I don't think the intensity of feelings during crisis versus when I feel grounded differs too much. I have felt just as close with her when we had sessions where we spent the whole hour joking and laughing. It's everything we went through together that made me feel this way.
I know she specializes in depression too. That's all I started seeing her for initially. It was just talk therapy for a few months and she would try to break down my walls and build trust by sitting very close to me whenever I cried and reminding me I was in a safe place. It was all foreign to me because no other therapist has ever been that way.
She has texted with me for an hour at 130am before and never had a single complaint about me contacting her.
If anything she has harbored this transference the whole time by being limitlessly available and hanging out after session a couple times.
Then she flips and says "I'm just your therapist" because I think the realization of transference and that she may have screwed up scares her.
I'm not sure she knows how to deal with transference that's the only logical explanation I can come up with. I hope my insurance covers two therapists at once so I can see one about transference and to explore why I felt the need to lie to her, and simultaneously continue to see my T. The thing is she has helped me so much, she really has. My relationships, automatic distorted thinking, self worth are all so much better. I am able to love myself while I'm seeing her and I don't want to stop seeing her until I can feel that way on my own.
I am engaging in therapy completely and right now the biggest issue and pain for me is the transference. If I don't deal with it, it's going to make me nosedive into depression again. I panic over everything and she's aware of that so this shouldn't be any different.
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Originally Posted by feralkittymom
Hopeful, it sounds like maybe you equate the intensity of feelings in therapy with the level of caring. So in a crisis, everything is heightened and the bond feels tight and kind of exhilarating. But in between crises, the connection feels flat, maybe even broken. That intensity sounds like transference to me, but the work of therapy doesn't really happen in the middle of those feelings. And that kind of intensity is very de-stabilizing.
I think she doesn't follow through and talk about the transference feelings because they seem linked to harmful SI for you. She certainly doesn't want to facilitate in any way such harm; she really is taking care of you in this. When you weren't seeing her, you say the SI feelings went away. That seems like a really good indication that engaging those transference feelings at this time would do more harm than good. She doesn't want to see you stop your therapy work, but it sounds like that or switching to another T are the only options you're allowing her right now.
Is it possible that for now you could let yourself engage in your therapy work, but put the discussion of transference on the shelf? I'm not saying ignore it or fight it--just let it be?
Does any of this make sense? I know it feels powerfully like rejection, but I really don't think that's what she's doing.
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-Hope