You’re Attracted to Your Client?!

I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I find my client Max extremely attractive and charming. I’d never act on these feelings, but I worry about how it might affect our work. More than I would with any other client, I’ve found myself thinking about how I look and speak around him, and when we chat at the beginning of sessions, I feel like the conversation sometimes borders on flirtatious. I could refer him out but feel bad because this isn’t his fault. Even if I did, how would I explain it? What should I do?

A Nervous System Enactment

By Sara Nasserzadeh

First, thank you for your honesty. It takes courage to bring such a dilemma forward, and that courage is the very foundation of any therapeutic work. The fact that you’re reflecting on your feelings and seeking a consultation, rather than acting on them, already shows integrity and self-awareness.

Attraction within the therapeutic relationship is more common than many clinicians acknowledge. The formal literature is limited, although seasoned supervisors often encounter it in consultation. Most therapists don’t act on these feelings; they bring them to supervision or personal therapy to explore what they illuminate about the client, the therapist, and the space between them. This can surface more often in therapies that engage sensitive or taboo material, including psychosexual therapy, where vulnerability and disclosure are central. We need large-scale studies to inform stronger training, clearer guidance, and better supports for colleagues in this area.

When you find yourself drawn to a client in ways that are uncomfortable, ask not only “Why am I attracted?” but also “What’s being activated in me?” Attraction, in its broadest sense, is the felt pull toward who and what we want to be around. Who we are attracted to is shaped by culture, upbringing, and lived experience; it’s largely socially constructed. Bodily activation, on the other hand, is visceral, an enactment of our nervous system responding to resonance, safety, or novelty. As Stephen Porges reminds us, the body often speaks before the mind can name what it feels.

You mentioned feeling self-conscious about your appearance and noticing a subtle flirtatious tone. This may not be sexual attraction but arousal of the nervous system, a physiological response to connection and vulnerability. When Max sits across from you and reveals his inner world with openness, your mirror neurons and attachment systems naturally engage. If he’s emotionally expressive, attentive, or appreciative (perhaps the qualities that may be scarce in your personal life or current phase), it can feel both enlivening and disarming. What you’re sensing may be less desire than your system’s recognition of safety and intimacy.

We also know from research that the therapeutic setting itself contains nearly every pillar of interpersonal attraction. Proximity and familiarity—we meet clients regularly, in close physical and psychological space, which builds comfort. And clients often share some of our values, emotional language, or worldview, which is why they may have come to us in the first place as opposed to somebody else. Reciprocity of liking—clients express trust and appreciation, which invites warmth in return. Perceived responsiveness—we’re trained to listen deeply and respond empathically, an inherently attractive quality. Opportunity and exposure—the therapy hour is a concentrated relational field with few external distractions.

Given these conditions, the setting is fertile soil for attraction to emerge. In most cases, except for overt physical attraction, these dynamics are present with nearly every client. The difference lies in which ones awaken something personal and deeper in us.

It helps to remember that many of us therapists have limited guards around our own nervous systems. We spend hours coregulating with others’ pain and yearning. Without deliberate self-care, our boundaries become porous. The body starts to confuse therapeutic resonance with irresistible chemistry.

Ask yourself gently: What chords in you resonate with Max? Does he remind you of someone whose approval you once sought? Does he embody qualities you long to experience more of, like confidence, tenderness, or curiosity? Sometimes attraction signals that a part of us is asking to be seen and integrated. The goal is not to suppress the feeling but to understand its message and use it to grow.

From here, review the frame: keep sessions structured so that small talk doesn’t drift toward flirtation; hold time and boundaries with clarity; bring this material to supervision so it doesn’t live in secrecy. I often think referral is a good option if the feelings intrude on clinical judgment or the client’s progress. Otherwise, exploring the countertransference can enrich the work.

Be gentle with yourself. You’re not failing as a therapist. Ultimately, the therapy room isn’t only a site for a client’s transformation but for ours as well.

Transforming Countertransference

By Julie Menanno

Your feelings are completely normal and nothing to be ashamed of. Every therapist encounters countertransference in one form or another. It’s part of the work, and sometimes it can blindside us in ways we never expected. What matters most is not whether these feelings arise, but how we engage with them. The fact that you’ve noticed the shift in yourself and are reaching out for guidance says a lot about your openness and emotional maturity. Awareness is the first and most important step in transforming countertransference into useful clinical information.

You implied sexual attraction, but it’s worth slowing down to look underneath that to the emotional layer of what’s happening. What does being “charmed” mean for you? Does it make you feel special, wanted, or seen? If so, what happens inside you when those feelings come online? Sometimes the emotional undercurrent of attraction has less to do with desire and more to do with the profound relief of being seen, wanted, or validated. These feelings can be intoxicating, and when that feeling comes from someone we find physically appealing, the pull can become even more intense.

