This week my case worker, who I rely on a lot, told me he will be away for a few months. He’s having another baby and wants to be there for his family. It has taken me a while to digest this news. I wish I could say I am happy for him, but honestly not all of me is. I feel anxiety about how I’m going to get through these next few months, and I’m also reminded that one day he will no longer be in my life at all. I feel dropped, literally. When I think about it I get a sinking feeling in my chest. I also feel jealous. I’m jealous of his wife, jealous of his kids, and jealous of him too. He wouldn’t be much older than I am and I’m jealous that he’s starting a family, has a meaningful job, and basically has a life. I wanted to know if other people experience these same feelings about their therapists, so I did a search online and found two blogs that really helped me. The first blog is called “Life in a Bind- BPD and Me”. The writer describes what it’s like for her to be “excluded” from her therapist’s life.

“Yes, I feel jealous. But I feel so, so much more as well. Intense desperation, longing, frustration, helplessness. And pain. So much pain.

I want to scream and cry. I want to claw my way out of my body.”

I found the choice of word “exclusion” particularly interesting. As someone who has been excluded all their life- from friendship groups at school to study (I experienced discrimination a few years ago)- I wonder how much all of this triggers old trauma. I get heart palpitations as I write this. My case worker is one of the closest people in my life, even though he is a professional and we only speak for an hour a week or fortnight. He knows me in a way no one else does. I’ve cried in front of him, he sits in on my doctors’ appointments, and he’s been there at my lowest. Whenever something happens I always turn to him first. It saddens me that he wouldn’t say the same about me. I want so much to be part of his life / his close circle. I want him to hold me. So I found comfort reading this post by Life in a Bind- BPD and Me.

The second blog is by a retired psychotherapist called Dr Stein. This is the blog that really opened  my eyes. “How Would a Friendship with Your Therapist Work?” lists some of the dilemmas that would come up if a therapist were to enter into a friendship with a client. But it was Dr Stein’s “Being Excluded From Your Therapist’s Life: Reasons You Haven’t Heard Before” that really got me wondering whether I’d want to be friends with my case worker. Dr Stein talks about how therapy creates an unrealistic picture of our therapists. We need to remember that therapists are playing a role. Part of their role is to give us unconditional regard, understand us and pay full attention to us. But this is not who they are outside of the office. They are human, and would probably burn out if they had to act like a therapist outside of the office too. In real life they get bored, say the wrong thing, lose patience, are not always sensitive, and sometimes are self-serving. They may also have different interests to us. We don’t see any of that in the therapy space. These points were also discussed by Deborah Lott in the book “In Session: The Bond Between Women and their Therapists”. This is another book which has helped me a lot in my journey. Deborah writes:

“Despite the intimacy that occurs during sessions, a woman who loves her therapist is always loving from afar. It is like having a crush on a movie star or rock singer. The words her idol sings may be tender and a woman can imagine that they are directed at her alone, but in reality the star is unreachable, his or her offstage life a mystery.”

There are other elements to therapy that make the therapist seem like the best person we’ve ever met. Time is a big element. As Dr Stein writes,

“To some extent, your therapist’s time is precious because it is in short supply. You visit him once or perhaps twice a week while watching a rapidly advancing clock. Were you to win more access to him, you’d find the contact less special.”

Deborah Lott also talks about Romeo and Juliet syndrome, the way the therapist is, by definition, out of reach. Forbidden attraction can feel even more desirable than the real thing.

All of these elements/rules of the therapeutic relationship can make a person in love with their therapist stuck- suspended at the moment of falling in love indefinitely. But what really changed my perspective, and helped me feel a little less stuck, was the following paragraph by Dr Stein:

“Because you have limited contact with us, we can make the time special for you. The counselor’s job is to invest every bit of his knowledge and concentration on you for the better part of an hour. He does not regularly do this at home, with his friends, on vacation or at the movies. He performs his wizardry for a small number of people. That is, an expert counselor does this for all his clients and only his clients. He tries to make you his exclusive focus every second of the 50-minute hour… Patients receive the best of us in a very special way. Yes, we offer love and more hours of contact to those outside the office. You, however, and others who sit where you sit, get something no one else gets: the healing art.”

I never thought that maybe, I am the lucky one. Not my case worker’s wife, or friends, but me.

I guess I’m left with a few questions.

First, would I feel the same about my case worker had I of met him in a different setting?

Second, would I feel differently about my friends (e.g. feel closer to them) if they were my therapist?

And third, can I copy some of the rules/artifice of therapy (e.g. a time limit) and introduce them to my personal relationships? Would this make me feel closer to my friends and appreciate our time together more?

I’m a dreamer, and I will probably will still fantasise about knowing my case worker outside of the office. But I also feel more at peace about this man being my case worker rather than a friend or partner. He is an excellent case worker. I only wish I had more security with him… that I could see him as long as he continues working. But we will cross that bridge when we come to it. And as Dr Stein writes in another post, we don’t have security with anything really. Everything ends.

“If impermanence is the nature of things, the sooner one accepts that truth, the sooner one will come to appreciate and enjoy what is still possible here: on a rich, confusing, dark, but dazzling place called Earth.”