened to be a plumber if my tap needed fixing. I know some of his faults as a person, he knows some of mine. He's not some idealised figure, but a person, like myself.
We've discussed the matter of friendship after the cessation of sessions, and we've both agreed to be friends with boundaries appropriate for academic colleagues, ex-supervisors, etc. This is a sphere which both of us inhabit anyway. We will make sure there is an appropriate gap between therapy and talking as academic friends. That future role does not involve having him search out answers with me in response to things in my life, or being some sort of 'eternal therapist' for me. It is simply an equal exchange of ideas between two people who enjoy talking about ideas. And it's understood by both that this means that any future client-therapist role for us is completely out of the question.
I can understand that post-therapeutic friendship is not always possible, due to ethical reasons. But I really do think it's ridiculous that 2 people at the same university, with similar intellectual interests, and who enjoy talking to each other on that level should be looked on with suspicion - or prevented from doing so - simply because one of them happens to have consulted the other regarding CBT at one stage in their lives.
There are certainly cases of abuse out there, but there are post-therapy friendships out there which do respect boundaries, and which do work in the long run. I do find it interesting, however, that these perfectly ordinary friendships seem to get hidden behind the 'once a client, always a client' rhetoric. In no other area of life does the 'once an x, always an x' format hold.
I do get a little bit annoyed that for however long I remain friends with my ex-psychologist, I will be expected to justify that in the eyes of 'once a client, always a client' belief holders.
Mabullas, thanks for your comments. There are exceptions to every rule of course... the hard part to writing a blog like this is I have to focus on the generalities rather than case-by-case scenarios.
There are no "hard" or "fast" rules to counseling... only that the therapist is consistently making sure that the decisions they make are in the best interest of the client and will not do harm.
Thanks for your feedback!
I have a big problem. Initially I went to see a counselor at my school (where I am a graduate student) for transgender issues. I got matched with a counselor specializing in LGBT issues, and was in the process of finding help to attain that purpose. However, in the process of doubting my sexuality and my dying attraction to women, I did not know that my counselor would have the impact she has had on my life. I feel madly in love with her, without realizing, and this is crushing me because the last time I saw her in session, I expressed that I thought of her as a friend. remember, I didn't tell her the "falling in love with you" part. Over the course of my sessions, she and I engaged in moments of "small talk", in whcih I found out that she was my same age (I will turn 35 December 11) and she is 35, and her birthday is the same date as my mom's birthday April 17! More than thta, this woman is extremely attractive, and it wasn't only the way she has made me feel, but I feel that she is the right person had I not walked into a counseling setting. Another problem is of my lifelong battle with meeting the right people. I am so detached from my peer group and have always had trouble making friends. I got picked on all throughout school, and today I am surrounded by so many undergraduates with whom I share nothing in common. This is really destroying me because I can't stop thinking about her. I have been crying for three weeks nonstop. At my last session, my counselor made me feel like crap by telling me that she could never be friends with me, and besides, I possibly wouldn't be able to satisfy her needs! Now is that comment unprofessional or what? I want to report her but I care so much for her and it hurts me. The only person that knows this is another school official which I had the guts to tell because she kind of knows about my transgender issues. How can I explain that this experience made me realize that I can still be a man and possess feminine characteristics and that I don't have to make a change full circle? And to make matters worse, I can't stop thinking about her and it's not fair that I meet someone so right for me (taking away the veil of psychology and this "professionalism" nonsense that keeps us humans apart). I guess my therapist doesn;t know about the two-year rule, and I know that if anything were to happen between me and her, she would NOT be exploiting me, as I came to her with another issue. PLEASE HEEEEEELPPPP!!!
Jantzen
I'm just going to be blunt, because it sounds like you already have trouble on picking up on social ques and norms so beating around the bush is not going to help you here. I am not doing this to be mean, judgemental or condescending. She most likely does know about the two year rule. Have you considered the fact that maybe she just isn't interested in you? You say it was unprofessional for her to say that you can fulfill her needs, but it was YOU who initiated that conflict. And it was unprofessional of YOU to tell your therapist that you have feelings for her not to mention odd that you would expect a women who treats Transgender people, to immidietley jump into a relationship with one of her clients? Maybe you should continue your therapy, with someone else. You say yourself that you are in the process of denying your sexuality. So do you like men, women or both. Not too many transgenders like women unless they are female born transgenders. I think you need to sit back and analyze the situation further I mean jesus you sound desperate and obsessed. news flash, this isn't really a "big problem" for most people, even for men who DO fall in love with their therapist. Most of us just find a new therapist and leave our phone number, see if she calls. shit.... you are way too intense. and I find it odd that you call your identity "transgender issues" and feel the need to see a therapist in the first place. most REAL trannys are content with themselves and do not feel the need to be "fixed". you're just a neurotic ninny, give me a break. anyone who goes on the internet with the sign off of PLEASE HEEEEEEEEEEEELP!!! just reeks of desperation. you fell in love with the first women you talked to when you began to doubt your sexuality, doesn't that tell you something or are you really that blind man?
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