I have a different experience as my mother was cruel, abusive and neglectful. When she passed away it brought me a lot of peace. Like I was finally safe.

In some ways I want my T to be that nurturing figure I never had and she IS in a lot of ways. She is very open, loving and affectionate with me.

It can be painful.

Two things have helped me. One is understanding that my T is uniquely different in the context of therapy than in her other relationships. I'm sure with her family she gets distracted and cranky. The endless patience she shows me is part of the T relationship and one reason its limited. We talked about my desire for more time once and even I admitted that while id like to have one night around a campfire to sit under the stars and ask a million questions other than that I find 2 hours an ideal session time. I get those rarely and it's the perfect amount of time. 1 hour is simply not enough time. 3 hours?? I could not maintain the intensity of our work for 3 solid hours. It would wipe me out totally. The whole nature of the T relationship makes constant contact seem overwhelming. I love my T but what we do is WORK too.

For me when I get very sad about the mom thing it helps me to list the concrete things I actually want. "Heal the giant hole inside me" is not concrete and not something she can do anyway. "Be my mom" is neither concrete nor realistic. So I ask myself do I want more praise/encouragement? More touch? More sympathy? Do I want her to worry about me? What do I think is missing? If I figure that out then I can ask for it and I often get it and its helpful . for instance ive told her to please express concern for my physical safety. For a 41 year old woman I'm quite a dare devil and she found this totally counter intuitive. Its not that she didn't worry about me but that she thought I would be completely insulted by her concern since I'm very capable etc. But I wanted it because I never got it. Now she will say things like "well, please be careful if you are taking your kayak out in 8 foot surf" and I feel like I get what I need.

If you break it down into.things your T can actually do you may find that longing lift.