u/Jmaxx2000

I've been working with my therapist over a year now and have gotten attached to her. In general, she's just a great therapist. She remembers details we've discussed from a while ago and, additionally, manages to connect our discussions across sessions really well for continuity. She's also warm, emotionally attuned and makes me feel cared for​. Being at the recieving end of this attention has made me develop some loving and affectionate feelings towards her that I've never brought up in session. I really want her to give me a hug and for her to say that she cares about me, in a way being sort of a stand in parental figure to me. But I feel shame over these feelings and don't want to tell her about them because I know they'll never be reciprocal.

How do therapists view attachments like this developing in therapy? I imagine that it must be kind of weird because of how one sided it is. Looking at it objectively, I have all these really strong positive feelings towards her but, also, I don't really know her personally so I'm not attached to her per se, more like I'm attached to how she treats me or what she represents. Do therapists view attachment developing as something positive/negative? Or is it like data that needs to be interpreted?

I've been depressed for years at this point and I don't know what to do. I'm 26 and, superficially, everything in my life seems to be going alright. I've got a good job, no debt, a nice apartment to myself, I go out and socialize a lot, have plenty of friends and have a decent relationship with my parents. Despite all of this, I'm utterly miserable and lonely all of the time. It's.....discouraging to say the least. I thought that once I got my life together and stopped being a shut in just videogames all day things would improve. But it hasn't at all. I'm the same guy, still depressed, just trapped in new scenery. Going to therapy hasn't done much for me frankly, I've gone weekly for the last 2 years and, while helping me reframe some thoughts and what not, at the end of the day, I still feel like shit. Antidepressants did nothing other than give me weird side effects and make me feel stupid.

And, yeah, I don't know what to do at all anymore. It's definitely some bullshit. Maybe chasing some phantom healing or fix for my situation was just some ever elusive quest to distract from the reality that being a conscious being with feelings sucks. That's what I've concluded recently. Life just sucks for a while and then we all die. There's no point to it and, at the end of the day, your experience is what you make of it. Maybe some people can derive meaning from suffering and negative feelings- but I sure as hell can't. Anyway... I apologize for this stupid rant but I just needed to vent somewhere.