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Old Feb 14, 2018, 01:02 AM
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annielovesbacon annielovesbacon is offline
Grand Poohbah
 
Member Since: Apr 2016
Location: USA
Posts: 1,527
Quote:
Originally Posted by Breadfish View Post
I am attached to feeling better, and I like my pdoc and T as a help to get there.

And yeah, sure, there's the occasional 'SAVE ME!' thought involved, but in the same way you'd have that thought of an orthopaedic surgeon when you're in excruciating pain. Or of a fireman when trapped in a burning car.

I have been truly attached only once, to a teacher. It wasn't fun for either of us. She was our class teacher (teacher responsible for supporting our class in school). We'd always gotten along well, but then I needed help (depressed, suicidal) and she was the only adult who would listen to me and take me seriously. I thought about her a lot, and told her things a class teacher isn't equipped to deal with. Eventually she 'spilled' to our year coordinator (year coordinator asked her how I was doing and she burst out crying). We made up (I also wrote her a poem, which REALLY shames me now - it was a lot like the song Because You Loved Me, but worse. Not really appropriate to send to a teacher.) and talked less 'excessively' after that. However, when I was in The Hell and being medically tortured, I thought about her all the time, in particular because I knew she wouldn't stand by and do nothing, and she'd take me away from there if she'd known what was going on. That thought probably saved me back then.
I idolized her.. she couldn't do anything wrong in my eyes even when she did. But the thought 'she'll help/save me' helped immensely when I was so depressed (not during the torture though, because I knew she wasn't aware), because it gave me a little hope. Else it would have been 'No one can save me.'
I now know there's a word for what I experienced: maternal transference. And maybe therapeutic transference, in that I made her my substitute T because I needed one and she was the only one available.
I can really relate to that. My senior year of high school, I had one teacher who was like a second mom to me. (I liked her better than my own mom, actually, as we didn't have a great relationship.) She seemed to reciprocate those feelings, occasionally joking about being my mom or adopting me. I was never brave enough (or whatever word you'd like to use) to straight up tell her how I was struggling, but I would often hint at problems I was having, and she tried to give me advice.
But when I graduated, I tried to keep up with her via email, and I asked her to lunch a few times. We emailed back and forth (surface level stuff) for about a month, and we never did get lunch. We stopped talking after that. I felt totally abandoned by her. We had such a great relationship, how could she just forget me so easily? But now I realize that that's the way it's supposed to be with teachers and students -- she was my teacher, not my best friend or mom, and that relationship ends when school ends. Also, in hindsight I definitely idolized her. Now I think of things she said that totally make me cringe and wonder why I would ever think that was okay.
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