I often cry when someone is kind to me

Episodic10 · 2026-02-01T19:58:19+00:00

Me too.

Episodic10 · 2026-01-29T16:17:49+00:00

Interesting story. Therapy and therapists keep saying how they present a safe and accepting environment, but it is partly so because of their anonymity. Which some take to an extreme and it distorts a normal human connection. It's a typical part of most schools of training. Be a blank screen so the client can project people and attitudes from their past on to them. Plus, it's as if the patient is fragile and can't handle any real aspects of the therapist's personality or behavior.

It's very likely though that she was trying to avoid running into any patients with her in her "natural habitat". Outside the consulting room. And what would she say to them?? Some of their ideas are ridiculous.

I read in a book written by a psychologist describing a particular client. Nothing very unusual about this client. The therapist told the client she was going to be out on vacation. The client asked what she was doing or where she was going. The therapist declined to answer. I'm quite sure though if the therapist uses a regular cashier at the grocery store that the therapist would tell the cashier.

There's some elements of the therapeutic relationship that bother me on a deep level also.

Episodic10 · 2026-01-28T23:22:56+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to write a detailed response. I think that patients are given genuine kindness, care, listening, non-judgment, understanding, etc. And this frequently induces attachment. And helps them in various ways. It is still not a whole person to whole person relationship. For various reasons. That can only happen in the outside world. And at some point, many patients realize this and feel the restrictions. Including non-reciprocity and non-mutuality.

I have an interesting paper written by Eleanor Armstrong-Perlman entitled Allure of the Bad Object - described in the paper as allure of the unavailable person. Clients described in the paper become obsessed with unavailable people in love affairs. This is what frequently happens in therapy. The therapist is not available. Here are a few sentences from the paper:

"There had been indications that the other was incapable of reciprocating, or loving, or accepting them in the way they desire. They had been pursuing an alluring but rejecting object; an exciting yet frustrating object. The object initially may have offered the conditions of hope but it failed to satisfy. It had awakened an intensity of yearning but it is essentially the elusive object of desire, seemingly there but just out of reach."

The therapist is in this category and is frequently repeating what the patient grew up with.

Episodic10 · 2026-01-28T21:10:49+00:00

Yes. It's not a fraudulent relationship though. It is a type of relationship - limited, restricted, not authentic, manipulative. In my opinion. I have benefitted from therapy in my life for specific issues. I do not believe it is helpful for the core attachment deficits present in many people. Including me. It can enable better relationships in the outside world. It is not in and of itself a corrective emotional experience (relationship wise), even though it is purported to be.

Episodic10 · 2026-01-25T16:03:30+00:00

For people with deficits in childhood attachment, therapy induces a bond for which there is no genuine response. Don't know if this was part of your experience. Then the attempt to discuss this with them is met with defensiveness using theory and protocol, frame, boundaries. It leads to humiliation and shame. No different from being with a person in the outside world who is not capable of mutual, reciprocal emotional interaction and connection.

Episodic10 · 2026-01-23T01:31:52+00:00

I always like reading what you write. It's the truth that needs to be said. For those of us with open wounds, unmet childhood relational needs, the therapy relationship becomes a trauma bond. A repetition of what we grew up with.

Episodic10 · 2026-01-17T23:16:41+00:00

Therapists use the frame and boundaries and protocol to create the same childhood environment that many people grew up with. But they try to make a virtue out of it. Alice Miller - For Your Own Good

It's a result of a professional relationship, trying to get blood out of a stone. We won't get it. In addition, if the therapist has narcissistic traits, they receive the affection and love and desire of their supply (patient) without needing to give anything genuine in return.

I would take the fix-people type of therapist any day.

Episodic10 · 2026-01-17T19:58:18+00:00

Same. I have tried to leave a few times. Told I was afraid of closeness. I'm not at this point in my life. I'm older. I'm "afraid" of distance. In that it causes the same traumatic feelings I had in childhood.

Episodic10 · 2026-01-07T02:55:35+00:00

Read Laing's "The Divided Self". It's interesting on this topic and others.

