Ramonajones, my T. and I are terminating right now because of the intense transference. My brother is also a psychologist and says it should not be that painful.

I thought I had a decent childhood. My parents loved me, provided for me, etc. but we never really talked about feelings, hugged, or were affectionate with each other. I never questioned it. I completely attached to my first grade teacher, my high school English teacher and a camp counselor but never realized it was because I was missing something.

My mom died in May 2014 after abusing alcohol/prescription pain pills for 15-20 years. I started seeing my T. while she was sick and all of these crazy feelings came up. I was very confident, driven, smart, extroverted, etc. but I all of a sudden had feelings I had never had before. I felt all these intense needs from my T. yet she's around my age. I felt crazy. During the past year, I've realized I also had emotional neglect. I never learned how to express feelings, have abandonment fears and usually push people away or have a hard time accepting affection/feeling from others. If you had asked me 2 years ago how my childhood was, I would have said fine. The maternal transference made me realize A LOT.

I'm hoping my next T. will be able to help me understand it more. So, in short, I thought I had good parents but the transference actually made me realize how much they didn't meet my emotional needs.