Attachment to/Transference with Therapist

[EveHarrington]

I thought transference is applying your feelings onto the therapist. Not simply expecting to learn how to have a good relationship.

No.

Transference is transferring your feelings that you have for other people on to your therapist.

ie. I hate my dad so now I’m transferring those same feelings of hate onto my therapist even though my therapist has done nothing to make me hate her.

This mode of therapy isn’t uncommon as supposedly you’ll be able to work out your feelings of hate for your dad with your therapist.

But really, at the end of the day, my dad is still a d-bag and I hate anything that’s indirect. Working out my shit relationship with my dad through a surrogate doesn’t make things any better. IMHO.

Just an example.

 

[EveHarrington]

So. . . Feeling good about receiving a compliment = expecting to learn how to be loved by someone unavailable= really bad like FOO taught me.

So I should be cold about it and not create a safe human connection with someone who has the tools and boundaries to make it safe?

A “relationship” is simply two entities communicating in some kind of fashion. Not necessarily a love thing. The thought of T actually loving me would have me hightailing it the other way and makes me nauseous because something went seriously wrong.

I do think there are different definitions of love. I do think (maybe not in my case and I’m fine with that) that some therapists do love their clients in a human to human way. Not necessarily romantic or even familial.

What happened was this: over the past several months of building a “relationship” with him, I hit a low point. This low point has a sh*t ton of factors in it. One of the factors was after the nightmare about him raping me he mentioned possibly moving to a different T. My brain took off with that and coupled with many, many other things I spiraled into some serious abandonment issues that really have nothing to do with him. But I applied them to him. With everything going on I attempted. Not strictly because of him. The day after I emailed him about it. I didn’t get an answer and I had no idea how much that lack of answer would affect me. I’m used to him not answering emails, we are designed that way with the expectation that he is definitely not available all the time. The silence made my abandonment issues come way out to the forefront. I finally emailed him again, pretty much raging at him that of all emails, that’s the one that should have been answered. He responded, apologetic. Then those feelings transferred onto this forum a bit until Chrissy and Sophy talked me through. These are super common feelings in all “relationships” I have had.

My original question was had anyone had to work through strong transference like this? Because the anger and hurt is extremely intense, but it’s not him and I know that. It’s just directed at him right now. He wants to start working through it on our next session, I don’t know what to expect and would like to hear others experience on it.

Him and I working through transference that I have a history of seems like learning a healthy relationship to me, so I’m genuinely confused. I’m not trying to be difficult.

I think you’re being very black and white.

Have you ever had a professional relationship with anyone?

Professional /= cold.

 

[Deleted member 47099]

I think you’re being very black and white.

Have you ever had a professional relationship with anyone?

Professional /= cold.

Professional does not equal cold.

 

[EveHarrington]

Professional does not equal cold.

Yes, you are echoing what I said.

/= means “does not equal”

I am referring to the OP being black and white, swinging in the opposite direction of warm and fuzzy BFF therapist.

Look, it’s obvious who is friends in this thread and if you’re not in that circle, then....yeah. I’m out too.

Good luck.

Btw, sometimes it helps to get advice from people on the forum who aren’t your internet BFFs. Just sayin.

 

[Emotional girl]

I had transference issues with my last T.All my life I had been looking for this superman character to love , protect me and keep me safe and for me I felt that with my T.I also had this deep need to care about him as well.
In my eyes he was this perfect man who I put on a pedestal ,I adored him but I also was obsessed with him and the fear of abandonment was so great that I felt suicidal.
My transference towards him completely changed when I remembered some repressed memories and then all I felt was ashamed and embarrassed about my feelings and our relationships completely changed .He helped me to see why I felt ashamed and embarrassed.
Transference and countertransference takes part in the therapy room all the time and it can help the client with relationships outside the therapeutic room but there has to be a healthy balance and there also has to be healthy boundaries as well.

 

[Deleted member 47099]

Look, it’s obvious who is friends in this thread and if you’re not in that circle, then....yeah. I’m out too.