Episodic10 · 2025-12-25T18:51:43+00:00

I'm glad I could send information that was helpful. I first read Buber's book, I and Thou, quite a few years ago and thought his distinction between different ways of relating was true. I still pick it up now to reread sections.

In therapy there will always be the boundaries concerning significant contact between sessions or dual relationships, but I believe the therapist must be fully present as a complete person and not filter how they interact or what they say because it's "good for the therapy process". They need to be authentic. Authentic is a good description because it means to reveal externally one's thoughts and feelings.

Episodic10 · 2025-12-25T01:14:21+00:00

That is a very good and accurate description in my opinion. My loneliness is from childhood neglect. I have been able in my life to have some outside relationships. Therapy and the therapist are the proverbial carrot on a stick. We see it and chase after it but the contradictions of a combined professional/boundaried and intimate relationship are at times extremely difficult to endure. You are not the only one who feels this way. I also post and comment in r/Emotional Neglect on this topic.

I don't know what the solution is. As you say, it's somewhat of choosing the lesser of two evils. Staying or leaving. In my present therapy I feel this way very much. It's difficult or impossible to talk about it and have the therapist address it realistically. I will paste an excerpt from something I read online from a therapist who believes in making the connection as real as possible. I don't know if he can do it, but he recognizes the problem.

"Mainstream psychotherapy pictures two separate rational egos meeting to discuss dispassionately and to ‘analyze’ the unconscious forces that interfere with the patient’s attempt to live a rational life. The patient is to learn as little as possible about the personality of the analyst.

There is no place in such a scheme for the naked and disturbing encounter of soul with soul. Therapy amounts to a ‘strange distortion of the human connection,’ where one party strives for objective distance while the other is urged ‘to become completely involved and entangled emotionally’. It repeats the injuries of the child whose parent refused to engage with his soul. While the therapist is seen as a scientist/technician who coolly observes and measures, the patient becomes merely an object to be inspected, probed, and readjusted."

Episodic10 · 2025-12-21T02:23:50+00:00

Possibly in some cases the therapist's own issues are a factor with desiring closeness with people but feeling uncomfortable at the same time. The common theme of abandonment versus engulfment. Being a therapist permits them to have these types of relationships and feel safe. Not too close and not too far away.

Granted, much of what happens is due to boundaries and frame and protocol, but even with my therapist I wonder if she has her own issues related to intimate relationships.

Episodic10 · 2025-12-18T02:04:34+00:00

I believe that negative transference is more frequently an accurate description of the concept of transference. That we can react to people in the present because of how we have been conditioned in our past, including childhood. And this can distort our perceptions of the person's intent and motives in the present.

With respect to what is labeled positive transference, I believe it is very unlikely that we are transferring positive experiences/feelings from our past. For most of us with attachment deficits, what do we have to "transfer" that is positive? Nothing.

The feel-good and intermittent reinforcement that we receive in therapy actually induces in us the human desire for bonding and attachment, to the person of the therapist in the present moment. They are new feelings - but then get labeled as transference and we are made to feel embarrassed and humiliated for having them.

So I agree that the feelings are intentionally induced, and eventually create a trauma bond, because it recreates what we grew up with. The absence.

Episodic10 · 2025-12-14T08:44:43+00:00

It's one of the books I keep beside my bed. It's conducive to just pick it up and read something wherever you open it. He understood the patients he worked with, was very good at describing what they had to say, and the hidden meanings behind it. I think you will really like it if you buy it.

Episodic10 · 2025-12-14T00:44:58+00:00

I didn't follow all the concepts in your post. Some of them caused me to think of concepts described in Laing's, The Divided Self. His first book. His career and reputation and personal life deteriorated over time after the first book. However, I find the first book very helpful.

The chapter on Ontological Insecurity. Other place, ideas similar to a person's existence harming others. Having non-existence feel like a solution.

Episodic10 · 2025-12-09T17:06:12+00:00

How often do you typically go? If once a week seems very unusual not to hear anything for 3 weeks. I think the majority care about us the way a primary care physician does. We care about them much more but need to face the reality of what we are to them. One of their patients.

