sister, I'm sorry the transference is so painful and overwhelming right now.

Maybe this is a dumb suggestion, but how about if you and your T go for a short walk outside of the office? Just 10 minutes, around the block? Maybe this will jerk your T back into being your T for you and help you get out from under the transference for a while. It sounds like you need a rest. It really helped me this one time T and I walked together outside his office. I saw him as just a guy then, walking beside me, and who could exist many places, not just in his office, in his bizarre T role. And now I see him occasionally outside for my legal meetings. For me, it really helps ground the relationship and pull it back into everyday life in the here and now.

As we trust T's with our past stuff and they successfully show us they are trustworthy and can hold our pain, we lose some of that pain from our past. But they have to prove themselves to be trustworthy. It sounds like recently you have trusted your T, but he has responded in a crappy way, and so your trust has been breached. Can you talk with him about his responses and why you perceived them to be crappy?

It's not always easy for me, but I try to accept my T as human, and humans are not perfect and make mistakes. Whenever things aren't perfect between us, I try to remember what he told me about a good enough therapist (mother) only having to connect with the client (child) 1/3 of the time (from Winnicott). 1/3 of the rest is rupture then repair. The remaining 1/3 is rupture without repair. This is good enough. Whenever we don't connect, I just chalk it up to not being in the optimal third that day. But we weather it. If it's serious enough, we repair. If it's not so serious, we can let the rupture be, and try again another day.

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T says it is the pain of abandonment but what I want to know is wasn't once around enough? Why go through this twice?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">My T says I repeat the same patterns from my past in an unconscious attempt to finally get things right. That is why I seek out these unloving relationships, to try to surmount them in the way I could not as a helpless child. So for me, it isn't just twice I go through things, but umpteen times, never conquering the pattern. Now I am working my buns off trying once and for all to be done with this. I am gonna do it right this time (resolve the unloving relationship with my husband) and put all this to rest once and for all.

Isn't that a good goal to work toward? Go through it one last time, but do it right, and then be done with it. It may be painful, but you'll be free of it on the other side.