Btw, sometimes it helps to get advice from people on the forum who aren’t your internet BFFs. Just sayin.

Eve, I know this is a sensitive issue for you and you've written about it a lot in your diary and other threads.

I don't think it's the issue here.

But I do think that having good friends IRL and on the forum too, is important. They are people that know your backstory, that read along, that listen to the details of what's going on. So they often have more insight into the subtleties of the situation. Personally, I think that's a good thing. That's the whole point of having friends.

Of course it's a good idea to get other people's opinions too. But when you start a public thread here, you get a lot of people being triggered by an issue and just giving their point of view based on something very triggering - like having experienced nightmare T relationships - and then it's got very little to do with what the OP asked.

So there a both benefits and drawbacks to starting public threads here and getting everyone's opinion. It can be really hard to sort through what is good advice and what is just people dealing with their own triggers and saying things that are not particularly relevant to the situation at hand.

 

[ILoveLife]

Everyone here is valid. One's opinions, regardless of someone agreeing with them or not, does not make people and others' opinions invalid. There's room for everyone's thoughts.

 

[Deleted member 47099]

There's room for everyone's thoughts.

I think often people think a thread like this is a general discussion about "therapists and transference" as if it's some general debate.
If it was, then yeah, everyone can just weigh in with whatever is on their minds, whatever they've experienced with a certain topic.

But these kind of threads are started by someone looking for support in a situation that they find confusing or difficult. And people giving random opinions, even if it's "valid" to give random opinions, is sometimes not helpful.

So I think there's kind of a need for people to balance valid/ helpful.

It's about *listenting* to what the OP is asking and saying, more than it is about *talking* and *saying* an opinion.

When an OP starts a topic like this, it's *their* topic. Not a general topic. And that's a pretty big difference, I think.

 

[ILoveLife]

Like I said, there's room for everyone's thoughts. Including yours!

 

[Deleted member 47099]

Like I said, there's room for everyone's thoughts. Including yours!

Sure. I think you had a similar issue the other day tho, right? Where you started a thread about your mother and heaps of people kept telling you to move out cos the situation was toxic? Which is also right and valid. But not appropriate to *your* situation. And you got upset that those people weren't reading your diary and hence were commenting "inappropriately" ?
Just cos it's valid for them to state their opinion doesn't mean it's *helpful* for you. In fact, it can be quite the reverse.

 

[Kubash16]

So we fell off track here big time I think. I’m sorry I was asleep and couldn’t address all this earlier.

I agree that everyone has a right to their opinion and I am more than willing to hear everyone out. I am not kicking anyone off this thread and hope it isn’t coming across like I am. I also don’t necessarily have internet BFFs which is a really ironic thing to say considering the transference that happened with a couple of forum members lol- sorry I get a kick out of that one. It may come across that I was more receptive to her input then others but that’s truly not the case. I am genuinely confused by Sietz assessment of the situation seems it seems to me that the whole point of therapy is to learn how to interact healthier with the world. A huge part of interacting with the world is relationships, so in my mind it stands to reason that a T could help there.

I posted this thread with the knowledge that I would get all sorts of different feedback and I want to hear it all. I really wasn’t trying to be difficult I just flat out don’t get it.

I felt like it was being implied that I am looking for T to love or rescue me or that I view him as some sort of parent. That’s not the case at all and I was trying to make that clear, but obviously got off track somewhere.

So, I apologize to anyone who got hurt or upset, that wasn’t the intention.

 

[Kubash16]

This thread did work out kind of opposite of what I was hoping. I was hoping to find others who felt like I do so that I feel less alone and less of a complete freak and now I feel like so much more of a freak. It’s kinda bringing me back to wanting to ghost on him and ghost on here and disappear from the world honestly. It’s not that I don’t appreciate everyone’s opinions, after all I posted so should definitely expect it. But I feel like this absolutely horrible person now who should just disappear so that things don’t get worse anywhere.