Therapist Attraction and Grief, in a Chaotic World

This week Richard & Fiona explore the complexities of navigating happiness in a turbulent world, managing feelings for a therapist, and grappling with love and guilt after loss in a Q&A episode.

Join our Evolve to Thrive programme

Whatsapp us

Submit a question

Follow us on Facebook or Instagram

The Richard Nicholls Podcast

The Brookhouse Hypnotherapy Group YouTube Channel

Richard's Social Media Links
Bluesky X Insta Facbook Youtube TikTok Threads

Listen to Richard on Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/richardnicholls

Transcript

Richard: 0:14

All right there everyone. It's podcast time with Richard and Fiona. Welcome to the Therapy Natters podcast series, the podcast that you had no idea that you actually do need in your life, um, till you found it and now you can't live without it. Or am I talking about myself here? Probably talking about myself. Fiona

Fiona: 0:35

Quite likely. Erm. I

Richard: 0:38

What you saying? All I do is talk about myself,

Fiona: 0:41

no, Just teasing.

Richard: 0:43

It's true though.

Fiona: 0:46

Well, we all focus on ourselves, don't we? I mean, that's, that's human nature.

Richard: 0:51

Yes, it is. And I think we do, we do live in a culture that tries to discourage that sometimes. That says, No, you aren't the centre of your universe. That's selfish. You're a narcissist. You're a narcissist. Anybody who thinks about themselves and puts themselves first is a narcissist. That's not what narcissism is. But we're not going to do a deep dive on that today because then we'd be here for longer than half an hour.

Fiona: 1:17

We certainly would, but it's very much a word of the moment that's being

Richard: 1:21

It is, isn't

Fiona: 1:22

Yeah,

Richard: 1:23

I've had loads of people that I've met, friends and clients, that have said, described their partners and ex partners and parents as well, of course, as a narcissist. And they might be. They might

Fiona: 1:35

Even, even ten years ago nobody was saying it.

Richard: 1:38

No, no, they weren't. And in our field, it probably is very different. And I've had a bit of a rant about this on my own podcast, on my other podcast project. But if we're going to use narcissist to mean somebody who has a very grand sense of self importance and not for those people that have been neglected and traumatised as children and leads them to create defense mechanisms and so on, then we need another word for that. Because we use narcissist to mean somebody that's been tremendously neglected as a child and it's led them to create a defense structure to prevent them from admitting to themselves that they've got incredibly low self esteem. And if we're not going to call that narcissism anymore, we need another word for that. Well, I'd rather we just carried on. And I hate to be the old man who shakes fists at a cloud, but can we not just keep things as they are, please?

Fiona: 2:34

There are times when words, meanings will change but we do need the word to mean what it meant. So let's stick with that and just, yes, let's leave it. Leave things as they were.

Richard: 2:48

And if somebody is selfish, then say that. Oh, they're a really selfish person. Now, I've got no problem in encouraging some elements of selfishness. I think we do need to put ourselves first sometimes. More often than not, probably.

Fiona: 3:04

fit your oxygen mask before helping other people.

Richard: 3:08

Yeah, well, that's today's tangent out of the way. Well, we've got a few today though, to be honest,

Fiona: 3:14

Well, that's what we decided to do today a little bit differently because, for those, eagle eyed, eagle, what's the equivalent of ears for that?

Richard: 3:24

What animal's got really good ears? A

Fiona: 3:27

but that thing.

Richard: 3:28

Bat eared? Hmm,

Fiona: 3:30

thing, anyway, yes, will have noticed, may have noticed that our episodes in this series are paralleling the weeks in Evolve to Thrive. But we've had a flurry, haven't we? A flurry of questions. So we thought we would have a little diversion and see if we could answer a few today.

Richard: 3:52

That's why we started up the podcast a couple of years ago, really, was to get stuff that's in our head out, hence Evolve to Thrive, and see what we can do to help you. Hence the questions. And yeah, because series one ended in January, February 2024? Yes it was, wasn't it? Yeah, of course it was. And in between then and now, yeah, we've had quite a few questions. And some we'd already answered in previous episodes, but there's some that we could probably do with touching on. So, thank you to everybody that's been sending stuff in. And continue to, please, because the more content that you can give us without us having to think about what to talk about, the better.