You might explore whether those needs for validation are being met in other parts of your life. But even when they are, it’s still easy to get caught up in the chemistry of feeling special. Therapists are human, and we’re just as susceptible to the physiological cascade of dopamine, oxytocin, and adrenaline that come with emotional connection. Naming that honestly, without judgment, can help take away some of its power, and help you explore healthier options to manage those feelings, so they don’t get acted out in flirting.

Once you have more clarity, try turning the question around. What is it like to not feel special or wanted? Has there been a time when those needs went unmet long before this client ever arrived? Our nervous systems carry emotional memory, and the pain of earlier unmet needs can lie dormant for years until something—or someone—reactivates it. When that happens, the present moment can feel larger than life, as if it’s offering the very thing we’ve always longed for. If this is the case, some gentle grief work might be helpful. Grieving the unmet need allows you to integrate it, so you no longer need to soothe the pain of it through the therapeutic relationship itself. That’s where your real power lies—in the ability to feel deeply and still choose consciously how to respond.

And of course, it’s equally important to consider what might be happening for the client. Charm is rarely random; it’s often a relational strategy developed to stay emotionally safe. What feelings might he be avoiding when he leads with charm? Vulnerability? Shame? Fear of rejection? Once you have a sense of that, you can begin to engage the pattern therapeutically. You might acknowledge the strengths in his warmth and relational skill while inviting curiosity about what the charm is doing for him—and what it might cost him. He’ll need to learn to sit with his pain and do his own grief work so he can feel emotionally safe from within, instead of depending on the temporary gratification of making others feel charmed. By gently exploring this, you’re shifting the focus back to his emotional world, where it belongs.

In doing so, you take the energy that’s been circulating between you and ground it in the therapeutic process itself. The work becomes less about managing attraction and more about deepening understanding—of both your client’s defenses and your own internal landscape. These moments are not detours from therapy; they are the therapy. When handled with care, countertransference offers a direct window into the very dynamics that most need healing, both in our clients and in ourselves.

Navigating Interpersonal Closeness

By Wayne Scott

This is a common dilemma and interesting to navigate therapeutically. No embarrassment necessary!

Depending on their familiarity with how therapy works, clients may draw on other social templates to navigate interactions with their therapist. Part of our role in building a therapeutic alliance is educating our clients about how to use this distinctive—and frankly odd—type of healing relationship. It’s distinctive in that it’s purposeful and goal-focused, tailored to the client’s clinical needs and change process. While we as therapists may use some self-disclosure as a strategy to increase the client’s sense of safety and trust, conversation in sessions is mostly unidirectional, focused on the client’s narrative about their life. It’s not about the professional’s experiences or needs.

If I was working with you as a clinical consultant, I’d ask for specific statements you make that would qualify as “flirtatious.” It’s a universally acknowledged truth that all therapists make chit-chat in the beginning of a session. It’s the foyer for the therapeutic conversation, the place where we assess each other’s nonverbals and implicit interactional cues, before easing into deeper stuff: Is it going to be safe to open up today? But if we make statements the client could interpret as flirtatious, that defeats the purpose. We’re in risky territory and outside of our role. Especially for clients who are sexual-abuse survivors (often an invisible identity but shockingly ubiquitous among therapy-seeking people), flirty banter could make the exchange feel very un-therapy-like and unsafe.

Now, alternatively, if the client is making statements that come across as flirtatious, it would be interesting to parse what’s the underlying attachment need. How is the client tolerating and managing the experience of interpersonal closeness with the therapist? Is there a vulnerability being masked and could it be communicated more directly? If the client is attracted to the therapist, that can be acknowledged and normalized. Our bodies respond to the feeling of emotional closeness with another caring person. But feelings don’t equal actions.

I have two examples from my own clinical practice.

Once I had a client who presented in a sexualized way: tight-fitting clothes with a fair amount of exposed skin, eye-catching tattoos, a steady gaze that I found disconcertingly direct. Early on, the client told me stories about their intimate relationships with a fair amount of explicit sexual detail. On the one hand, the client was being fearlessly honest; on the other, there was a rapid and sometimes uncomfortable escalation of verbal intimacy between us that had a sexual charge to it. I found the client’s physical presence distracting, and it was uncomfortable to maintain eye contact.

For a couple months, I held on to the discomfort while I tried to figure out my reaction. I talked to the therapist upstairs with whom I frequently consult on cases. As the client and I gently explored family history and their early experience of sexual abuse by an older teenager, it became apparent that the client’s sexualized way of moving in the world was a legacy of that traumatic experience, a survival strategy, an ingrained way of getting ahead of authority figures who made them uncomfortable. The sexualized way they presented in therapy was part of the story they needed to tell and that they needed me to see. By connecting to their earlier experiences of sexual abuse, they were able to liberate themselves from this style of interaction. And we explored what they needed from me in sessions to feel safe and in control.

