[sweepy62]

ok i been in therapy almost a year and now i am starting baby steps with some trauma i started last week how do i know when my inner child is speaking in session please help me with this, i dont want to ask my t

also i know i have read the definitions on transference but i really need examples i am not in love or anything with my t we are both females how do i know transference is taking place when i am in session

[unaluna]

As a rough swap at it, I would presume transference is taking place anytime you don't want to ask your T about something, like your inner child question. You are "transferring" some unpleasant attribute of a person from your past onto her, that makes you feel fearful or uncomfortable or embarrassed about it? And your reaction, your feelings, are kinda out of proportion to the actual situation. If T isn't the perfect person to answer that question for you, who is? So what is holding you back? Transference is.

Killed two birds with one stone, did we?

[Perna]

"Inner child" is just a construct for a feeling you will have of being younger. If you can remember some incidents from your childhood and how you felt, when you feel the way you did then when talking about that period of your life in therapy, instead of just "remembering" how things were/seemed, that will be your inner child.

I was 52, in the kitchen making biscuits one afternoon and was thinking about therapy and about life, etc. and started having trouble with the biscuit dough; I was making them from scratch and the dough was sticky and my hands were getting all gummy and uncomfortable; I made the mental/emotional wish that my mother was there to help me contain the mess but the same instant I made the wish, I realized my mother was dead (died when I was 3) and my stepmother was, that day, in the hospital being operated on (so also very not available!). I burst into tears. That was my inner child. After a bit of time the adult, 52 year old me, was able to comfort me and deal with the sticky dough, continue making the biscuits, etc.

Transference, as hankster says, is having a feeling about a situation and misplacing the action of it onto another person/situation. You don't really know your T, that's why they do not tell us much about their personal life, so thinking she is any particular way; being loving or mean, giving or withholding, or your having difficulty asking her something like your inner child question, those feelings are often actually coming from some other, previous situation/person in your life.

One of the goals of therapy is to recognize and straighten out the feelings; kind of like I did with my inner child example above. I was not a child with messy hands needing help, I was a 52 year old adult female. In that case I was with myself and did all the work myself (which is the goal of therapy) but when a parent gets yelled at by the boss at work and then goes home and yells at the kid for some small incident, that's transference.

The parent doesn't feel they can respond to the boss so "stuffs" the feelings but a child is not going to be able to "hurt"/threaten a parent so it's safe, when the child (or spouse, or "dog") does something we don't like to respond inappropriately to that, now-occurring situation, adding some/all of the previous anger and frustration. That's what "kick the dog" refers to; we don't respond appropriately to things as they are happening in our lives but the feelings have to be resolved so we take it out on someone else on down the chain of command and it's the children and animals that are on the bottom/receiving end. A lot of the abuse and confusion we had as children was not "ours" but misplaced because our parents did not know how to respond to their own difficulties and help themselves and took it out on us.

Therapists are specially trained to be that "bottom" person for all the unresolved hurt, anger, fear, etc. and help us see, understand, and resolve it. Sometimes the feeling comes out as we are retelling the original story, as happened with my messy dough self that's the inner child. We are all the ages we have ever been.

[Sannah]

You might feel smaller or more powerless.

[sweepy62]

Originally Posted by Perna

"Inner child" is just a construct for a feeling you will have of being younger. If you can remember some incidents from your childhood and how you felt, when you feel the way you did then when talking about that period of your life in therapy, instead of just "remembering" how things were/seemed, that will be your inner child.

I was 52, in the kitchen making biscuits one afternoon and was thinking about therapy and about life, etc. and started having trouble with the biscuit dough; I was making them from scratch and the dough was sticky and my hands were getting all gummy and uncomfortable; I made the mental/emotional wish that my mother was there to help me contain the mess but the same instant I made the wish, I realized my mother was dead (died when I was 3) and my stepmother was, that day, in the hospital being operated on (so also very not available!). I burst into tears. That was my inner child. After a bit of time the adult, 52 year old me, was able to comfort me and deal with the sticky dough, continue making the biscuits, etc.

