Quote:
Originally Posted by feralkittymom
It feels to me like you've made it an "either/or" when it needn't be. You can grieve the unmet maternal needs of the past and simultaneously experience those transferential needs being fulfilled through the T relationship. Maybe that's what made my paternal transference with my T work rather than lead to that pain of unfulfillment: it's true he did fill those needs and didn't abandon me, but also my needs never became overwhelming, and I didn't fear abandonment because the grief of the original unmet needs was always front and center. The T relationship didn't substitute for or hide the original pain, it revealed and healed it.
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I couldn't access that grief until i'd started to accept that there was no fantasy mother. I think i am experiencing having some of my unmet needs in therapy by my therapist now (still early days) but what i don't have is that longing that she becomes my actual parent, i don't have that overwhelming wish that somehow, if i make her like me enough, she'll unofficially adopt me as her own child
I don't have to suspend reality anymore. So now i can feel her meeting some of my needs but also tap into the grieving i have to do.