Healthy Attachment of Therapists and Their Clients

Posted On November 19, 2022

Normal or appropriate attachment is a therapist who shows interest in your problems, is sensitive to your feelings, seems pleased to see you (but not in a selfish way), and respects you. Normal attachment allows you to feel valued and safe.

 

This article shall focus on attachment styles and a client’s attachment to their therapist.

 

John Bowlby and Attachment Theory

 

 

John Bowlby was a British psychologist and psychiatrist known for his interest in childhood development and his theory on attachment. Bowlby published a collection of his lectures and essays that encouraged a generation of researchers to study the relationship between a therapist and their clients in light of child attachment.

 

Bowlby’s new and revolutionary attachment theory states that children are born pre-programmed to seek and form attachments with others to help them survive. A child needs to attach one main person that is more important than the rest. However, a child will attach to others as well.

 

When a child fails to attach to someone due to abuse or neglect, they are left threatened and fearful because of the insecurity that becomes their normal. Adults who did not attach to a caregiver before age five are prone to carrying their fear and have difficulty in their relationships, and form an attachment disorder.

 

An Attachment disorder is a kind of behavioral disorder and a type of mood disorder. There are five kinds of attachment disorders as follows.

 

Secure attachment style. Adults with secure attachments had a positive emotional bond with their caregivers and are comfortable in their adult relationships with low relationship anxiety.

 

Avoidant or dismissing attachment style. These adults living with this type of attachment disorder are uncomfortable with closeness and would rather be independent in their relationships.

 

Anxious or preoccupied attachment style. These adults crave intimacy but do not feel secure in their relationships. They may avoid forming intimate relationships to keep from being hurt.

 

Disorganized attachment style. Adults with this type of attachment have intense or chaotic relationships. These people seek closeness in a relationship and then push their partner away.

 

All the attachment styles, except secure, leave adults guessing how to behave in relationships and open to intimate violence. You may see yourself in one or many of the above attachment styles. If so, there is hope for you through therapy.

 

The Necessity of Healthy Attachment to a Therapist

 

 

Attachment to one’s therapist is normal and allows you to try emotional intimacy, something you were denied as a child. Once you become emotionally close to your therapist, you feel safe because they become your safe base from which you can try to reconnect with the world.

 

Therapy closely resembles the connection that should have occurred between you and your parent or caregiver when you were a child. Clients of therapists seem to at first believe their therapist to be stronger and wiser than they are, and this thought pattern allows a degree of protection and security. You may seek to be close to your therapist and experience uncertainty, fear of termination, and separation anxiety.

 

To overcome complex issues such as dissociative identity disorder (DID), you need to experience attachment to your therapist. For a short time, your therapist becomes your substitute parent, and a good therapist understands this and allows it to happen to a healthy degree.

 

During this attachment, you will be able to search for answers to your issues. Your therapist becomes Annie Sullivan, and you are blind, deaf, and mute Helen Keller. Your therapist’s work will guide you to self-understanding, but you actually do the work. It is your own strength and wisdom that will lead you to freedom.

 

Good attachment will let you leave when you want to go, even if the therapist doesn’t think it wise. It is not bad or wrong for a therapist to experience attachment to you as well, as long as the patient’s needs are always foremost in the relationship and the therapist abides by professional, ethical standards.

 

What About the Unhealthy Attachment of a Therapist to Their Client?

 

We have established that clients for attachment to their therapist, but what about the therapist? Do they also form an attachment to their clients? The answer is a resounding yes. They are, after all, only human, and a client who comes into a therapist’s office weekly can offer the chance for a therapist to become unhealthily attached to their client.

 

The therapist may experience transference if the client reminds them of someone they know or feel maternal towards their client. Transference is a phenomenon where the therapist adopts the needs of their clients. Then their clients can experience and transfer onto them the emotions and feelings they felt toward their caregiver or some other relationship in the client’s adult life.

 

If that all sounds complicated, that is because it is. Somehow the therapist must control their feelings so that the relationship will remain therapeutic and not become unhealthy.

 

In an unhealthy therapeutic relationship, the client may feel and act on romantic feelings that may form because of the intimate nature of psychotherapy. It is vital the therapist does not form a sexual attraction toward their client. To do so would be to break their ethics and what their licensing organization expects of their conduct.

 

If unhealthy attraction does occur, it is best if the therapist terminates their client and seeks help for themselves.

 

Another type of unhealthy relationship is to form such a tight bond with your therapist that you cannot leave when it is time. A good therapist will work diligently to form a delicate balance between allowing the therapeutic alliance to form without allowing their client to become utterly dependent on them.

 

Ending Our Time Together

 

Therapy is a complex and helpful tool when healing from dissociative identity disorder. One cannot heal from this complex issue without seeing a counselor.

 

Within therapy, you will find that your attachment style determines how you will react to your therapist. Always tell your therapist the truth and not allow your childhood experiences to clog or hinder your progress.

 

I have experienced first-hand the power of transference in a therapeutic relationship. My first therapist Paula had a mess on her hands when I first began to see her. I immediately attached to her and saw her as the mother I never had. She allowed this attachment to a certain extent, often reminding me she was not my mother or my friend. She was my therapist.

 

When Paula retired in 2016, and because she had carefully avoided me becoming wholly dependent on her, I could continue feeling some pain but not crippled.

 

“… every therapist must develop enough personal maturity, clinical wisdom, and capacity for good judgment to effectively and safely conduct psychotherapy, an imperative that is especially important in the treatment of this population. The emotion dysregulation and insecure and disorganized attachment of complex trauma clients elicit strong emotional reactions from others, even those in their support network, including therapists. Reactions can range from sympathy, sorrow, fear, and guilt to frustration, impatience, anger/rage, hostility, and disgust or contempt.”- Christine A. Courtois

 

References

 

Mallinckrodt, B. (2010). The psychotherapy relationship as attachment: Evidence and implications. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 27(2), 262-270.

 

Petrowski, K., Berth, H., Beiling, P., Renner, V., & Probst, T. (2021). Patient’s and the Therapist’s Attachment Representations, Attachment to Therapists, and Self-Esteem-Change Through Psychotherapy. Frontiers in Psychology, 12.