As I work through my rut in therapy, I was wondering why I can only talk about my bad experiences with my T. I will go in thinking ahead of time, OK I'm going to tell him something good that happened...but then I can't bring myself to do it. Two thoughts came out of that...1) It's a great way to drive somebody away and 2) My family usually put me down whenever I felt I was succeeding at something.

So, to the first point. Well, one could say it would hurt a lot less driving somebody away by being all negative. Because if you're cheerful and kind and generous and loving and you drive people away...that would just hurt soooo much more. No excuses - You can't say they rejected you because you were being negative. They rejected you simply for being you. Rejected you at your very best. Or they took advantage of you and made you feel like a complete idiot. If you've put your best foot forward and there's no more you can give and they still rejected you - that would really, really suck. So depression becomes a coping mechanism. When somebody gets too close...to the point where you've become attached to them...that's where the big risk is. So you put out a pre-emptive strike and drive them away before they get a chance to do it to you. The very core of you.

To the second point...well, it's just safer not letting anybody know what you're doing if they're going to poke holes in it, tell you not to bother, that they can do so much better, why don't you just stick to <insert boring endeavour here>.

It's frustrating that I treat my T this way too but that's why they call it transference. It's not about him, it's about my experiences with significant people in my life emotionally re-enacted with my T. Simply because it's become so ingrained. A pattern, programming...that has to get erased, written over with a new program. How one goes about that...I don't know. That's kind of the million dollar question at this point.