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Originally Posted by SarahSweden
Very interesting post. I can very much relate to what you describe and I have been feeling this especially with one therapist. I idealised her and I saw her both a bit like a mother figure and I was sometimes attracted to her.
The idealisation, to imagine or believe that the therapist "has it all" brings jealousy and itīs inevitable to compare yourself to your therapist. In some way you want to be like your therapist to perhaps be more liked by her and with idealisation comes the idea that you want to be more close to your therapist.
Iīve also experienced that kind of "blank slate" therapists you describe and they use it to foster transference within the client. Personally I see that as manipulation and I donīt like "blank slate" therapists. I think you have in a way "out-smarted" your therapist by googling her and in a way you have "challenged the transference" as you know much more about her than she probably want you to.
But as I see fostering transference as manipulation I see it as a positive thing that you found out things about your therapist. At the same time I understand itīs hard knowing those things about her as it makes you jealous and itīs also hard to keep it a secret if you donīt want to tell your therapist you that you googled her.
I would say that even if itīs very hard to tell your therapist you googled her you did nothing wrong actually, you were curious and you acted out of her not telling anything about herself. By that you could try telling her, perhaps writing something down and hand it to her. A good therapist should be able to handle a situation like this, she knows information about her is available online and by that she has probably had clients that looked her up before you did.
Meeting with her knowing that you keep this secret from her will keep you from fully benefiting from therapy. Itīs her responsibility to help you, you should never keep things from her for fear of being terminated or her acting negatively towards you.
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Thanks for your reply.
It's interesting that you mention about idealising your T in relation to this topic as I think I have a tendency to the same.
I'm not attracted to current T, although I do notice if she looks particularly attractive ( perhaps this is more of the jealousy aspect? ). I also don't see her as a mother figure, even though I'm jealous of her children. I don't want her to fulfill that role. This surprises me as I was extremely attached to other Ts in the past. I idealised them and saw them as mother figures while being attracted to them at the same time. It really messed with my head.
I really don't understand transference. In my experience of therapy, Ts never want to address it, despite them being at least partly responsible for creating it. It also has only ever caused me to feel the pain of longing for something I can never have, ashamed of my feelings towards T and then anger at them having manipulated me.
I understand your point about not being able to fully benefit from therapy by keeping secrets from T, however, I feel very uneasy about telling her as I don't think she will handle it well. Underneath the "blank slate" exterior, I sometimes get a glimpse of what I perceive as T having lost her footing a bit in session. It's like she knows what to say and how to behave for most things in line with her training, but then I present her with something new and unfamiliar and I think I see her floundering a bit, as though she's got slightly out of her depth. Maybe this is just my perception though...who knows?