feeling pretty anxious and scared - Core beliefs, missing one’s therapist, transference, & self soothing

[megalocardia]

I try to learn about trauma and ways to improve my symptoms, but sometimes this makes it worse ): right now my looking into core beliefs turned into looking into attachment stuff and now I'm triggered and missing my therapist.

I am kind of new to this. She is my first long term therapy, I've seen her about a year and a half, and I am so deep in the maternal transference thing with her. She knows and being very open about it has helped a lot. However sometimes I still hurt so bad!! Like right now: I am crying and missing her, but it's inappropriate to reach out (i think?) because I do want to be able to learn how to handle things myself. Like what do I dooooo.

Any advice on coping with missing your therapist between sessions, specifically when from a maternal transference lens, would be welcome. I'm also making the drive to have an in-person session with her in a couple of weeks to show her this big project I've been working on in school. She's said multiple times that she "would love" for me to come and have a longer session and show her my project, and that makes me feel so cared about and seen by a wise figure that I never have felt before. It feels like it's healing part of my baby self but also it feels like I'm enabling myself. idk. She said her only concern was it being too emotional for me and causing intense/more dysregulation that it would otherwise. I think I will be emotional but I think it's going to be very cathartic. And yes I will be sad when I leave but I think being able to show her this thing I've worked on for months and struggled through will be so good for me. I just see such mixed things online about the boundaries in therapy and I don't want to f*ck myself up. She said of course I can have a hug and that makes me really excited because she feels like a mother figure to me even though I know she is not and I am okay with that, even if it still brings up a lot of emotions. Logically I know if she /were/ my mother then I wouldn't be able to have her as my therapist, and having her as my therapist has been such an extremely healing part of my life that I would not trade for anything in the world.

Idk this is mostly rambling and i still feel like i barely know how to use this forum. we're gonna work on ways to self soothe / distract when i'm having these intense emotions (not just of missing her but in general lately) and until then I want to try things. So right now I'm posting here instead of emailing her like i'd usually do >< I do feel a bit better but I have cried A LOT.

do I need to just journal? what kinda app or site thing should I journal on? typing would be better because I have pain in my writing hand already from schoolwork.
And where can I find some good prompts for trauma related stuff?
i never believed i could get better or have any kind of happy life at all and i finally the last few years have realized that I can and it's been so emotional trying to figure out how to just 'be'.

thank you to anyone who reads this gobbledegook lol

 

[osiris]

Hey there.

Your title about being anxious and scared struck me, because that’s how I felt when I first came to this site, and how I often feel on my journey.

One thing I’ve really learnt is that being honest with T has been beneficial, so telling them when I’m anxious. Wanting reassurance from another human is a totally normal thing and it’s probably worth exploring that. Wanting to contact them when things are hard is also normal as they have obviously helped you when you felt bad before, but I think I get how you are trying to not do it right now.

There is a diary space on here that you can use if you want to journal - there’s different levels of privacy so one you can keep to yourself if you don’t want others to share it. No idea about prompts to work through trauma, but I bet if you google it something would come up.

I hope you start to feel some release from the anxiety soon.

 

[megalocardia]

Hey there.

Your title about being anxious and scared struck me, because that’s how I felt when I first came to this site, and how I often feel on my journey.

One thing I’ve really learnt is that being honest with T has been beneficial, so telling them when I’m anxious. Wanting reassurance from another human is a totally normal thing and it’s probably worth exploring that. Wanting to contact them when things are hard is also normal as they have obviously helped you when you felt bad before, but I think I get how you are trying to not do it right now.

There is a diary space on here that you can use if you want to journal - there’s different levels of privacy so one you can keep to yourself if you don’t want others to share it. No idea about prompts to work through trauma, but I bet if you google it something would come up.

I hope you start to feel some release from the anxiety soon.

oh wow I didn't know there was a diary function - I'm definitely gonna look for it! I want to use this as a resource more as community is a need I've identified (:
thank you for your reply! I ended up finding some light reading on some mental health stuff and calming down. I do feel lucky to be able to reach out to my T when I need to, but I also want to learn to take care of myself and knew this was just a little hiccup. I already feel better. (:

 

[megalocardia]

It’s completely understandable to feel that pang of loss between sessions—especially when you’ve formed such a caring bond with your therapist. In those moments, gently ground yourself with a brief self‑soothing ritual: take a few deep breaths, put on a comforting playlist, or jot down whatever is most pressing in a journal. If you’re looking for guided topics to help process those big feelings, you might find anxiety‑focused journaling prompts really useful.

