Love in Psychotherapy
Do Therapists Love Their Clients?
Findings from a Survey of UK Counsellors and Psychotherapists
We don’t often use the word love in professional psychotherapy spaces.
We talk about empathy.
Unconditional positive regard.
The working alliance.
Attachment.
Compassion.
But not love.
So, we decided to ask.
In February 2026, we ran a small online survey with 32 counsellors and psychotherapists affiliated with Peel Psychological Consultancy in Newcastle, UK, and Ellesmere Counselling and Psychotherapy Training (ECPT). Fourteen qualified practitioners and eighteen trainees responded. We asked three simple, open questions:
What is love?
What is love in psychotherapy?
What is the therapist’s experience of loving the client?
The answers were thoughtful and revealing.
1. What Is Love?
Across responses, love was most often described as:
A relational connection or bond
Grounded in care and safety
Sustained through commitment and ethical action
One participant described love as:
“Commitment, intimacy, deep affection involving mutual respect, care and trust.”
Another wrote:
“Love is the deliberate choice of acting in kindness and care even when it would be easier not to.”
Several emphasised safety:
“It is a feeling of belonging where you feel safe to be your self without fear of judgement or criticism.”
Interestingly, a minority described love in spiritual or transcendent terms:
“Love is a magical energy. Hell is the suffering of being unable to love.”
Overall, love was conceptualised not as romance, but as a safe, intentional, relational bond grounded in care and commitment.
2. What Is Love in Psychotherapy?
When the same professionals were asked about love in therapy, the language shifted.
Love became professionalised.
The most common themes were:
Compassion and care
Unconditional positive regard
A safe therapeutic space
Healing and growth
One participant wrote:
“A deep care, empathy and compassion and emotional comfort.”
Another described it as:
“Unconditional positive regard for the client, and co-creating a safe space for sharing and exploration.”
Spiritual language largely disappeared. Instead, love was reframed through Rogerian and relational terminology.
In therapy, love became ethical, boundaried, compassionate care.
3. What Is the Therapist’s Experience of Loving the Client?
This is where things became more emotionally complex.
When asked about their own experience, 68% openly acknowledged loving their clients.
They described:
Warmth and positive feeling
Deep care
Intimacy and presence
Reparative love
For example:
“I definitely love my clients… I want the very best for them.”
And:
“Love is presence, intimacy and containment with truth.”
Some described loving the “child” within the client, or offering love that had been missing developmentally.
But 32% expressed anxiety or professional tension.
One participant wrote:
“Can that be said? As a therapist, I love my client? ‘Care for’, yes… wouldn’t the term ‘love’ be inappropriate in a professional setting?”
Another shared:
“I didn't know what to do when I was a student and I knew I loved my client. My supervisor was glib about it, but I felt real shame, that I had somehow failed. I now reflect on my time with that client and acknowledge the true work was to love her.
The tension was not about crossing boundaries — but about whether the word love itself is professionally legitimate.
What Does This Tell Us?
Across the three questions, a clear progression emerged:
Love is relational and universal.
In psychotherapy, it becomes professionalised and ethical.
When therapists speak personally, love is experienced — but not always comfortably named.
Most therapists in this small sample experience loving their clients.
Yet a significant minority feel uneasy about saying so.
This suggests that love may be:
Present in practice
Central to healing
Culturally ambivalent within professional discourse
Perhaps the question is not whether therapists love their clients — but whether we feel permitted to acknowledge it, and whether we have a safe framework through which we can teach therapists to work with it responsibly.
Why This Matters
Research consistently tells us that the therapeutic relationship is one of the strongest predictors of outcome.
If love — in the form of deep care, attuned presence, and ethical commitment — is part of that relationship, then perhaps we need more nuanced conversations about it.
Not romantic love.
Not boundary-less love.
But relational, ethical, professional love.
Love that is warm.
Boundaried.
Intentional.
And healing.
This research highlights the need for an ethical and safe framework that can support counsellors and psychotherapists to feel confident and competent in offering therapeutic love in service of their clients’ healing.
ENGAGEMENT – A Model for Providing Effective Brief Intervention Therapy at Relational Depth
Drawing on my knowledge of traumatology, relational psychotherapy and interpersonal neurobiology, alongside over 20 years’ experience working with clients in both brief and long-term therapy, I have developed an integrative model called ENGAGEMENT (EM).
EM brings contemporary scientific understanding into the lived, relational reality of therapeutic work, particularly within brief intervention settings. Held within the intersubjective space of the therapeutic encounter, EM emphasises the therapist’s use of self as a vessel for change. It recognises that healing occurs not only through technique, but through attuned presence, relational depth, and embodied responsiveness — qualities that closely echo the themes emerging from this survey.
EM has been experienced as impactful in work with individuals presenting with complex needs and has also proved to be a powerful teaching framework for therapists in training.
If you are a therapist, trainee, or supervisor, I invite you to reflect:
Do you experience loving your clients?
Are you comfortable naming that experience?
And do you feel permitted — ethically and professionally — to hold that kind of relational depth in the room?
If this conversation resonates with you, join Nicole at the Transactional Analysis Conference Cumbria (TACC 2026) in February 2026, where she will present her workshop, Love in Psychotherapy: An Empassioned Affair.
Written by Nicole Addis and Cassie Liddle, February 2026
Nicole will present her workshop, Love in Psychotherapy: An Empassioned Affair, at the Transactional Analysis Conference Cumbria (TACC 2026) in February 2026.
For more information, contact: nicole.addis@peeluk.com
Images used in this article are Microsoft Stock Images (used under licence)
#Psychotherapy #MentalHealth #RelationalHealing #ENGAGEMENTModel #BriefIntervention #TACC2026