Well, it took a long time! For me it was a slow process, painstaking at times. It involved being willing to recognize cognitively and feel emotionally and express during sessions all those thoughts and feelings in the moment. It was crucial to not shut down or avoid. I couldn't even begin to do that until after a couple of years, when the dissociation was under control.

It involved, at times, a certain amount of regression--though my T kept that to a minimum by switching to a more cognitive focus as needed. It required of me to be committed to being as open and honest as possible, but what made that possible was the trust I already had in my T and his demeanor--very calm and accepting.

I never feared his reaction to any feeling or thought or judgement I expressed (and there were times when I was quite unfair to him ); my self-condemnation was a much bigger challenge. For me, the resolution of the transference was a very conscious process. It wasn't about being swept away, losing touch, dissociating, feeling out of control--those things may happen as the transference develops, but I suspect resolution isn't possible until that peak is past.

Probably resolving the transference was a focus of 2/3 of the years in therapy. It provided a frame through which to process FOO memories. I had done a good bit of that in the first 2-3 years, but revisiting those thoughts and feelings within the context of the spontaneous thoughts and feelings in the T relationship of the moment seemed to be what deeply integrated those experiences.

Before that I had viewed those memories as painful but distant (maybe because I was so often dissociated during the events? or maybe that's a necessary step in the process), and while it helped cognitively and, to some extent, cathartically by being heard and validated, it didn't really defuse the pain of those experiences. It was almost like they belonged to a different self, and I couldn't get close enough to them to defuse them. Like the pain could reach me, but I couldn't reach it. Somehow, those feelings had to be brought into the present to play out in real time in the room in the T relationship to lose their power to hurt me. I think that may be the reparative part of therapy. It allowed my T to respond directly to pain in a way no one had at the time. It changed the experiences, and so changed me.