Attraction
At a glance
A therapist’s felt attraction to a client — a real, ordinary human response that body psychotherapy training has to reckon with directly, given how much attention it pays to embodied experience generally.
Why this needs its own honest page
Attraction happening is not, by itself, a professional failure — bodies register attraction outside conscious control. What matters entirely is what happens next: whether it’s acted on, whether it distorts the therapeutic relationship, and whether it’s brought to supervision rather than carried silently.
The disability-specific layer
Disabled people are routinely desexualised, which can make a therapist’s own attraction to a disabled client feel unusually loaded to acknowledge — as though noticing it confirms some kind of transgression. It doesn’t. The same professional standard applies regardless of the client’s disability: notice it, don’t act on it, bring it to supervision.
Working with it
Name it honestly to yourself first, then in supervision. Attraction that goes unacknowledged is more likely to distort the relationship than attraction that’s been named and held with appropriate boundaries.
A question worth carrying
Have I actually named this to myself and, where appropriate, in supervision — or am I carrying it silently and hoping it doesn’t affect the work?
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Disability, Sexuality & Pleasure · Supervision · The Therapist’s Body