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scott88keys said:
We all have our own feelings and whatever they are are valid. It all depends on... where you are.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">Thanks, Scott, I like that.

So many insights here. Making me come to some new ones of my own.

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alexK said:
I think that how I feel depends a little on the nature of the transference at that particular point in time. And about how stressed I'm feeling (how much support I need).

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">I think that's how it is for me, alex. I do get angry at my T, but not about his vacations, so I think I am just not feeling abandoned by him, despite the abandonment I experienced as a child, teen, and adult, the lack of secure attachment to my mother, etc. What is great about the relationship with T is that he is NOT abandoning me, and that makes me feel so secure and has been very healing. Although we do work on my abandonment issues (e.g. with my mother), I don't think I have a lot of parental transference onto him, so I have been able to accept that he is staunchly there for me. But maybe I do have some "backwards" transference, because I think the healing with T has helped heal some of that abandonment from the past. (I am transferring the T relationship backwards in time onto the unsuccessful mother relationship. Does anyone else do that?) T has also commented to me before that my progress in therapy has been "meteoric". I am not sure why, but I have passed through some typical stages in therapy in a compressed way, taking months instead of years, etc. T says it is because I came to him "ready to heal" combined with a decent degree of the ability to be direct (which has since improved even more). I do recall that early in our therapy, it was more difficult for me when he went away. I felt much more destitute (but not angry) and like "how am I possibly going to last while he is away?" So I have made progress since then, perhaps?

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MissCharlotte said:
I also think that the deeper the therapeutic relationship, the more attached you become and the more you will "feel" the pain of the break.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">I don't agree that people with stronger and deeper attachments necessarily feel more (fear, anger, pain) when their T's go away. I think my attachment to T is as strong as can be--I have never been so close to anyone or trusted anyone like this--but maybe I have just become able to internalize him so he isn't really gone when he goes away, if that makes sense. I miss him keenly when is gone and I am so joyful when he returns (I love the first sessions back when he returns, when that joy is strongest). But I don't get angry or scared when he is away. (Although sometimes I worry his plane will crash.)

Mouse, although your T does not encourage the anger, some T's may. The articles I have read do not say that the T's put the feelings into their clients, just that they encourage. (The authors were therapists.) Sometimes people need encouragement to be able to express, so it can be a good thing. But this author felt that sometimes some T's might do a little too much encouraging when the topic was therapist vacations (kind of an ego thing--T: "I want to be needed so much by my clients when I go away"). I am not saying most therapists are like this, but it was interesting to read these ideas from an experienced therapist's point of view.