Posted by pinkeye on July 29, 2005, at 13:58:18
In reply to Re: Lott: Question about recovering from transference, posted by deborah anne lott on July 28, 2005, at 21:46:34
This reply is incredible.. You have such an insight and knowledge and way of communicating. I really am glad I read your book and you came here to participate. I always thought you were a therapist, and I am surprised that you are not !!
You do have wonderful insight. You should write many more books on transference and therapy and how to work on transference and heal the patients without hurting them etc.
I am sorry you went through a tough time getting your book published, but LOT of Extremely Good authors go through a very difficult time with their publishings initially. But little later, when it picks up, they end up with outstanding sales. I am 100 % confident, anybody who reads your book will realize what a piece of gem it is, and how great an author you are.
You should definitely write more books !!
You asked about our thoughts.. Here are some of my discoveries.. (from working through my own transference with my ex psychiatrist).
The first key thing that helps is to get a very understanding therapist who can guide you through this feelings. Luckily, I got a new therapist who was much more experienced and who could really understand the feelings, and could identify the roots of it as being my issues with my father. It was the first major step to healing - to identify the root cause of all the intense longing and desire for approval, and an older authority figure. The pain was so very intense, and I could never have made sense out of it myself without any help. I really thought it was all about my psychiatrist. I didn't even know I was abused by my father in a way which led me into this pattern. Discovering that was the first major step, and I couldn't have done it without help from a therapist.
After that, every time, my thoughts went to my psychiatrist, and longed for him, I started questioning the thoughts and feelings and was surprised to discover that almost all of it really was about my feelings for my dad - what I missed from him, how I got over dependant on my dad, how he always kept authority and approval over me etc. What I had longed for so intensely was some form of approval, that I was a decent human being and a woman, from a male authority figure, and to be shown some kind of sanctioning of my existence. And I had such rage, and anger at my father, and I didn't understand why in addition to all the intense longing I felt for my psychiatrist, I also felt simultaneously such hatred towards him sometimes, how I felt like screaming at him, how I felt like teaching him and protecting him, and saving him. I didn't understand that everything was about my dad. Slowly, after several sessions of redirecting my feelings towards the actual person (my dad) from my therapist, I began to start doing it for myself. It took a very long and hard and intense struggle to realize that and luckily I had always had some insight into myself, so that helped.
After that, the next big step came in realizing and recovering the problems with my dad. I began to replay all my childhood in my mind, and really kind of went through some of the thoughts I had in my mind about my dad, and started questioning his value as a person and a dad in my life. And I had held him in the status of God in my life. So the next step was to reduce his status from being a God to a mere human in my life. I started focussing more and more on his mistakes, and how outrageously he had acted throughout his life, and how he messed up my life.
After that, the final step was to approve myself as a worthy human being. Every time I had intense desire for approval from my psychiatrist, I started turning the feelings towards myself. All these years, I almost always waited for that one fine day, when my psychiatrist would finally tell me how good a person I really was, and that I was such a worthy human being and a good woman etc. And of course, he never did say that. And now, everytime I long for that one day, I tell myself whatever I wanted to hear from my psychiatrist - that I am such a good person, I am really worthy, and started somehow trying to unconditionally approve myself. Every time I long for approval from him, I now give it to myself, and that hugely reduces the intensity of the feelings.
So I would say, that the key to working out of it is what you have said - 1. Understanding what the feelings really are about. 2. Trying to go through the childhood and understand what happened and revise your life. 3. Correct it and give yourself what you missed and what you long for. Most of the times, it is not even love we long so badly for, it is some approval and sanctioning of us as human beings and as persons. Love is easy to find, but approval is the hardest - and the right way to go about is to give yourself the self approval you need.
This is what happened with me. I am sure everyone else has a different path to recovery. I am not there yet fully as well.
But really, every therapist (CBT or not) should go through a course on transference. It really would save lot of patients from going through such pain and hurt. I had to work extra hard, and go through extra pain, because there was no training on this.
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> This is probably the most difficult situation a client can go through. There are no easy answers so if it sounds like I'm offering an easy how-to, I don't mean to. I've been there myself (as I think you can tell from my book)and I'm convinced a client can use the experience for good in her life, but that is not denying that it can be very very painful. I think one thing the client has to do is stop fantasizing and telling herself that the romance is going to happen, or that the therapist is really one's soul mate, or that these incredible things he/she said in session meant that he/she really did love even though he denied it, or imagine meetings years later, or all the things we do when we have that intense yearning. When a therapist moves away or retires or even dies, the grief and loss are also real. It is okay to grieve and to recognize that something important has been lost. If the client, either alone or with the subsequent therapist, can trace the feelings back to earlier events in her life, and find the emotional thread of them -- that sometimes helps. What I mean is if a client can remember feeling that way as a child yearning for her mother's love or her father's attention, or whatever it was she didn't get -- that can sometimes help. If she can start to understand that the feelings reside in her, and that she has some power over them, rather than believing that they reside in him and that she is helpless to do anything but yearn and be unrequited.
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> The client must recognize that the person she is in love with probably does not exist -- what she saw of her therapist in the consulting room may be the very best of him, and there is a lot that she did not see. If you read the stories of the women in my book who actually had their fantasies fulfilled -- by having sex with their therapists -- you will see how quickly the love can go away when confronted with the harsh light of reality.
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> The client should try not to compare the therapist favorably with her spouse or significant other or potential significant others, or anyone else she's having a real relationship with. That's always counterproductive. She should try not to tell herself that everything in her life would be better if only he/she loved her. If fantasies of the therapist are filling a hole in the client's relationship life, she needs to try to figure out if there's a way to improve those real relationships or to find someone able to fulfill more of her needs.
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> I think probably the most important thing is to grieve if she needs to. She's got to accept the loss, and allow herself to feel it. She'll probably be grieving more than the loss of this transference love -- maybe all the losses of her life that she never got to grieve.
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> She also has to accept that maybe she'll always be a little bit in love with her therapist, but that this love can recede and doesn't preclude her loving others. She needs to try to take in and hold onto whatever actual good she got from the therapy. And it helps to realize that one is not alone -- many of us have been there -- if not with a therapist, with a teacher, or an older sibling's best friend, or someone else unavailable. The client should try to do whatever she can to be active, and pro-active, in her life rather than passive because I think passivity only increases that sense of helpless longing. The client should try to turn her love to someone who needs it -- maybe by volunteering at a homeless shelter or reading a book to kids once a week at the library, or doing something good for someone who will appreciate it.
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> What do others think about this? Any other suggestions?
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> > Hi Ms. Lott,
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> > I have read your book, and found it to be of incredible value. It gave me such good points and validated so many feelings I had for my psychiatrist. It is an incredible work !! Thanks a lot for writing that.
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> > A question I have in my mind is - How does one recover from intense transference towards their therapist? When for some reason you don't have the therapist to support you or work with you through your transference or if that help is inadequate? (For instance, when the therapist retires, or moves away, or when you move away). Even working with another therapist is not the same in those extreme transferences. How does one guide herself/himself through transference and work out of it?
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> > Are there any special techniques, other than the obvious ones - talk about it, get support from other people? Many times, the transference is so extremely intense and painful (especially when it is romantic transference, and you don't have any contact with your therapist) and how does one guide herself/himself out of it?
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poster:pinkeye
thread:534787
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050725/msgs/535305.html