Thanks. I guess I didn't explain very well. I didn't exactly FEEL the hate. I could be "in that place" and, as I have written in other posts, the therapists couldn't tolerate being hated. But I could also keep it turned off, dissociated, as I learned to do as a child. So those were my options -- allow it "on" and risk "hurting" the therapist and her rejection/shaming me. Or "behaving myself" and staying stuck. In which case, what's the point of my spending my money on therapy?

I have worked through a lot of that on my own, with the help of PsychCentral and another in-person support group.

I've been in therapy on and off for 50 years. I understood intellectually about negative transference. But because of my dissociation I could "step out" of or cut off the transference. I understand that may make no sense to most people.

In the post that moved me to respond, the person wrote about her knowing both the adult part of herself and the (child) part that hated her therapist. My parts were more separate. And the challenge was, and is, to accept the child part that hates. But when therapists (reactively) hate and reject the child part that hates, as my last therapist (and others) did, it is retraumatizing and hurtful, not healing.

Nevertheless there is/was also something in me that continues to want something better, that wants recognition and acceptance as a human being, that even wants to contribute to the larger whole of human society, and that other post struck something in me, like a chord.

Thanks for you reply and thanks to others for your "hugs". Hatred is a human emotion. There's a reason that we have it. A lot of my processing over the last year is to try to understand its "purpose", why I (and most everybody) have it, what survival function it is there for. Especially in times like now in the U.S., we tend to "hate the haters". And maybe that's OK socially when we're talking about adults and what they do with their hate.

But -- I've had to accept my own hatred, on my own, without my therapist's help or that of anybody else. I've used what I had -- my rationality. Others may use other things -- art or poetry for instance.

Having an accepting community, somewhere, in some way, has been essential for me. The last therapist (and others) have not been.