Thank you. I think journaling just for myself would be beneficial. So far I only write updates of my week for my therapist (a habit leftover from dbt diary cards)

 

[Movingforward10]

I totally relate to your feelings about your T. I have them too. It does get easier.

It's such an intense, all consuming issue. The fear and worry about is this 'too much' is a horrible uncomfortable place. I always felt in such a bind: make these feelings go away and also want more of T and need more of these feelings.

What helped me was/is:
Journal, journal, journal.
Talking to T about it again and again
Working through my relationship with my family.
Having additional contact outside of therapy (we had/have boundaires about it - and thankfully now I'm at a place where I rarely rarely do this).

i'm not explaining it well as my head is in another space at the moment. But I want to offer hope that the intensity and heady mix of it does ease off.

 

[arfie]

sometimes I still hurt so bad!! Like right now: I am crying and missing her, but it's inappropriate to reach out (i think?)

transference was such a huge problem in my early recovery that the team in one clinic handed me off to one another in order to help me understand it better. thank you, my team players. over the course of this therapy sequence i learned to reach past the trigger and reach the base wound. in my own case the base wounds were unavailable parents, friends lost in the continuous shuffle of my childhood, etc., etc. sometimes i still hurt so bad, but at least my tears are cleansing the appropriate wounds. healing happens.

for what it's worth
journaling helped/helps ALLOT in my own case.

 

[megalocardia]

I totally relate to your feelings about your T. I have them too. It does get easier.

It's such an intense, all consuming issue. The fear and worry about is this 'too much' is a horrible uncomfortable place. I always felt in such a bind: make these feelings go away and also want more of T and need more of these feelings.

What helped me was/is:
Journal, journal, journal.
Talking to T about it again and again
Working through my relationship with my family.
Having additional contact outside of therapy (we had/have boundaires about it - and thankfully now I'm at a place where I rarely rarely do this).

i'm not explaining it well as my head is in another space at the moment. But I want to offer hope that the intensity and heady mix of it does ease off.

I need to start journaling for myself, I just know it's going to be soooo full of tears/emotions. But they need to come out.


I'm thankful my therapist is very willing and accepting of talking about my feelings around her. It feels weird but her nonjudgemental stance makes it easier. I definitely have working through past relationships with my family to get through, I think a core issue is my baby self still wants a safe place and she right now provides that.

I'm interested in the additional contact outside of therapy. She is open to me texting/emailing her (the text is not her real number but does go to her real phone) and I am good about not expecting quick replies/understanding this time outside therapy is a benefit to me and not anything she even has to do. Do/did y'all meet up? My therapist is a few hours away and I just drove out with my wife to meet her / have an IRL session for the first time (with her) and it was so overwhelmingly healing (and with that, now I'm so emotional). It felt like my child self just wanted to stay on her couch forever. I think in-person would be so healing now that I've built almost 2 years of rapport with her but I don't know if I'd be crazy to move closer for in person sessions. On the other hand, my entire life has been kind of blunted because I've not healed from emotional wounds so maybe it sounds "crazy" but would actually be a quicker pathway to giving me a fuller life.

Sorry for all the long talk. I just left her office yesterday and getting settled and my brain is tender.

 

[megalocardia]

transference was such a huge problem in my early recovery that the team in one clinic handed me off to one another in order to help me understand it better. thank you, my team players. over the course of this therapy sequence i learned to reach past the trigger and reach the base wound. in my own case the base wounds were unavailable parents, friends lost in the continuous shuffle of my childhood, etc., etc. sometimes i still hurt so bad, but at least my tears are cleansing the appropriate wounds. healing happens.

for what it's worth
journaling helped/helps ALLOT in my own case.

I am so thankful my therapist is so open and able to work through my transference with her. It's helped so much, and I'm going to bring up reaching the "base wound" to her to see what she thinks about it. I think mine would be similar, unavailable safe adults in my childhood. And I agree about the hurt and tears cleansing the wounds. It does hurt really, really badly but it feels like (for me) a path towards healing.

I kind of journal to give to my therapist every week but I want to start journaling on my own/for myself and I'm just lost. Do you do by hand or typing? I get really bad hand cramps but I love writing so I'm torn. And do you have any places you get topics/prompts etc or do you just write about your feelings/day/etc? I have a big problem being able to be alone with myself and I think journaling (for myself) could help this as well.