Fiona: 4:31

So, shall I read the first question, Richard?

Richard: 4:33

Go on then, go on then, I can't remember which one was

Fiona: 4:36

Oh, well, this is from Tony from Toronto. So, wow. Hello, Tony from Toronto. He says, I have many friends, wife and children, never needed therapy and am relatively happy, though I wish I could be happier. How can I be happier when it is apparent that the world is getting worse? I don't want to become an apolitical person, not watch the news and bury my head in the sand. Realistically, I can't change the world, make an impact, make a difference in any real way. Others seem to be happier, but I look at them as being shallow, out of touch with the heavy issues going on in the world. What's a guy to do? And think, and be happier. Love that. What's a guy to do?

Richard: 5:21

Yeah,

Fiona: 5:22

well, that's, that's quite a profound question there, Tony.

Richard: 5:26

it is. I'd forgotten that Tony had sent, well, I hadn't forgotten that he'd sent it in, because I sent that to you this morning.

Fiona: 5:31

Yes,

Richard: 5:31

And I do, but he sent it through a little while ago, so apologies Tony, it's taken us a while to get to it. It's a big topic, isn't

Fiona: 5:39

it's absolutely fascinating. It really makes me smile, even though it's actually sort of quite,

Richard: 5:45

It could be depressing think

Fiona: 5:46

sort feels a little bit depressing but it makes me smile. I think it's, for me, it's the existential element to that question. And I love a good existential discussion. So that's what probably makes me smile. And also his willingness to be challenging it and thinking about this. And my immediate thought is, it doesn't have to be all or nothing all the time. So it's okay to have times when you're not thinking about bigger issues and times when you do. So that, look at them as being shallow, people who are happier. So people who are not paying attention to the problems in the world. There's a time and a place for everything. I guess that's what I'm, what I'm thinking in that context.

Richard: 6:35

Yeah, mean I've come off well, I haven't come off social media far from it because I'm too much of a people person for that. But I've stepped away from Twitter quite a bit. I just do some automatic I will just send some dancing people on a Friday through and that's about it and I tend to live on Blue Sky a bit more nowadays because it seems a bit friendlier but there was a lot on Twitter of what we might think of as Whataboutism. So somebody might say, Oh, I've just had a really, really fantastic peach. That was a really tasty peach. Thank you, Peach Company. And somebody would comment with, Why aren't you talking about Palestine? Why aren't you talking about Ukraine? Do you, do you, do you hate Palestinians? What? I'm talking about my peach. What's going on here? How did this happen? Because it's on their mind. It's on their mind that the world is on fire, and so it should be on everybody else's. And maybe it is, from time to time. It's certainly on mine from time to time, but I'm not going to let that get in the way of the bits that aren't on fire. There are wars, and there have always been wars, for hundreds of thousands of years, probably. And it's horrible, and I'm not going to pretend that it's not. And I'm sad for all the people that are hurt and going through what they're going through, but there's only so much I can do and it doesn't make me selfish to, oh, I hate to use the phrase, look the other way, because that's not what I'm doing.

Fiona: 8:00

no, it's,

Richard: 8:01

There's a middle ground, isn't

Fiona: 8:02

there is, there is absolutely a middle ground because, Tony uses the phrase, burying his head in the sand. And you said, look the other way, but we cannot, as individual human beings, focus on all the problems that we are now aware of. And this is such a big change in recent years. I mean, I know this is so obvious, but in the past, people didn't know about the stuff that was going on in other parts of the world. If you think back to, you know, stuff that we've heard about even the Second World War, people didn't know what was happening. And I don't just mean they didn't know about the camps and Holocaust and all. They didn't know what the battles were that were being fought unless they were in a place that was being bombed. You didn't know because there was such limited media. An awful lot of that would have been propaganda. So, think back further. People living in a village, didn't know what was happening in the next village. They didn't know about an earthquake that was happening somewhere in the world. They didn't know about political turmoil in some other country, um, slavery just popped into my mind. Most people wouldn't have known that was going on. So, we know so much more now about what is going on and it's very easy to go to that view that Tony said of the world is getting worse. Is it? Um, in some respects, perhaps, in other respects, perhaps it's that we know more and understand more about what is happening I mean, if you think about medical breakthroughs and, and so on, that's getting a huge amount better. Technology has made life an awful lot better for a lot of people.

