(2013) 1. Start seeing private therapist. Immediately feel comfortable.
2. Talk about my core issues in order to build a foundation for the therapy process.
3. We delve a bit deeper into my emotional archives, start to talk about my family, my childhood, etc.
4. We continue down this road rather comfortably.

(2015) 5. Start seeing therapist/mentor assigned to me by university. Find this therapist kind of scary.
6. Talk to private therapist about concerns re: uni therapist. Find uni therapist very intense.
7. Begin to realise that uni therapist is not actually scary at all.
8. Uni therapist helps me so much, teaching me what seems like an endless amount of things about my own personal scripts and my self-destructive behaviours.
9. Realise that maternal transference is happening with uni therapist. Very unsettled. Talk to private therapist about this. Cannot talk to uni therapist about it.
10. Start using things I learn from uni therapist in sessions with private therapist to explore it further. Private therapist's office feels like a safe place where I can also talk about my transference and try to understand it somehow. Still struggle with this.
11. Admit to self that I love my uni therapist. Terrified by it. Grateful for private therapist who is very kind but also very neutral so I don't have to worry about anything when it comes to her.
12. Uni therapist is the best. Love her. Cannot make myself stop loving her. Very overwhelmed by it. Private therapist helps me cope with it. Realise I am terrified of having emotions that are this strong at all, do not understand why uni therapist has to make me feel these things. Angry with self for feeling them. But she helps me so much, so won't ruin it by saying anything, and think maybe I need to learn how to manage emotions anyway? I don't know. It's very hard.

This process is different for everyone, obviously, and it would have been very different for me if I hadn't started to see a second therapist this year. I don't feel like I can separate the two different therapists into different processes or whatever, and how I feel about one of them has affected the work I've been doing with the other one, but I don't think it has been in a negative way. My private therapist is great, but it was very comfortable with her. She didn't challenge me much. When I first started seeing my therapist at university, I was challenged, and that changed everything. I really needed it. She is also my academic mentor, meaning she is supposed to help me structure my time as a student and with my assignments, but I take the things I learn from her and discuss them with my private therapist and it has made all the difference. Uni therapist is straight-forward and reads me with incredible accuracy, and I can take that to my private therapist who has a much more gentle approach, and the combination works for me.

What complicates it is how "loving" and "nurturing" the university therapist is. It is possible that she's doing that whole "re-parenting" thing with me, but it's very overwhelming. I hope it is a stage, so I can get past it and move on! I can't feel like this forever, surely?