Quote:
Originally Posted by koru_kiwi
Transferrence in developmental truama begins in the felt experince of 'no mother'. Motherlessness is the lowest ring of hell for a baby or small child, creating a background fear of death of obliteration.
Transference expresses the unmet need of the infant. It is about dysregulation. In this paradigm we can look at transference as a nervous system seeking its own regulation from the other, almost always on its own dysregulated but insistent terms. Transference relationships that arise with patients who have suffered developmental trauma are fraught with expectations of mothering and intensified by affect dysregualtion, distrust, and unbearable hunger. For both the patient and the therapist this transference can be challenging to manage.
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I can relate to much of this, and this echoes other things I have read. Others have written about infants using their mother's nervous system to learn to regulate initially. If that did not happen to sufficient extent, then presumably the adult would have ongoing problems with self-regulation, and be partially dependent on others for that regulation. That is partly my reality. And I think this manifested in therapy.
But when they start applying labels and diagnoses, and especially when they conflate such manifestations in therapy with some sort of healing process that can be "managed"... that's where I get off the train. Now we're into snake oil and witchcraft territory.
Judging by what I've read and experienced, when therapists play around in this area there is a good chance they will cause harm. First-do-no-harm means nothing to them. If you have a client who becomes dysregulated, and then the therapist says "oh look, the hour is up, goodbye till next week, better work on your coping skills", well that is a recipe for a paroxysm of dysregulation. The whole thing is set up to cause limbic and sympathetic overdrive. Bonus points if the therapist forbids contact between sessions.