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Originally Posted by Bether91068
Okay, so I need to get this out of my system somehow.
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This is the perfect place for that. We love to listen (and respond) to stuff like this.
Bether, I also see my relationship with my therapist as real and reciprocal.
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Once I felt the human side of my T, I could let my own walls down and show him mine. Non-verbal understanding and acceptance. I recognized him. Once I did that, I think I could tell him anything. He let me see so I let him see.
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Very beautifully said and very close to my own experience. I remember once very early in therapy (within the first 5 sessions) when we were going over a dream I had about me and T. T asked me what it was in the dream that I wanted from him. I had a hard time identifying it and verbalizing it. I finally just said, "I want you." I'm not sure what I meant at all, in a practical sense. This was more of an utterance from a deep place inside, and ill-defined. I'm not sure he knew what I meant either. But we left it at that.
Then towards the end of our session, he told me a story about himself when he was a little boy and this abusive situation he had been in and it was like magic, the planets moved into alignment, and I interrupted him, "that's it" I said (eureka). What? "That's what I wanted from you." That's what I had meant when I said, "I want you," and I think he had instinctively figured it out. I wanted him to share himself and the relationship to be reciprocal. It was quite a watershed moment for me. My T has continued throughout my therapy to self-disclose very liberally (and has brought us back to that moment several times to check in and said, "you told me you wanted this" just to make sure this was still what I wanted).
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I suppose I see transference as merely a label. It's an element in every relationship.
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Agreed. I don't use that label to describe my relationship with my therapist or with others, but I understand that it works for some people.
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I know now that I am personally craving a close, emotional relationship that has been absent in my life. But I don't think that I should distance myself from the strong feelings of affection that I feel for my T by labeling them as if they were unreal.
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Very well said. I agree.
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There is a place where I "met" my therapist. It was a place of understanding and acceptance that was mutual. It was a loving place where I healed my wounds and found hope. And I know he felt good about that because I know what that glow in his eyes meant. It's our place and it's very real. Maybe for only a short time on a narrow floor but still ours. Anyhow, that's how I feel about it. That light that I shared with him helps me to move forward and keep trying. It's something that I won't ever forget.
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Very beautiful. Thanks for sharing that.
There is a book you might enjoy by Robert Coles (a psychiatrist) called
The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination. Coles describes his early career and his discovery about the power of reciprocity in therapy. (I love this book.) Another relevant favorite of mine,
I and Thou by Martin Buber. Their themes align with what you have written.