In another instance, after working together for about a year, one of my clients communicated they had a crush on me. On the one hand, I was terrified to be in the realm of boundary violations; on the other, I found it a little bit flattering. After some consultation with the therapist upstairs, I circled back and made sure the client knew that feelings of love and attraction are normal ways our bodies make sense of the intimacy of the therapeutic relationship, but that to serve my professional role, the therapeutic nature of our relationship would be protected. There were guardrails that would not permit any action to be taken on the feelings, and I was trained to keep them strongly in place. It was a turning point in our work, a deepening of both safety and closeness.

Exploring Conditional Connection

By Allison Briggs

Feeling drawn to a client doesn’t make a therapist unethical; letting that attraction quietly steer the work does. The fact that you can name it—to yourself, to a supervisor, or even to colleagues—is already a marker of integrity. Awareness is what keeps the work safe.

Attraction in therapy rarely arrives out of nowhere. It often echoes something old—an ache for someone who once felt just out of reach. Many of us learned early to earn closeness through desirability: by being pleasant, likable, or a little dazzling. That’s especially true if we grew up feeling unwanted, too much, or like a burden to a distracted parent. Sometimes it came from the opposite dynamic—a parent who idealized us, mistaking admiration for real attunement. In both stories, connection was conditional. Being desired felt safer than being real.

So when a client brings that same energy—charming, attentive, full of praise—it can light up the body in a very familiar way. Without meaning to, we start leaning forward, matching the warmth, wanting to be liked back. What’s happening isn’t unprofessional, it’s human. The work in that moment is to stay awake to it. Notice what’s happening without judgment. Track your breath, your tone, your impulse to please. Ground yourself: feel your feet, lengthen your exhale, come home to your own body. Our task isn’t to leave ourselves to stay wanted; it’s to remain centered in ourselves so we can hold the client’s experience rather than merge with it.

Over time, those reflexes can soften—especially with our own trauma work. I’ve encountered this dynamic a couple of times in eight years of private practice. Earlier in my career, I remember feeling that pull toward the captivating, emotionally wounded client, wanting their validation. Now I understand that pull for what it is: the nervous system recognizing a survival strategy.

Many clients who lead with charm learned to use it to secure love; their sense of self became wrapped around being wanted. The healing work is to show them they never had to earn their place. And if we, as therapists, start trying to earn ours—by proving we can handle it or keep them—we’ve shifted the frame away from their healing and onto our need for validation.

Sometimes the most direct way to preserve the work is to name what’s happening. When said calmly, from regulation, it can open insight rather than shame: “I notice you’re saying a lot of complimentary things and smiling as you talk. What’s that about for you? Who else have you had to do that with?”

When curiosity—not relief—is guiding you, naming what’s in the room becomes therapy, not confession. But timing matters. If naming it brings you ease or subtly hands emotional labor to the client, it’s too soon. Pause. Bring it to consultation. And if you’re not already in trauma therapy yourself, that’s where to begin. These moments aren’t failures. They’re invitations to understand what part of you is being asked to re-enact an old story.

Reconnecting with Your Mission

By Wendy Behary

It’s natural to feel attracted to a client. And of course, we need to recognize that this attraction can be problematic if we’re unable to manage it and it moves into the realm of flirtation, where it can interfere with working toward an effective therapy outcome. If there are limits that need to be set, maladaptive behaviors that need to be confronted, or thoughts that need to be addressed and corrected, you’ll have a hard time bypassing your need for the client’s approval.

So if you’re unable to mitigate that attraction, I’d suggest you find a way to let him know that you don’t think you’re a good fit for him. You can do this by simply telling him, “I feel like you could get more benefit from a colleague who may be a better match in terms of the issues that you’re looking to address.” A little white lie isn’t the end of the world if that’s what it takes to help him move on to someone who can help him more effectively.

The other option is to see if you can honor the fact that you’re a human who has an attraction, but at the same time, switch your focus to your mission, which is to address a vulnerable part of the client that needs your attention, that’s seeking attachment and connection. That vulnerable part of him is the wounded part, affected by whatever coping modes he’s constructed over time to deal with whatever life issues he’s currently facing. When we can turn our attention toward a client’s vulnerability, we can shift our own role into that of being a kind of reparenting agent, a good advocate, a good “mama bear.”

When you’re in that role, you don’t feel attracted. You feel more of a maternal instinct along with your therapeutic expertise. That combination of instinct and expertise can help you be a healthy advocate for the client as you reach a little deeper to get to that more vulnerable side of him, the child part which often needs to be accessed for us to do meaningful, sustainable work.