Richard: 9:59

Yes, and it's easy to skew our opinions or beliefs because of that information. I heard somebody recently say that there seems to be more cancer nowadays, and there must be something going on. Why is there more cancer nowadays? Well, it's because we got even better at picking it up. The scans are so much better, we don't pick it up after there's a lump that's appeared. There's standard mammograms, for example, and somebody will go, There's something there. We just need to get that checked out. Wow! And out of nowhere they've got cancer. That's happening a lot. And that's a good

Fiona: 10:42

a good thing. Yeah, because,

Richard: 10:44

You try telling somebody who's just been diagnosed with cancer that it's a good thing, it's really hard, they don't believe you.

Fiona: 10:50

I don't think I would be trying that,

Richard: 10:52

No, no.

Fiona: 10:53

But yeah, Tony, you have a choice. And that choice is not just a general choice of forever and I am going to be somebody who is this forever. Each moment, you have a choice. As to whether you're paying attention to wars, to climate change, to poverty, to this crisis, that crisis, or whether you're paying attention to watching a comedy on TV, or reading a fluffy novel, or just having a laugh and a giggle with your family. Moment to moment you have choices and not only is it okay, it's sort of compulsory. Because there isn't an alternative.

Richard: 11:40

Yes, a bit like, grief. That we can be happy despite it. Yes, there can be sadness in our life, and we can look with a sense of, not just disappointment, but great loss that things aren't the way that we want. But we can still be happy. We can still enjoy a friendly conversation with somebody, an attachment to somebody. We can still feel connected and loved and lovable and loving and all the different things that make us human. We can do that as well. It's like you say, it's not one or the other is it?

Fiona: 12:12

You could enjoy stroking a puppy, or looking at a funny video of a cat falling off a kitchen work surface. There's always contrasts. So there we go, we've, we've solved the world in that one. Yep, that's

Richard: 12:26

it, we don't need to make any more episodes about anything ever.

Fiona: 12:29

all,

Richard: 12:30

We've done that 15 minutes.

Fiona: 12:33

So, second question.

Richard: 12:35

What was the second question? Let me find my notes out. Yes, here we are. Lauren. Hi Richard. I wonder if you'd be able to talk at some point about the attraction clients can feel for their therapists. I'm a woman, and recently I found myself fantasising about running away with my male therapist and starting a new life with them. I've read comments online that say this is actually quite common. But it feels just like real love. I've not said anything to my therapist, obviously. And never will. But it would be interesting to hear your perspective. Lauren. Thank you, Lauren. I have a perspective.

Fiona: 13:11

I have perspective. Do you want to start with answering, Lauren?

Richard: 13:15

What you might feel for your therapist, It might feel like real love, but it could be that just like dreams can get confused and things get squished together because we had an experience during the day and then we had another experience and it put the two together. It might be that somewhere in our brain, like most adults, love to us is romantic or sexual in some way, and it's not just about feeling safe. If your therapist makes you feel safe, that's a good thing. It's certainly good to challenge it and say, I'm feeling like I'm falling in love with my therapist. Should I run away with them? Should I, should I, should I tell them that we should end therapy and we can live happily ever after because they're single and I'm going to leave my husband? Um, no.

Fiona: 14:06

I mean, the form of the question suggests that Lauren does know that it's not the same as meeting somebody, at the pub and going out on some dates and falling for them or whatever it might be.

Richard: 14:25

Old school.

Fiona: 14:26

I mean there is the standard Freudian idea of transference, which is that in therapy, but it can be in any situation, that you see in somebody, a similarity in some way to somebody else, so you're putting on to them. And so the feeling that you have for your therapist isn't really about the therapist, it's about somebody else. That is something you could work through with your therapist. So depends on modality of the therapist.

Richard: 14:55

that's true, because although she said, oh, I'll never tell him, obviously, actually, you, you could, and it could be a really useful healing thing to learn that relationships are safe.

