The Seduction of Being Admired
A few days ago, I came across a discussion among therapists around a question that made many people visibly uncomfortable: What happens when a therapist develops feelings for a client? I read the responses and moved on, but strangely, the question did not move on from me.
Perhaps it stayed with me because I did not arrive in counselling through a straight professional corridor. Long before I entered a counselling room, I had spent years in very different spaces—as an artist and performer, a teacher, a writer, in media, and in community work. On paper these roles may appear unrelated, but in reality they have one thing in common: people. And when you spend enough years working closely with people, you begin to understand that attachment does not restrict itself to romantic relationships.
A student can become deeply attached to a teacher. A young artist may begin seeking one mentor’s approval more than the applause of an entire audience. A junior colleague may admire a senior far beyond the professional role. Someone you help through community work may gradually begin depending upon you emotionally. Readers, too, sometimes feel they know a writer intimately because her words have entered a private corner of their lives.
Performers perhaps encounter a particularly interesting version of this. Someone may hear your music, watch you dance, listen to you speak, or read something you have written and feel an immediate connection. The emotion may be completely genuine, but the intimacy may not be. They know something you have expressed; they know the part of you that reached them. Sometimes, without either person consciously intending it, that emotional connection begins to feel like something more. For years, I understood this simply as admiration. Counselling gave me another language for some of what I had already been observing.
Psychology speaks of transference and countertransference: feelings, expectations and earlier relational patterns that can enter the therapeutic relationship. Therapists are not immune from attraction, attachment, protectiveness, irritation, affection or even the desire to be important to a particular client. Research has acknowledged this for decades. Pope, Keith-Spiegel and Tabachnick (1986) challenged the uncomfortable assumption that competent therapists simply do not experience sexual attraction towards clients. Ladany and colleagues (1997) later explored attraction among therapists-in-training and the importance of supervision in recognising and managing such responses.
But the more I thought about it, the more I felt that this conversation belonged outside the counselling room as well, because there is another side to admiration that we discuss far less often: What does being admired do to the person who is being admired?
We usually examine the student who becomes attached to the teacher, the client who develops feelings for the counsellor, the young artist who idolises the guru, or the junior who becomes emotionally dependent upon the mentor. We talk much less about the teacher who begins enjoying being special to one particular student, the mentor who likes being constantly consulted, the senior who starts waiting for the junior’s admiration, or the counsellor who begins looking forward to one client’s appointment just a little differently from the others. That is where the question becomes uncomfortable, but perhaps also much more useful.
Most of us like appreciation. I certainly do. An artist enjoys applause. A teacher feels happy when students remember what she taught them years later. A writer is touched when someone says, “It felt as though you had written this for me.” A community worker feels fulfilled when someone says, “You were there when I needed somebody.” Why pretend otherwise? Age does not remove this need. Degrees do not remove it. Professional titles certainly do not. But over the years, I have learnt to ask myself a question that I now find increasingly important: Am I responding to this person—or am I responding to how this person makes me feel about myself? The difference can be enormous.
A good teacher, for instance, does much more than teach a subject. Sometimes we recognise ability in a student before the student recognises it. We encourage, guide and perhaps open a door. To a young person, being genuinely seen by someone they respect can be extraordinarily powerful. Sometimes the student begins waiting for one teacher’s approval more than the lesson itself, and sometimes the teacher, without quite admitting it even to themselves, begins waiting for that admiration too. Neither person necessarily began with a wrong intention, but somewhere along the way, something has shifted.
This is also where the familiar argument—“But what if both people genuinely feel the same way?”—needs closer examination. Mutual feeling does not automatically mean equal power. A teacher may hold marks, recommendations and opportunities. A senior colleague may influence a career. A guru can determine access to a stage or artistic circle. A community leader may carry considerable social influence. A counsellor possesses something even more delicate: access to another person’s vulnerability. The relationship may contain genuine affection and still not be equal.
Counselling makes this particularly clear. A client may tell a counsellor things they have never told a spouse, parent or closest friend: shame, loneliness, trauma, rejection, sexuality, jealousy and fear. For perhaps fifty uninterrupted minutes, someone listens without competing for the conversation, without checking a phone, without immediately giving advice and, ideally, without judgement. For a person who has rarely experienced that kind of attention, imagine how powerful it can feel. Is attachment surprising? Not really. Can the counsellor feel something in return? Of course. Counsellors did not stop being human when they received their qualification. The danger begins when we confuse having a feeling with acquiring a right to pursue it.
