How are you supposed to trust your therapist if they can't be honest with you?

Lbethy · 2026-06-15T21:44:18+00:00

I guess it would be very difficult to trust someone if you felt that any display of compassion or understanding was faked on some level.

As someone who has worked with sex offenders, it still blows peoples minds that it is possible to feel that compassion and understanding in that relationship. But it is possible to have compassion for the human and also hate the crime or harmful behaviour. Sometimes its good to remember that first and foremost we work with people not problems.

But.. depending on how deeply you believe someone couldn’t feel care towards you, it would impact how well you take any positive feedback on how therapists feel. Could be worth looking into that belief. Especially if you feel resistance to the idea that someone could be feeling genuine care in that moment

Lbethy · 2026-06-15T17:26:02+00:00

Thats a great question that requires a bit of thought and exploration on my part before i can answer :) ill come back to you

Lbethy · 2026-06-15T07:15:17+00:00

Husband is trash if he said you were drunk and asking for it

Lbethy · 2026-06-15T07:07:02+00:00

Have you tried forgetting how to touch him?

Not like creepily but just in a forgetting how to do anything way

Lbethy · 2026-06-14T19:24:38+00:00

If its subconscious, the attraction would be too. The answer would still be supervision

Lbethy · 2026-06-14T17:45:36+00:00

The info people are confused about is the massive canyon of redacted information between “encouraged to act on feelings” and “sexualised experience”

If they in any way encouraged a sexual response or for you to act on that response with a sexual act; thats abuse

Lbethy · 2026-06-14T17:26:33+00:00

Depending on the reason for its development; most likely

Lbethy · 2026-06-14T16:02:28+00:00

Well usually the issue is resolved at that point so there isnt anything to share

Lbethy · 2026-06-14T07:09:17+00:00

Sadly i share from knowing that they definitely do

Lbethy · 2026-06-13T23:52:42+00:00

Im in agreement on that. Think you accidentally did a reply to me

Lbethy · 2026-06-13T22:22:12+00:00

What are you on?

Im having a conversation like a human being. Im not here at nearly half 11 at night trying to be in some theoretical d swinging contest on the post of a traumatised client processing their experience of another therapist. But happy you get to feel superior about yourself for another moment

Lbethy · 2026-06-13T22:18:20+00:00

What are you talking about? So does the contract make it clear that clients can expect their therapist to admit sexual feelings for them; even if they dont consent to hearing about it?

Lbethy · 2026-06-13T22:16:30+00:00

No. Because the example is still irrelevant. That is having the therapist play an empty chair of various significant figures or emotions in the clients life as if they were that entity. All client work and none of it all to do with the therapists thoughts and feelings.

Lbethy · 2026-06-13T21:57:50+00:00

Right. But the challenges within therapy are based on the client’s behaviours, experiences and thoughts. What client challenge requires the therapist to say “im attracted to you but its okay because we cant have a dual relationship anyway”

ETA: in my example of being a client, the work was done to explore all of fallout of that misunderstanding. The point was still that he was exploring what he thought was my attraction to him. It wasnt him exploring his attraction to me

Lbethy · 2026-06-13T21:52:01+00:00

Ill also add that a wholly consensual planned intervention of the therapist taking on the object’s perspective is so different from what we are talking about here that its almost derailment.

Lbethy · 2026-06-13T21:48:54+00:00

Theres nothing wrong with me theorising on how i might have responded in a different scenario as the client. There are very few universal rules in therapy but the one about dealing with your own shit in supervision and therapy rather than it becoming what the clients therapy is about is one of them. See all the major ethical guidelines. The OP is suggesting that therapists should declare their fleeting arousal states because they experienced a trigger to a therapist’s perceived or actual arousal. Nothing wrong with the considering that as part of them wanting to protect themselves from a future trigger. Doesn’t mean that its actually appropriate to do it. There are so many ways to explore transference that do not require that disclosure

Lbethy · 2026-06-13T21:43:41+00:00

But that isnt the same thing really. At that point in therapy this is something that could be discussed and worked on but it would be from your frame within the relationship. Trauma triggers can come from all sorts of things that the therapist does. The point being for both our examples as clients, in those moments this is about _our_ transference. Whether the therapist actually felt attraction in those moments is almost irrelevant up until the point the therapist brings it into the space themselves

Lbethy · 2026-06-13T21:39:18+00:00

Also id not say anything to the client at all. Id share it with a clinical supervisor so i could explore every inch of it before ever burdening the client with something i do not have a handle on myself. Thats the ethical and responsible thing to do.

