Psycho-Babble Psychology | about psychological treatments | Framed
This thread | Show all | Post follow-up | Start new thread | List of forums | Search | FAQ

Don't know how to bring this up with T (trigger?)

Posted by greyskyeyes on September 26, 2005, at 15:55:21

Okay. I have a session tomorrow and there’s something I really, REALLY don’t want to talk about. Which means I NEED to talk about it (bleah). Which led me to ponder the reason I don’t want to talk about it. Which in turn led me to an interesting realization. If ya’ll don’t mind being my guinea pigs I’d like to bounce it off of the board. (big thing I like about PB, I can do this and no one – I hope – will think I’m strange) I am apologizing beforehand, this will be **LONG** as heck. Sorry.

In a nutshell. I have BPD. Occasionally I, well, have what can politely be termed fits and impolitely termed temper tantrums. Over trifles. In this case it was definitely a trifle (don’t want to get into it, too embarrassing). Fueling the frustration was the fact that it was late afternoon and I’d gotten up at 3:30 am, and only had 5 ½ hours of sleep the night before. So I ended up going ballistic over something insignificant and slamming things around and into walls, which scared my toddler son and infuriated my husband (scared him a little too), and ended up with me shaking and crying and wanting to seriously hurt myself. I had to beg my husband to hold me and to tell me to take my Risperdal (he did and I did).

He thinks we need to “talk about it” in our next joint session with my T. I don’t see why we need to. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to tell her about it. Which is very odd because I tell her many, many things. This struck me as a Big Red Flag so I thought about it for a while (I’m bored at work today and the network is very slow) and I came up with a bit of a “eureka.”

I’ve always thought I had absolutely no transference with my T. I’ve had transference before – with male Ts (erotic, of course). But I figured that I have a perfectly proper, no-baggage-attached type of relationship with my current T. However… it seems like there’s been a good bit of talk about transference lately so my mind has had the subject rolling around in the background. I’ve come to the conclusion that I *am* experiencing transference – maternal. I assumed with a maternal transference it would be obvious, like, literally wanting her to be my mother. That’s not the case. But, I’m *reacting* to her like I would to my mother.

My mother is the type of person that has an inability to accept a reality other than her own. And she is the type to hold grudges. If I did anything she didn’t like, she would hold it against me. For example, I was the most horrific teenager in the world, even though I made good grades, was highly involved in school activities and well-regarded by all of my teachers, and played multiple instruments, all because I liked boys and liked to talk on the phone. And had the audacity to need to be driven to competitions/ auditions. And oh yeah, wanted to wear the clothing the cool kids did. She wasn’t overtly abusive, but there was a lot of emotional neglect going on. So I’ve been talking practically nonstop about her in sessions lately. Interestingly enough, I hardly mention my father even though he was somewhat physically abusive and cold to me. And that’s where my “eureka” comes into play. I talk about my relationship with my mother and the way she responded to me because my T then responds to my words in the manner I wish my mother would have responded to me when I was growing up. Does that make sense? My T is very sympathetic. She often says that she can’t imagine a mother not being proud of a daughter like me. She expresses extreme empathy at situations where my mother *should* have been empathetic.

The downside of this is that I am starting to form a dynamic with her approaching that of the dynamic I have with my mother. Since I am getting positive reception from her, I don’t want to tarnish her perceptions of me. I don’t want to talk about the “bad” things I do. Like I’m afraid it would constitute a slip-up and she would reject me. Therefore, I don’t want to talk about what happened the other day. We have talked about painful, bad things before, and I always feel uncomfortable, like she should be upset with me. Then I change the subject as soon as I possibly can to something “safer.”

Does this make sense? It’s probably painfully obvious to everyone (uh, if you're still reading) and kinda sad that it took me this long to figure it out. <SIGH> But I thought I’d run this by you all (since this board always seems to have so much thoughtful insight into these things!). Guess I definitely need to bring up not only what happened the other day, but the transference issue. I’m just not sure how or even where to begin...

~ grey


Share
Tweet  

Thread

 

Post a new follow-up

Your message only Include above post


Notify the administrators

They will then review this post with the posting guidelines in mind.

To contact them about something other than this post, please use this form instead.

 

Start a new thread

 
Google
dr-bob.org www
Search options and examples
[amazon] for
in

This thread | Show all | Post follow-up | Start new thread | FAQ
Psycho-Babble Psychology | Framed

poster:greyskyeyes thread:559858
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050920/msgs/559858.html