Research on countertransference makes an important distinction here. Hayes, Gelso and Hummel (2011) found in their meta-analytic work that countertransference reactions were modestly associated with poorer psychotherapy outcomes, while successful management of countertransference was associated with better outcomes. The issue, therefore, is not simply whether a therapist experiences an emotional reaction. What matters enormously is what the therapist does with it. This is one reason professional supervision becomes so important.
It is also why I hesitate when disclosure is automatically described as courageous or “honest.” Before telling someone over whom we hold professional influence something deeply personal, perhaps we should first ask why we need them to know. Will knowing this help them, or will saying it relieve us? There is an important difference. Sometimes we give our emotional burden a respectable name and call it honesty.
Imagine a counsellor telling a vulnerable client, “I have feelings for you.” Perhaps the counsellor feels relieved because the truth is finally out, but where does that truth go? It goes straight into the client’s chair. The client must now carry it into every future interaction. Was that smile therapeutic warmth or attraction? Did I receive extra time because I needed it or because the counsellor wanted me there? Can I still talk freely about my partner? Am I hurting the counsellor when I discuss another relationship? Should I behave differently or dress differently? Without necessarily intending to, the professional may have shifted some of their emotional burden onto the very person who came to them for help. The room that was supposed to hold the client’s emotional world now has another occupant: the counsellor’s emotional needs.
That is why I do not think boundaries should be confused with coldness. At their best, boundaries are a form of care. And boundaries rarely collapse through one dramatic act; more often, they move quietly, almost imperceptibly. Five extra minutes that always seem to be available for the same person, a message that was not really necessary, an extra rehearsal, one student receiving opportunities others do not, sharing something increasingly personal because “we understand each other,” looking forward to one meeting a little too much, feeling disproportionately disappointed when that person cancels, checking someone’s social media, or making an exception and then finding a perfectly reasonable explanation for why this case was different. Each action, viewed alone, may be innocent. It is the pattern that deserves our attention.
Recent scholarship continues to emphasise that professional boundaries cannot simply be maintained by memorising a list of rules. A systematic review by Lawson and colleagues (2026), examining how therapists negotiate boundaries, highlights the importance of ethical judgement, reflection and self-regulation when therapeutic relationships become complex. I think that lesson belongs equally to teachers, mentors, managers, artists and community leaders.
After spending much of my life around people, I have come to believe that human relationships rarely remain inside the neat boxes we construct for them. Admiration can become attachment, gratitude can resemble love, being understood can feel like intimacy, authority can be mistaken for charisma, and being needed can feel remarkably like being loved. Perhaps the most dangerous confusion, however, is the one that takes place inside the person who holds greater power: being admired can quietly begin to feed the ego.
We are quite good at discussing the vulnerability of the person who becomes attached. We are far less comfortable examining the emotional hunger of the person who enjoys being needed. Perhaps real self-awareness begins there—not in declaring, “I would never feel something inappropriate,” but in being able to recognise, “Something is happening here. Before I act, I need to understand what part of this belongs to the other person and what part belongs to me.”
For a counsellor, that examination belongs in professional supervision. For a teacher, mentor, artist, manager or community leader, it may require consultation, reflection, firmer boundaries or simply enough honesty to notice that a relationship has begun to change. We cannot always control who admires us, nor can we necessarily control the first feeling that arises within us. But when another person has entrusted us with their vulnerability, their learning, their career, their art or their emotional world, the greater responsibility belongs to the person who holds the greater power.
Perhaps that is where the invisible line really lies—not between people who feel and people who do not, but between those who recognise what is happening and those who allow the feeling to quietly rewrite the relationship. The line is not drawn by what we feel. It is drawn by what we choose to do next.
References
Hayes, J. A., Gelso, C. J., & Hummel, A. M. (2011). Managing countertransference. Psychotherapy, 48(1), 88–97. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022182
Ladany, N., O’Brien, K. M., Hill, C. E., Melincoff, D. S., Knox, S., & Petersen, D. A. (1997). Sexual attraction toward clients, use of supervision, and prior training: A qualitative study of predoctoral psychology interns. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 44(4), 413–424. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.44.4.413
Lawson, J., Schröder, T., & Russell, K. (2026). How do therapists negotiate boundaries: A systematic literature review and meta-synthesis. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10879-026-09750-9
Pope, K. S., Keith-Spiegel, P., & Tabachnick, B. G. (1986). Sexual attraction to clients: The human therapist and the (sometimes) inhuman training system. American Psychologist, 41(2), 147–158. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.41.2.147
