Hi guys.

So for those of you who haven’t been following my story/drama I have created here in the past (sorry about that), I’m in a residential treatment center and I’ve been here for a week after being hospitalized for self-harm/diagnostic clarification for three weeks. I’m doing slightly better in that I feel like I’m getting help and actually working towards getting better in the long term. I feel slightly better about myself because of that and some of my symptoms are improving. I’m having less sui thoughts, less urges to self-harm, and I haven’t self-harmed in two weeks which is really big for me. However, I’ve been having much more intense and frequent flashbacks where I am completely panicked, confused, and dissociated.

In this program, I have a case manager. She is a therapist and her main job is to completely control my treatment. She works with me one on one, she helps me through talking to my mother, she coordinates my care both inside of the program and sets up the next step. I’ve been experiencing absolutely unbelievable maternal transference with her. It’s weird to me because I’ve only known her for about a week, but she’s here every weekday from 9 to 5 and was by my side when I’m having these intense flashbacks. She’s always there to help me and that combined with the fact that something about her reminds me of my old T I think is contributing to this. I can’t stop wanting her to love me and take care of me. I’m jealous of her other patients and I get super upset if she forgets to see me even though I know she is bad at keeping track of time and just ran out of time. But it’s like I really feel like I need her to love me as a daughter and I can’t stop wishing she would. That triggers me to think about how I don’t have a mother who loves me and I get extremely upset/angry. I don’t know how to handle this.

I’m scared of the fact that I’m only going to be here for a month or so and then she’ll be completely gone and I’ll be alone to face the world again. I know I’m being overdramatic when I say that because I felt the same way about the separation with my old T, but this for some reason feels different because she’s literally there with me if I need her all of the time and was there for me through a few extremely scary episodes where I honestly thought I was in my parents’ house and someone was going to attack me.

Any advice on how to handle this? Should I talk to her about it? I’m scared to do that and I don’t really know what she can do to change it. I mean, I guess she could try to distance herself from me more, but then what happens if I’m needing help? I don’t want her to distance herself from me. I feel like I love her, but I know it’s just maternal transference. I didn't even know her a week ago.