We carry everyone we meet around with us. You know how someone reminds you of someone else? Well, that happens in a big, unconscious way with our big childhood figures. If you and your mom were always battling (like me and my stepmother) or your father ignored you (and you kept trying to get his attention), all that you felt when you were young and couldn't articulate it and it just became "understood" as how the world worked; well, the world doesn't necessarily work that way. You're not "stupid" like your father or teacher use to always say, or "worthless" like your mother claimed, etc. But you keep acting like that was true when you're around other people because that's all you "know" so far. It was ingrained into you. That's why we don't know too much about our T's; they're "blank" so we can't know they think we're stupid or worthless, etc. We're projecting or "transferring" what we were raised with onto them. Having a male therapist and being "in love" is the same as happened when females are 3 or 4 years old and "Daddy's girl". If Daddy wasn't a very good Daddy, we'll be afraid our T is disapproving, scary, or "bad" in some way, just like dear old Daddy. If mother didn't want us, was unavailable, we'll think T's don't want us, are unavailable.

My stepmother was very controlling, had "rules" for everything so I, consequently, kept trying to "make up" rules. I kept trying to make the world obey me (lots of luck with that! :-) instead of looking to see what the world had to show me. That included T. If she asked a question, she was "grilling" me, just like my stepmother use to. The world operated my way (I was very adamant, argumentative, "sure" of what I said) just like stepmother had insisted the world worked (for her). I had picked up my stepmother's anxiety and need for control and stuck it on top of my own shy/insecure nature and had a heck of a mess :-) I tried to pass this off on the rest of the world. T's because we don't know much of them, can see when this is happening because we don't have enough "information" or input form them to decide that they, themselves would reject us or hurt us or make us angry, etc. They say things like our parents (usually) said and %#@&#! us off or frighten us, etc. even though it's not our parents and the situation is totally different and we're adults now, not helpless children. We don't have to prove to our father that we can make it in the world, we don't have to get good grades in school (or resist getting good grades to spite them, like me) to please our mother.