Hello!

It's important to realize that ransference is a totally normal and natural part of therapy. It's actually within this dynamic that we learn the most about ourselves. I'm speaking from experience here. We HAVE to look past the romantic and/or erotic feelings and see what their purpose is. My transference began as SOON as I told my therapist about being sexually abused by my pediatrician at age 8. I did not want these feelings towards her. Not at all. I was falling head over heels in love, but I knew...I just knew it couldn't be real, because I don't know her! I only know the "her" she shows me in her office, and that's an idealized version. Here are some thoughts:

Once the reason for our transference is revealed through hard work and much soul searching, we come to realize a few things:

1) By being empathetic, showing unconditional acceptance of our authentic self, being kind, patient, and non judgmental, the therapist is actually SHOWING and TELLING us how we need to be treating ourselves!

2) The transference starts because it's the first time anyone has ever showed us unconditional acceptance...the love we never received before (that doesn't mean or parents didn't love us, or we had a horrible childhood: my parents loved me and my brothers more than anything in the world. But I knew I was different [lesbian] at a very young age and got cues from my entire little world around me that this wasn't ok, so I hid that side of me until I was 22. So right there, I was denied unconditional love simply because no one knew the "real" me. I was a small kid and didn't dare tell anyone. There was a traumatic experience in my childhood that caused me to close off ANOTHER side of me to the world. Anyway, to have a therapist who knows all of my darkest secrets and greatest accomplishments and accepts all of me and asks that I ALWAYS be my truest self with her...that leads to ...

3) Who WOULDN'T love someone who cares for them unconditionally and gives us their undivided attention every time we talk??
That's love, but not romantic love.

4) Think if it this way: if you experience transference with your therapist, and you discuss it (I thought it was so embarrassing, I emailed my therapist about my transference), I think it's greatly to EXPLORE what makes you so happy. Explore what it FEELS like to be intimate with someone who knows all of you and accepts you unconditionally. If you can learn to love YOURSELF and accept yourself in this way, the idea is that you will bring this into your personal relationships OUTSIDE of therapy.

5) We'll never have a relationship like the one with our therapist, we DON'T know them. We're learning about ourselves through them. Projecting, mirroring, etc.

Transference goes on in every facet of our lives.
We're constantly judging/sizing people up based on our past experiences. We HAVE to have a frame of reference.

My goal in therapy is to learn to love and accept myself the way my therapist loves me unconditionally. I want to learn to accept all of me the way she does.

Getting to this stage helps diffuse the transference.
And that's a beautiful thing! I think that's when the work really starts.

Go easy. Be kind to yourself (I'm working on that myself ).

And I must say, please do have a conversation with your therapist about his use of the word projection. I suspect what he means is you are projecting what you want in a relationship-- in a relationship with someone outside therapy, or perhaps with yourself...to truly appreciate and accept yourself (again, something I'm now working on, too!)