Quote:
Originally Posted by BudFox
Good questions. I believe my parenting was pretty troubled, especially my mother. Lot of emotional neglect and a lot of emptiness. Last year a female T who was very attuned to me seemed to unleash old longing. It was mixed in with very real adult attraction and feelings for her, so pretty muddy picture, but I do think I was responding from a place of deep unmet needs. This was a singular experience in my life. I was not able to work thru it, because we terminated and then things went very badly.
I find attachment theory quite interesting and helpful but I think ideas about how it manifests in therapy are pretty speculative. I also wonder how much of the intense attachment or dependence in therapy is induced by the process, out of proportion to the client's personal history or wounds. And also how healthy or prudent it is to reawaken such needs in an artificial quasi-parental relationship.
|
I'm sorry it went so badly for you BF. I wonder all the time if it's prudent or wise to reawaken these needs. I will say though that prior to this round of therapy, I was semi-aware of those needs and had a nasty habit of forming crazy attachments to people who were not strong enough and not properly positioned to help me. It was a kind of pathetic and humiliating little pattern. It was also puzzling because I really didn't get what was going on. I forced myself to grow up and stop doing it for a number of years but I was always looking and always hopeful that some new person I'd met would be my next magical mother figure. Now at least the need is channelled toward one person, it's not just out there attaching to any damn thing, and at least it's attached to someone who is pretty safe, who is paid good money to address it and who is willing to unpack it with me.
While this type of intense transference is quite common here, it does seem like quite a number of people on PC have said that they have good, close, helpful relationships with their T but have not invested the relationship with the magical intensity of parental and/or romantic love. I often wonder what separates these two groups.
I know that the therapeutic explanation is that the intensity of the transference is itself evidence of an early unmet need. But it's kind of circular reasoning: Your trauma has created the need and the need is evidence of trauma--whether you can remember or articulate the trauma or not.