Fiona: 15:09

But it does depend on the modality of your therapist, and that might be quite tricky to work out. If they're analytical, then yeah, go for it, because that's the realm that they work in.

Richard: 15:21

Are you saying that if there were a CBT therapist, they wouldn't know how to handle this?

Fiona: 15:24

They might not know how to handle it.

Richard: 15:28

Oh, okay.

Fiona: 15:28

I remember a supervisee I had once who said to me that a client had expressed feelings of love for him, and he said, so of course I told her I couldn't see her again.

Richard: 15:41

Oh, no! Oh my god, no! That's the exact opposite

Fiona: 15:45

Being a supervisor is occasionally challenging, more than but that was one of those ones where, yes, my reaction was as yours is now and people

Richard: 15:55

That's just giving goosebumps.

Fiona: 15:57

that reaction, but of course I had to be a little bit subtler in responding, but my response was, in a subtle way, You've just made a terrible mistake. And you don't do that. You work with what a client brings. But I'm just using that as an example that not every therapist will have been trained. This person was trained. Their training told them to do that. So,

Richard: 16:26

I'm so naive sometimes. Oh my goodness. Righto.

Fiona: 16:32

So therapists vary. But I also just want to go to the sort of very basic, sort of fairly obvious point. That, I'm sure this isn't just me, that falling in love, as in having a crush on somebody, is not that unusual. It sort of feels like it's, it's just a part of life, whether that's, somebody that you know, maybe that you work with, or not somebody that you would ever think to be getting with, or it could be famous people, who doesn't have the occasional crush on somebody they see on the telly. We tend to think of them as sort of teenage like. I mean, I remember thinking that Paul Michael Glaser was going to turn up and sweep me off my feet. But he didn't

Richard: 17:27

just remembering something my wife said to me once when we were watching George Clark's Amazing Spaces, and she said, Really love this guy. He's probably the only man I'd leave you for. And I was sideswiped. I'm like, what? You? Really? And she went, well, yeah. I mean, you've probably got some, haven't you? And I thought, no, I don't. I came up with some. I'm like, well, maybe, maybe. Then I had to go digging, trying to find people.

Fiona: 17:59

In that I hear something which is sort of tying together the transference and the idea of the sort of crushes. that your wife was seeing him as this idealised person.

Richard: 18:12

Idealised. Absolutely.

Fiona: 18:14

And that's, that's what we do isn't it? We see an idealised version of this person would just be the most amazing person to live with. They would be so kind to me. They would be this, that, the other. And of course, we don't know that. We don't know anything about them really.

Richard: 18:31

No, and although You're not paying your therapist to be nice to you, to spend an hour being kind. They are kind people, otherwise they wouldn't, they wouldn't, you can't fake It's genuine

Fiona: 18:43

and they are listening to you.

Richard: 18:46

Yes, they are attuning to you. hanging on every It's very attractive.

Fiona: 18:53

because it's something we

Richard: 18:54

Like we were saying the other week. Yeah, I was, we were talking about that the other week, weren't that you don't need to be interesting, you just need to be interested. And that is an attractive quality. And so it would be unusual if we didn't get our wires crossed and associate that feeling of, well, this person is paying me attention and they make me feel special and associating that with romantic love. Be unusual if that didn't happen. So sure, fantasise about it, but don't go and knock on his door, find out where he lives and say, I've got a secret.

Fiona: 19:31

No, if you're going to discuss it with the therapist, do it within the context of the therapy, because If the therapist has been trained to, to deal with this properly, then it would be looking at the transference, looking at what they might be looking for, what might be missing in their lives, if anything, because it might not be. It could just be that normal thing, like, like your wife and

Richard: 19:53

George Clark,

Fiona: 19:55

that's, that's just a normal part of everyday life.

Richard: 20:00

Yeah.

Fiona: 20:01

Let's see if we can do one more, shall we? sort ties in a little bit. This is from Jim from Southampton. He says, I'm 57 and a widower. My wife sadly died six years ago, and although it has been very hard to carry on without her, with the help of my friends and family I'm doing well. My wife was ill for a few years before she died. We had many conversations about what life would be like without her. She would often say that she just wanted me to be happy, and that it was fine if I met someone else. I've had a few dates over the last year, and I've connected well with the women that I met, but even a meal and a few drinks feels like cheating. I know my wife wanted me to carry on, and potentially even marry again one day, but the guilty feeling inside me just won't go away. So I say it's sort of slightly similar in that it's, it's it's a are these feelings okay sort of question.

