I don't see how it's possible or desirable to avoid transference of one type or another. The same with staying secure and calm. I just started psychodynamic therapy a couple months ago and I didn't come in secure and calm. If therapy is working I assume I'll get to that state at least significantly more often than I am now but it takes therapy working first.

For example, lately I've been pushing my comfort zone and it unearthed a lot of turbulence I've been hiding from. Friday in therapy I figured out a central reason for what happened with my life and for the turbulence. In the process I became aware that my non-logical, feeling part was reacting to the T as if he was mocking me underneath his open, calm, caring exterior. And you know what, that was what I was paying for. Today all the dysfunctional old feelings are back but now I get to step outside them and be compassionate with myself for having them.

I like my T but I don't atm have strong attachment needs in therapy and I see part of my work in T is to be able to relax enough so that my turbulent feeling side feels safe enough to experience this, know it's okay, and "know" that I can be accepted even when I'm difficult and vulnerable and messy. Then come out to a feeling of calm that's actually secure.

I think that therapy is tricky because it isn't so much of a relationship as a meta-relationship. Meaning it's a constructed relationship, with a lot of the same elements of all good relationships but constructed to help the client safely work out things in a way they can't in an actual relationship. Like a relationship laboratory maybe. The problem is the therapy relationship when it's working smells like a real relationship and it takes a lot of skill to keep it real but at the same time keep it meta. This is the therapist's responsibility and one reason we (or our insurance) pay them well. Therapy with my ex T wasn't working because, even though she had the skills and we clicked, it slid out of a meta-relationship into an actual one and didn't get back. Therapy with new T is working better in large part because he's better able to handle this.

So when therapy is working for me what does it look like in the middle? It looks like turbulence, but it also looks like there's an adult in the room who's empathic to my turbulence but not caught up in it and who I can trust with it, that they care but don't take it personally, and who I can trust to know what to do with it so I can relax and work though it.