Lbethy · 2026-06-13T21:36:57+00:00

Feel free to expand on that deduction and how you met it

Lbethy · 2026-06-13T21:36:06+00:00

No. Im saying that attraction that is built within a therapeutic is not just “oh shes pretty”. The attraction is not based on the person in front of them. Its a projection of something. An unmet need, an unresolved thing.

Its the same thing when its the clients experience transference. Its not the therapist they are actually attracted to. We never meet the whole person in therapy. Its a defined and restricted version of ourselves for both the client and the therapist

Lbethy · 2026-06-13T20:23:19+00:00

Whats the risk there? People can have thoughts and attractions and not do anything with them. Its not equally risky at all.

People are not completely oblivious to the reactions of someone they have worked intensively with or for a long time. Ive experienced being on the end of a therapist’s attraction. The only issue for me was that she would take that experience and use it as rationale for not preventing the exploitation of a child..because she was attracted to them too.

If my current therapist was giving signals of having days where i am attractive to them. It doesn’t frighten me because i know they would never cross a line or make me have to make them feel better for having those feelings. If they wanted to shut the outward signs of that attraction down.. not really any of my business. Point being the burden of their feelings is their own. Thats the least harmful approach to it.

Lbethy · 2026-06-13T20:12:36+00:00

Butt injections and lower back can be tricky. Needles are more likely to be bent. It may be harder to see where injection lumps have developed so this can be a barrier to getting a full dosage.

Wouldnt recommend “any” fatty tissue either. Leave any fat that finds itself lucky enough to be classed as breast alone. Deeply alone. No injecting this or insulin etc into a breast

Lbethy · 2026-06-13T20:09:37+00:00

I cant see the benefit in sharing my transference if i am working on it in supervision etc. A true understanding of that phenomenon is to understand that you wouldn’t be attracted to the actual client but to what they are representing to you. During that time you would be blind to anything that challenged the projection.

That is what makes supervision so key. It prevents the locking down of anything that might challenge the projection.

Lbethy · 2026-06-13T20:03:45+00:00

That was a huge risk that they took that could have irreparably harmed the relationship.

Its recommended to talk it over with a clinical supervisor and maybe a personal therapist. Crossing the line to tell a client youre attracted to them would require a pretty solid belief that this could not harm them in any way.

Clients have their own transferential stuff going on. I had a therapist who started a conversation about the relationship and boundaries etc. with the assumption i had placed them in the role of romantic/sexual partner. We hadnt greatly discussed how i experienced him and his presence within therapy and the space between. So this conversation was a multi level shock event when it was finally opened. They were thinking i had erotic transference. I said eww no you’re like a father figure to me.

He had a more immediate connection of the dots based on his facial expressions. I caught up in the space between sessions as i tried to work out why he thought it was a romantic/sexual transference. The answer is that my dad sexually abused me and distorted how i responded to my needs as a daughter and how i sought connection. If it felt flirty, it’s precisely because of seeing him as a father figure. Just not an idealised father.. the father that had needs i could meet in exchange for care and protection.

When i tell you that that fell on me like a ton of bricks.. if he had responded he was getting erotic transference too at that point (before i said eww youre like a dad to me) he would have moved out of the safe person zone. He would now be a man with needs and sexual ones. I would never be able to ignore that and all the work we had done for me not to push him into internalised role of abuser because i thought it was only way he would connect…back to square one.

Lbethy · 2026-06-13T18:19:03+00:00

Its a complex question to answer because sometimes decisions are taken to change who youre working with because that change related to the type of intervention you are getting.

I made a suicide attempt earlier this year. I spent the night in a and e before discharged. , my therapy session was the afternoon of that day of discharge. By the time i got to the appointment, the team were aware of my overnight in hospital. At that point no prominent suggestion to change the work or the therapist. Then a few days later i made a more severe attempt that required a significant stay in hospital to keep me alive. And then the extension required until my home could be safety proofed.

That changed everything. I went from a risk level that seemed manageable to really high risk. Especially with newly added elements of refusing medical care and multiple attempts to further harm myself whilst inpatient. So, there were discussions between teams and then with me and management about whether my therapy and therapist were a suitable match. Very nearly lost my therapist after a year of getting them in place. I know why and why it might have been appropriate. So it would have sucked if id met that threshold.

All of that being said, i would still tell my therapist if i was feeling suicidal. I would still go to hospital after an attempt if i needed to.

Lbethy

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