Richard: 21:00

I think it would be strange to not feel guilty in this situation. That would be quite a normal thing. And I'm also thinking about it from a potential partner's perspective, that Imagine we got a question that said, I've met a man, but he seems still in love with his, his wife who died. Yeah, he will be. And he will be for the rest of his life. And he'll cry on her birthday. And he'll think about her at Christmas. He's still in love with her.

Fiona: 21:33

That's a good thing.

Richard: 21:35

Yeah. It's a

Fiona: 21:37

it's, it's, sad but it's good because that shows a good relationship that was had. So Jim is demonstrating that he had a good relationship with his wife and, you know, that in one sense is over, but yes, he will carry her as part of him forever. An analogy just popped into my head to see if it works. Which is that when somebody has a child and then they have another child, they've got two children, or then three, four, however many. They don't love the first one any less. So, there isn't a finite amount of love that we have in our hearts or wherever it may reside. There's endless amounts. Most people will be able to grasp that idea of the children one, hopefully. Although sometimes, people who felt jealous of siblings or whatever might not get it.

Richard: 22:35

But certainly we'd expect there would be some feelings of jealousy in a new partner if they knew, Oh, he's still in love with his wife who died. He still loves that person. And they would be jealous of somebody and they might bring that to therapy themselves and say, I'm jealous of a woman who died, even though she can't do anything. I still feel that she's got my partner's heart. Because she does.

Fiona: 23:05

Well, part of it

Richard: 23:06

Yes, part of it. She has it too

Fiona: 23:09

That's the point that there's space. Like, it's okay to have more than one child, I mean, I'm not going down routes of polygamy or whatever, but there is space in our hearts for love.

Richard: 23:27

But I know what somebody would say. They would say, But that's different. And it is but also,

Fiona: 23:32

it is different

Richard: 23:33

But also it isn't. In short, it is okay for you to feel the way that you feel.

Fiona: 23:40

And guilt is designed to stop us doing things. But if we feel it, we can then examine that guilt, examine the behaviour, and go through a process of saying Actually, no, that was okay. I don't need to feel guilt about that. And learn from it. Put that guilt to one side. Put it in a little box somewhere.

Richard: 24:02

Hmm. And pull it out and look at it and examine it and it tells you your values. We don't want those to change. So, sure, if you have a great value system, of

Fiona: 24:13

Loyalty.

Richard: 24:15

loyalty is the right word, yes. Yes, if that's a big part of you, then keep that. But are you being disloyal? Not in this case, no. And even if she'd said, please, beforehand, before she died, if she'd said, please don't love another.

Fiona: 24:35

Now, then that would be harder to work through.

Richard: 24:38

It's so unfair to say that, but I understand why somebody would say

Fiona: 24:41

oh yeah. Yeah, because that's, that's that person feeling, sort of imagining the future time and feeling jealous. that would be tough

Richard: 24:51

It would, but even, even then, your life would be your own and it, Yeah, it's a hard one. really

Fiona: 24:59

is value system based, and there are people who never even think about getting another partner when their partner's lost because of that very value system. And, as with most, and again we've discussed this, most value systems are entitled to hold whatever values they like.

Richard: 25:20

But it's such a sacrifice.

Fiona: 25:21

In this, value system that Jim is portraying, both he and his late wife were in agreement. So there's a value system that's sort of clashing with the belief system, in a way.

Richard: 25:35

Yes. because there's a part of his brain that says, this is cheating. I'm cheating on my wife. Because for many, many years while they were together, he would never do anything like this. And now he is. And yeah, there is going to be a jarring. Almost like being brought up in a religious cult, or even just, just a religion, really. And later in life, walking away from it and thinking, no, that's, that's not right. These are just stories. None of this actually happened. And I have choice of what to do in my life. It would still feel like you're doing something wrong. And I've met people who used to be in the Jehovah's Witness. I'm going to say program. That's probably not the right

Fiona: 26:26

not. Used to be Jehovah's Witnesses.