 

[Movingforward10]

The contact my T had/have outside the therapy session is email only. The agreement is that I decide when I need to email and that I can email if I am in a crisis and need help. The definition of crisis is open to me to interpret (which caused a lot of heartache: is this crisis enough? Etc). She was clear that it wouldn't be therapy by email, as she doesn't do that. But the email can be a therapeutic tool to help progress in therapy. One time she offered for me to call her as that was a big crisis. I said no, not because I didn't want/need to but because I felt so bad taking her time outside of the session.
She went online in the first lockdown and has never returned to in person sessions. So I have only ever been in a room with her for those first few weeks (I started therapy in Jan 2020). I used to be desperate to be in the room with her again. And now it's fine. I feel I get what I need online.
So in terms of you wanting to move closer to her so you can have more in person sessions. I would encourage you to raise that with her and work through it. This transference and emotional wound does get better so the need, over time, to be as close to her will lessen.

In terms of journalling, I journal on here. I write up each of my sessions and I book mark them in here so I have them in a place that I can easily refer to. It's really helpful for me to review them. And I can also see how they have changed over the years. From such intensity to now more reflection.

I love my T greatly and I think I always will. She has been that parent I have never had, even though she can't be. It's a beautiful thing, having a therapist be there with you through this. I'm hoping the bueaty and appreciation of it will be enough one day to say goodbye, along with healing this wound enough to be able to do that.

It's a long journey. In my experience anyway.

 

[megalocardia]

The contact my T had/have outside the therapy session is email only. The agreement is that I decide when I need to email and that I can email if I am in a crisis and need help. The definition of crisis is open to me to interpret (which caused a lot of heartache: is this crisis enough? Etc). She was clear that it wouldn't be therapy by email, as she doesn't do that. But the email can be a therapeutic tool to help progress in therapy. One time she offered for me to call her as that was a big crisis. I said no, not because I didn't want/need to but because I felt so bad taking her time outside of the session.
She went online in the first lockdown and has never returned to in person sessions. So I have only ever been in a room with her for those first few weeks (I started therapy in Jan 2020). I used to be desperate to be in the room with her again. And now it's fine. I feel I get what I need online.
So in terms of you wanting to move closer to her so you can have more in person sessions. I would encourage you to raise that with her and work through it. This transference and emotional wound does get better so the need, over time, to be as close to her will lessen.

In terms of journalling, I journal on here. I write up each of my sessions and I book mark them in here so I have them in a place that I can easily refer to. It's really helpful for me to review them. And I can also see how they have changed over the years. From such intensity to now more reflection.

I love my T greatly and I think I always will. She has been that parent I have never had, even though she can't be. It's a beautiful thing, having a therapist be there with you through this. I'm hoping the bueaty and appreciation of it will be enough one day to say goodbye, along with healing this wound enough to be able to do that.

It's a long journey. In my experience anyway.

I'm so thankful my therapist allows me to email and text between sessions as much as I need, but I do worry about burdening my therapist. She has said she holds her boundaries well and is okay with me doing that, as long as I understand she won't get to it right away (which is more than reasonable to me).

I think it was really easy to access my baby self when I sat in her office for the first time after over a year and a half of virtual sessions. It felt like I was in a physically safe place that I didn't have to be responsible for the safeness of. It was so healing and now I'm just crying. lol.

I need to figure out how to journal on here.

I love mine as well. I couldn't not love her, for all that she does to help me and others. She has been so instrumental to my growth. I am just also heartbroken that leaving has to occur.

It is long.

 

[arfie]

Do you do by hand or typing?

i let whimsy dictate and go through binges of all the available options. my longest running binge was 70 page spiral bound notebooks which i carried with me everywhere i went. i go for the 70 page because the bigger notebooks get pretty beaten up before i fill them. my online journals keep getting lost in the cloud shifts, but that's okay. the typing still served the purpose of venting emotions and organizing thoughts.

I get really bad hand cramps but I love writing so I'm torn.

i learned how to write with both hands for this very reason. that morphed into some unexpected surprises.

And do you have any places you get topics/prompts etc or do you just write about your feelings/day/etc?

i go with whatever brain fart is sounding off when i pick up my journal.

 

[megalocardia]

i let whimsy dictate and go through binges of all the available options. my longest running binge was 70 page spiral bound notebooks which i carried with me everywhere i went. i go for the 70 page because the bigger notebooks get pretty beaten up before i fill them. my online journals keep getting lost in the cloud shifts, but that's okay. the typing still served the purpose of venting emotions and organizing thoughts.

i learned how to write with both hands for this very reason. that morphed into some unexpected surprises.

i go with whatever brain fart is sounding off when i pick up my journal.

thank you for this lighthearted and helpful reply! haha