Quote:
Originally Posted by musial
Background: I'm in the 8th month of therapy with the only T I've ever felt comfortable with. In the past I've seen a few others with not much connection or length of treatment.
So my situation with this T is that I have very strong feelings!! Toward him, about him?? I'm female and he's male but it's not sexual or at least it's mostly something else, so I guess I need to label this attachment or transference. When I'm away from him I feel ok thinking about this somewhat intense relationship (from my perspective) and it seems like I will be able to address it in person... then... nope! I get sooo freaked out in front of him and do anything to avoid talking about it. This is driving me crazy, pretty much literally! I have past trauma (even though I hate that word) and a messed up family of origin. I feel very scared about being too needy/intense with my T.
So my question is... has anyone been through this "awkward" therapy phase of avoiding the topic of your strong feelings for your T (possibly for months!), then making it through that and having a better experience afterward? I'm trying to convince myself that it will be worth the anguish of talking about what seems impossible to even bring up, in order to start doing the real work.
Thanks so much for reading  I really appreciate this community! |
No you don't need to label the attachment as transference or anything else. Personally, I feel that people on this site frequently use the word "transference" to dismiss the fact that they have a genuine emotional attachment to their T. I'm not saying that transference doesn't exist or doesn't happen because it does, but you can't just assume that every emotion you feel towards your T fits in this square box of erotic, romantic, paternal, maternal, or whatever attachment. Maybe it isn't an awkward phase that you must work through. Maybe you just have strong feelings for him and need to learn to sit with those feelings and be comfortable with them. That's harder to accept because as you said, you're scared of becoming too needy or intense. But having any type feelings for someone (including transference) isn't bad.
That being said, yes, I have had the problem of not being able to tell my T how I feel about her. I started to write her letters about it without ever intending to give them to her. Then I finally did give her one and that opened up the floor for discussion. It didn't end up helping that much though because she was super inexperienced and didn't have any clue how to work with me on them, we had a sudden separation for three months while I was inpatient which caused me to mourn the relationship until I completely emotionally disconnected and I was unable to reconnect upon returning because she was leaving in a few months anyway.