Richard: 26:29

Used to be Jehovah's Witnesses. And their brain still keeps going back to it that says, I'm living the wrong life, I'm doing something naughty. I'm a bad person for this. Just because they sang happy birthday or something.

Fiona: 26:46

It doesn't even have to be that extreme. I mean, I know there's more extreme than Jehovah's Witnesses but I've got a friend who's a Catholic and has rejected that as a way of living but still bits pop through.

Richard: 27:00

Mmm,

Fiona: 27:02

I was listening to something yesterday, it was talking about the, I can't remember what they described it, but the ages of 4 to 14 are the times when certain religions actually aim to get children. That's the time when they can educate them, they would say.

Richard: 27:20

Mmm.

Fiona: 27:20

and so if somebody's been through, well, everybody's been through the ages of four, four and fourteen, presuming they are older than fourteen, that's how it works. Whatever's gone through that time, that will have an effect

Richard: 27:35

I'm sure I made a reel about this at the time. But there was one person that we never got a chance to get onto season one of Therapy Natters, because sadly, he died. And that was Geoff Ibbotson. And that would have been nice to have him on, because he was a lovely guy. He really was. And when we drove up to, was it Oldham, his funeral? think it was in Oldham, wasn't it? Rotherham, somewhere around there?

Fiona: 27:57

yes, I think it, was Oldham,

Richard: 28:00

hmm. At his funeral, and I've had a couple, I had a couple in 2024, there was the Lord's Prayer at these funerals, because either they were religious or some of their family was and wanted, wanted a prayer in there. I'm not religious, I'm a humanist, I'm accepting of it, but I don't live by it, I've got my own, my own ethics, but I still knew all the words to the Lord's Prayer, because I was brought up in a Church of England primary school where you were made to say it every day. I still know all those words. I didn't try to know them, didn't try to remember them. They're never on my mind, but they're always there

Fiona: 28:37

But, there's Do feel free to, uh, not answer me or edit this out, but do you know what they mean?

Richard: 28:47

That's a very good question. Probably not. No, because I'm, I don't give them any thought. Good point. Hmm.

Fiona: 28:56

There's books about what, what it means.

Richard: 29:00

There's a massive book

Fiona: 29:01

Well, yes, that doesn't, that doesn't say what it means. There are books about what the Lord's Prayer means and I believe that actually Jesus is reported to have said in the Bible that that's the only prayer you need.

Richard: 29:20

Wow.

Fiona: 29:21

that one. I heard something the other day, I could easily be criticised here. But, that's okay, if I'm wrong. but that Jesus said that's the only prayer you need because God already knows what you need. So, there's no need to pray for anything else. Because he already knows it. Interesting view. Then different religions pray differently. So, Catholics again. You can't pray to God, you have to pray to a saint to intervene with God on your behalf. Whereas

Richard: 29:51

It's very complicated, isn't

Fiona: 29:52

very complicated.

Richard: 29:53

rules that we create for ourselves. And maybe it's okay to look at those rules and go, what's right for me? I'd encourage anybody who's got these sorts of questions about guilt, about whether they're doing something wrong, question it. If you are, if you're doing something that hurts somebody else, then yeah, feel guilty about it. Because it'll teach you to not do it. But if no one's being hurt No one's being harmed. It's okay to look at that feeling and go, this is just misplaced, but it makes sense why I feel this way. Because it does. In Jim's case, it's because he loved his wife. Don't remove that. Don't pretend you didn't. And if a new partner has got a problem with that, well, that's on them.

Fiona: 30:38

Indeed it is.

Richard: 30:39

Let them write in. Well, We've answered some questions! That's nice, we haven't done that for ages. And we need to wrap up. So, like I was saying earlier, please, if you've got any other questions, do send them to us. Link to all of our social media stuff and how to get in touch is always in our show notes. In the meantime, we'll leave you to your week. have a good one. Behave yourselves, be nice to yourself and each other, and we'll see you next week, I guess.

Fiona: 31:09

Hope so. See you then. Bye!

Richard: 31:11

See you soon. Bye for now. Bye bye.