Posted by lucy stone on September 18, 2004, at 8:34:31
All:
I know I don't post very often and when I do I sometimes unintentionally hurt (I'm truly sorry, Pfinstegg), but I am a devoted lurker. I'm not very good at expressing the caring I feel toward the people on this board or in my real life. I think I have the details of my life but if I haven't I'll do so here. I'm in my 50s, married with with two teens, one born to me and one in our family through adoption. One lives at home and one lives nearby and attends college. I am a research scientist and run my also scientist husband's lab at a large university. I'm not in the feeling business so it might explain part of my difficulty in expression my feelings through the computer. Although I currently work with my husband and have done so off and on through my work life, I have also had long periods when I worked in other settings. My mother died when I was in college and my always emotionally distant and other emotionally abusive father remarried within a year. My daughter developed anorexia when she was 12 and the family therapy I went through with her made me know I had serious problems of my own to deal with. I am currently in the fourth year of a 4 X per week psychoanalysis. I started this thread because of all the discussions that have been taking place here about transferrence. I am the poster girl for transferrence, not just with therapists but with other people in my life. I have been plauged with a fantasy that I first developed in my early teens about a strong, handsome man who would protect and take care of me, who would make everything OK. Sometimes it included sexual elements and sometimes it didn't. I repeatedly tried to play out the fantasy IRL with college professors, coworkers, and most damaging to me, supervisors. Of course it usually ended up in a disaster for me and when the unwitting man wouldn't cooperate I turned him into an enemy and would do anything I could to distroy him. Damaging to my life for sure! I have spent most of the last 4 years replaying this with my analyst, althernately trying to get him to play along with my fantasy be my protector and hating him for refusing to do so. I have spent long periods (months!) of tearing him down and trying to distroy him. He is strong and skillful, though, and rode through this with me. I have come to realize what is probably obvious to anyone reading this, that I have been looking for a father to love, protect, and take care of me. I have also come to understand that as I adult I will never have that and need to grieve the loss before I can move on with my life. I am trying to give this fantasy up but it is very hard. I also have elements of it in my relationship with my husband, my working for him is part of my desire to be taken care of. Part of my analysis has been the intense transferrence I have had with my analyst, and it is only because I have had it that I am able to work through these issues. I don't see transferrence as something negative that needs to be minimize but as something positive that leads to healing, at least for me. When I read posts about deep fears that therapists will not return from vacation, agonies about cancelled appointments, or worries that therapists don't really care, I totally understand. I think these feelings are a vital part of therapy, because if we don't have them we can't understand why they are there, what they mean, and how those same fears play out in our real lives outside of therapy. If we look at it rationally, of course the T will come back after vacation. He or she is a professional treating a troubled patient and would never ethically just stop seeing someone. That's reality. We're not dealing emotionally with that reality, though, we dealing emotionally with all the people who have hurt or left us in the past, and of course we expect this person to do the same. In our therapies we can learn that not everyone hurts and leaves and we can learn to live our lives without those past feelings hampering us so much. At least, that is what I am learning. I am gradually moving out the shell I have been in for so long and trying out situations that I have long been afraid to be in because of my fears of being hurt. I can't say that it is entirely successful, but my T is there to support me. He refuses though, to play the fantasy parent part and tell me what a good girl I am for trying and that still infuriates me. Now though, I know what I am doing and why. I am leaving tomorrow of a two week trip to Spain with my sister. I have been to Europe many times but always with my husband to do the hard parts, like actually interacting with anyone there. This time I will have to do it by myself, without my husband. That is real progress for my. I also feel calm about a two week absence from my T, something that would have made me frantic a few years ago. We were talking about termination last week, and that topic terrifies me. He said that I can live without the real him, it's the fantasy him I can't live without. I know that is true even if I don't believe it yet. He also said, "I know it seems impossible to live without you...I mean me." I quickly asked, "is that Freudian?" and he smiled...I heard it in his vioce...and said in his analyst way.."may be", so I know he does care, in a therapist way, of course.
poster:lucy stone
thread:392271
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040918/msgs/392271.html