Posted by JANNBEAU (homenym) on March 27, 2002, at 21:05:28
In reply to Re: In love with my therapist, posted by wendy b. on March 27, 2002, at 0:21:41
> Hi, Wendy,
I agree!! Beautiful message. Insightful, kind, loving, realistic, knowledgeable!
I can identify with all that you said about parents, absent or present. My father left when I was 10, my mother worked all the time (I KNOW she loved me, but I didn't FEEL that she loved me! and I knew my FATHER didn't love me or he wouldn't have left me, right?
I've been working on this issue, mostly alone, for the past thirty years! I didn't even recognize the abandonment issue until about ten years ago. I once had a wonderful therapist (male) with whom I, too, fell in love! He was a resident and I only had about 1.5 years with him before he moved on. He was great about preparing me for the separation, although I don't recall ever talking specifically about my abandonment issues. I made marvelous progress with him. I never connected with another therapist like I did with him. That's probably why I eventually became disenchanted with therapy and never completed my work.
I'm with you on this one. I think Penny, Allison, and others should stick with the therapist with whom they have developed the transference relationship as it is possible that transference may be at the heart of a therapeutic relationship (does that sound Freudian or something? It's been too long since I studied psych to remember). At any rate . . .
God Bless and Good Luck,
JannbeauHi Allison, Dinah, Penny, others,
>
> Somehow, I am attracted to this conversation, sorry for interrupting. Penny and Dinah and I have had conversations on the board in the past about this same issue. It keeps cropping up, and probably a good thing, too...
>
> Sexual attraction to your female therapist, wow! That surely must be difficult to deal with, and I know how weird it is to all of a sudden love another woman, when you're not (you didn't think!) gay. But aren't women are so easy to love! I drove past the house of my former therapist several times... I didn't feel ashamed, please don't be so hard on yourselves. For me, it was sort of more like: ok, this is where the almighty Therapist lives, and it's a pretty normal house, larger than mine, yes, but the act of driving by brought it down to a level of reality for me. Like realizing your first grade teacher shits, or your parents have sex... You know...
>
> In the transference, we're working on the elemental, primal relationships with our parents, and acting them out with the therapist. Even, as in my case, parents who weren't around, like my biological father. As someone (Allison I think) mentioned, it's like some of our old realtionships with lovers or spouses... we're just "trying to get it right," somehow, through these surrogate parental figures. Who more than the therapist, the one with the magic key to unlock our minds, would be better for us to work out these things with? Ideally, the therapist is trained to know how to handle the issues, and some even say that the transference is the very heart of the therapeutic relationship.
>
> My therapist for 7 years was the empathetic mother I never experienced. Oh, yes, I had a mother, one who professed her love to her children on a daily basis... But when I was asked by my current therp., if I remembered any special moments where I thought I had been mothered well, some close connection like sitting in my mother's lap or being read to, I couldn't conjure one up. That was revealing... As I grew up and went to college, I became involved with several older men (my mother's age), and tried to get from them what I hadn't gotten from my mother, and from the father I never knew. Of course, it didn't work.
>
> Others have had much more traumatic relationships with their parents than I ever had - being beaten, hurt, ignored, etc. You have probably already done this, but you might ask yourself what it is that needs to be done over, what or who the therapist stands for in your case... Write it down, share it here, if you can. Especially for Penny - you can talk here for the next four weeks. I don't think the substitute therapist is doing any good, and it's too painful to share intimacies with someone you don't trust. I do think working on the transference with the one you love is going to give you the most direct avenue to resolving your feelings of abandonment and loss and hurt. Do it with the actual person who is bringing up those feelings - don't bail out now. So you want to feel special in her eyes... that's ok, that's fine. Didn't you want to be that to your mommy and daddy? Isn't that ok, what we all wanted and should have had, but probably didn't? There is no shame in that, please don't feel ashamed. The little girl inside you needs to come out and ask for and receive what she never got, approval and unconditional love. You are working so very hard at healing those old wounds, and it takes a lot of courage and strength to do it. It's painful, it brings up so many bad feelings, but you've got to do it, and you know it, that's why you're wrestling with this now. Wounds can heal - that is one of the wonderful things about being human...
>
> Sorry to interject at this late point in the conversation - I think you and Penny are doing amazing work, and I know Dinah has struggled with this too. Just hold on, write more here if you can, or use a journal. Dance, sing, invite the beast into your living room...
>
> Wendy
>
>
>
> > Hi all,
> > This issue has really been troubling me lately, and I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced transference like this. My issue: I have been going to the same therapist on and off for 10 yrs and was just recently diagnosed cyclothymic. All the other times I have gone to her (for anxiety), it has never gotten this intense (I think I was holding back a lot and am now getting down to another level). I have always had a high regard for her, but lately I can't stop thinking about her. And what makes it weirder to me is that we are both female and I've never really been attracted to women before (i'm married), but suddenly I am thinking of her romantically, maternally, sexually, etc. I am constantly rehearsing in my head what I will say to her next and therapy is becoming the focal point of my week. I can't help but think this is unhealthy. Yes, I have told her about this, we spent awhile talking about it, but she says it will resolve itself eventually, be patient, etc. Should we keep talking about it (and take time away from other issues) or will talking about it continue to fuel the fire? And yes, it is truly transference in that this thing with her mimics previous dysfunctional relationships I have had with men, all of which ended badly. I guess the idea is that if this is resolved positively, then it will *change my life*, right?! But how to "resolve" it??? Any ideas?
> > Thanks for listening!
> > Allison
poster:JANNBEAU (homenym)
thread:20769
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020325/msgs/21073.html