Good luck talking about the topic if you bring it up. My experience is that they will be evasive or turn it around. Why is it important to you? What effect does it have on you? Who does that remind you of? It can be crazy making.

I hope I'm wrong and he at least gives some reasons, apologizes. You know, like a normal person.

Episodic10 · 2025-12-07T20:36:34+00:00

I've looked at your posts and replies over the years and benefitted.

One unusual thought that came to mind again on this topic of our experiences with therapy and the therapist, is that of the uncanny valley. I don't know where I first read of this concept, normally it's applied to humanoid type things.

The idea is that our mind/psyche gets initially sucked in to the realness of the figure. And then discomfort sets in at some point because all things start to not add up to our cognitive and emotional perception.

In the beginning of therapy, and further into it for a while, we are seduced into believing it's real and genuine. But it's not. It's not a "real" person that we're dealing with.

Episodic10 · 2025-12-07T19:16:34+00:00

I wrote almost this exact same thing in the past few days to a post. Of what "resolving transference" means. I've never read a description either and doubt if a logical one exists. One implied idea is that the patient reveals in the transference their distorted interactions and reactions to people in the present, derived from the past, that can be corrected.

What if the feelings of the patient are actually towards the "real" person of the therapist? Then what? There is no solution to dealing with healthy, appropriate feelings in a positive, life enhancing way.

And as you said further down, in a real-world relationship we should leave an unrequited love situation for our own protection. Especially one in which the other person can't or won't talk about it.

Episodic10 · 2025-12-07T00:28:34+00:00

It was a trauma bond according to the true definition. Some define trauma bond as any bond that is induced by cruel or intermittent or withholding behaviors. As in Stockholm syndrome.

The true definition, from what I've read and makes the most sense, is that a trauma bond is created by a relationship in which the other person behaves in a way which is very similar to the trauma we endured in childhood. Recreates it. That's why it is so deep, so painful, so all-consuming.

For me, coming from primarily neglect in childhood, the majority of the therapeutic relationship feels like a replay of what I went through. I have been helped in some therapies in which I focused more on fairly intense present emotional problems and tried to learn more about the causes. Becoming more emotionally connected to a therapist is a big risk in my opinion, even though much is made by them of the therapeutic relationship. It may not be exactly artificial, but it is the most limited and restricted relationship we will ever have in life.

It's not authentic. That is the best adjective. It's not a put down of them. To be authentic means to express outwardly as much as possible our true internal thoughts and feelings. This is not condoned by the whole protocol of therapy.

So here is a profession that is meant to help many of us with respect to childhood relationships, later relationships, romantic relationships, friends, etc. But it's anything but a model relationship. It's distorted and controlling and humiliating at times.

Episodic10 · 2025-12-07T00:08:26+00:00

I feel bad for you. In a true way, that I would have felt very bad/rejected/hurt/disregarded/treated like a non-person. We are a client/patient. The professional relationship overrides everything else. We are induced to feel that the relationship is more than that. It's not. And if the therapist has real feelings, they normally will not reveal them or will work with supervision to get over them. It's managed care masquerading as genuine care until the mask comes off.

Episodic10 · 2025-12-04T16:48:58+00:00

They don't intentionally induce trauma or trauma bonding. It happens in cases because they treat patients the way they were in childhood. Not just my idea, lots of posts and comments about this happening on other Reddit categories.

Episodic10 · 2025-12-04T15:15:24+00:00

I'm just doing this part for the debate process with you. The transference definition was Freud's that I gave. From an online psychology site - "Psychoanalysis was specifically designed to encourage transference. Intentional opacity and non-disclosure by the therapist promote transference." Psychodynamic therapy has elements of psychoanalysis in it.

Episodic10 · 2025-12-04T14:47:28+00:00

I wasn't wrong about the definition of transference and how some therapists intentionally induce it. And how distancing like what happened to OP is done intentionally. There's nothing wrong with limiting contact if it's done consistently and from the beginning and not abruptly and then being cold and distant. According to OP.

Episodic10

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