Transference, as hankster says, is having a feeling about a situation and misplacing the action of it onto another person/situation. You don't really know your T, that's why they do not tell us much about their personal life, so thinking she is any particular way; being loving or mean, giving or withholding, or your having difficulty asking her something like your inner child question, those feelings are often actually coming from some other, previous situation/person in your life.

One of the goals of therapy is to recognize and straighten out the feelings; kind of like I did with my inner child example above. I was not a child with messy hands needing help, I was a 52 year old adult female. In that case I was with myself and did all the work myself (which is the goal of therapy) but when a parent gets yelled at by the boss at work and then goes home and yells at the kid for some small incident, that's transference.

The parent doesn't feel they can respond to the boss so "stuffs" the feelings but a child is not going to be able to "hurt"/threaten a parent so it's safe, when the child (or spouse, or "dog") does something we don't like to respond inappropriately to that, now-occurring situation, adding some/all of the previous anger and frustration. That's what "kick the dog" refers to; we don't respond appropriately to things as they are happening in our lives but the feelings have to be resolved so we take it out on someone else on down the chain of command and it's the children and animals that are on the bottom/receiving end. A lot of the abuse and confusion we had as children was not "ours" but misplaced because our parents did not know how to respond to their own difficulties and help themselves and took it out on us.

Therapists are specially trained to be that "bottom" person for all the unresolved hurt, anger, fear, etc. and help us see, understand, and resolve it. Sometimes the feeling comes out as we are retelling the original story, as happened with my messy dough self that's the inner child. We are all the ages we have ever been.

wow u have clarified that so much for me thank you i now realize that my inner child came out in therapy last week as i was talking a little bit about childhood trauma but why didnt my t tell me?

and i guess i have gone through transference with my t because i feel afraid to ask her certain things and i am always asking her if she is proud of me when i take a step foward but why didnt she say i was going through transference? answer back please

[unaluna]

A session could be like those old VH1 Behind The Music shows, with pop-ups explaining a psychology fact or historical reference every 3 seconds.

[sunrise]

Originally Posted by sweepy62

wow u have clarified that so much for me thank you i now realize that my inner child came out in therapy last week as i was talking a little bit about childhood trauma but why didnt my t tell me?

Maybe she didn't know. It might have been kind of presumptuous and perhaps even dismissive for her to say "oh that's your inner child." Next time, you sense your inner child coming out, how about if you tell her?

Originally Posted by sweepy62

why didnt she say i was going through transference? answer back please

Again, maybe she didn't know. Plus a lot of Ts aren't into interpreting everything through the lens of transference. Sometimes it can be a dismissive stance, something the T says to distance himself/herself from emotions the client expresses that make him/her uncomfortable. So I don't think it's a bad thing your T doesn't talk a lot about transference. How about if you ask her what she thinks of transference? Then tell her you might have been having some when you said/felt/thought X, and see what she says? There are lots of interpretations of a client's words/behavior. Sometimes having the client tell the therapist, instead of vice versa, is a good approach.

I think I've only talked twice about transference with my T, and I've been seeing him for over 3 years.

[pbutton]

Originally Posted by hankster

A session could be like those old VH1 Behind The Music shows, with pop-ups explaining a psychology fact or historical reference every 3 seconds.

I SO want this. lol

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by pbutton

I SO want this. lol

I wasn't even thinking of it that way! I just meant to say, there is so much going on every moment, like if any other professional talked their way thru the whole procedure - you would never have time for the actual procedure. But yeah, that would be cool, wouldn't it? And like the previous poster says, from so many different schools, simultaneously? Wow!

[crazycanbegood]

i know my inner child is coming out when i feel the urge to fling my rather large mass into the arms of my small framed T. I don't know if I feel the emotions that I felt as a child. I mainly just feel like a little kid or baby who wants to go to T for comfort and sustenance.