You know, what a mother figure should look like has changed over the years in therapy. Sometimes I even felt shocked when my every need wasn't met by T.
Eventually I learnt that a good enough mother doesn't need to be the start and end. But they do need to stand beside you as you find your beginning and end.
That if a T as a mother figure did it all for me before I knew what it was I even wanted/felt than she would be robbing me.
A lot of us who come into therapy for a traumatic upbringing have a gaping wound. We do not really know what part of that hole another should fill and what part of the hole is ours.
We don't know any of that, we just want 'mum'. The lack of mothering leaves us with a gap that our fantasy fills so we can survive.
It's working through what's fantasy and what's a real expectation.
Takes a while to work through that.
To know that T not jumping in and hugging you because your upset isn't uncaring, it's valuing you enough to let you feel your feelings and finally process them because T is more concerned about you working through your pain rather than being 'seen' to be the perfect mother.
A therapist can never be that mother, but they don't need to be, they just need to care enough to stand beside us through all of it.
For those of us that missed out on having a good enough upbringing, that alone feels so transforming. Because we never had it.
For those who say "my mother was good enough so I don't want some stranger to be my mother". I wonder if they really did have a good enough mother, because if they did, they would understand someone else's desire to finally get what they say they had. I think it's more that they hold into the believe they had it because if they let go the defence they did than they would feel the feelings others are in touch with.