Quote:
Originally Posted by Soccer mom
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.
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Soccer Mom, the way you describe coming to understand your unmet emotional needs through experiencing overwhelming transference is very similar to my experience. I have also had to go back and reconsider a childhood that really did not seem so bad in light of this powerful neediness I was experiencing. It's been quite dizzying really.
How/why did you decide to terminate with your T? Do you think you would be able to work though some of these feelings within your current therapeutic relationship? Is it too uncomfortable to even try? Or is your T not willing to go there with you?
I have noticed, in the year or more since I started this thread originally, that while I still feel needy and I still find the neediness quite uncomfortable, I do not feel quite as desperate about it as I used to. I feel slightly more confident that T will see this through with me (though I still feel like I'm tempting fate by writing those words) and that I might some day emerge okay.
Another thing that has happened for me is that I have limited my intense maternal transference to my T. Which is advantageous because it means that it's not oozing out into other relationships in inappropriate or potentially embarrassing ways. My T seems capable of not withering under the intensity of it, doesn't shame me for it and seems not completely surprised or overwhelmed by it. So in that way it's safer than having the need manifest with people who are not equipped or paid to deal with it and who do not have the same responsibility to keep their own issues under control.
That said, I do still go to great lengths to keep a lid on it so as not to overwhelm or alienate her. Also, I suppose I'm trying to maintain some kind of dignity in all this. So there's really no telling what would happen if I just went balls out needy little monster on her. But I won't do it because it's not my style.