But that's really interesting what you said about there being anger under an idealizing transference... Do you mean anger at my parents? Like I'm angry at them, so seeking an ideal parent in someone else? Because that seems to fit.

It's really only been since I've been seeing my T that I've come to realize I didn't have some idyllic childhood. I think I just thought I had this perfect childhood with a stay-at-home mom and a fun dad, so anything that was lacking was a fault of mine. Like, my OCD that started at a very young age (as far back as I could remember), that was my fault, my issue. The constant worrying. The health anxiety (to the point that my mom hid a family illness diagnostic manual). The intense separation anxiety that started when I was 12. The depression in my later teens. It's like they were all personal weaknesses in spite of the supposedly perfect childhood I had, where the three of us had dinner together at exactly 5:30 every night...and went to the beach for a week every summer.

Never mind that I got punished for some of my OCD fears (mostly food contamination), or that they held me down to try to force me to take an anti-anxiety med (when one of my fears was that I'd die from a medication allergy), or that when I asked to see a therapist in senior year of high school because I was depressed, and my mom said "What do you have to be depressed about?" (because I was good at school, had friends, and was good at faking being happy).

It was finally from talking to T that I could say that my childhood wasn't perfect. I felt guilty because I didn't suffer some awful abuse. I felt like I didn't have a right to be upset with or angry at my parents. But T said that it can actually be really difficult in a situation like that, because there's nothing glaring that was going on. So I feel conflicted about being angry at them. Because they probably thought they were doing a good job. But they weren't meeting my emotional needs. So I think now, having T and MC who ARE meeting some of those emotional needs, it's making it much more clear what I missed out on. Initially, I felt some sadness about it, but I think now it's transitioning into anger...