Transference

He brought up that word today. Charming. Now I've got to figure it out.

Lots of figuring out in therapy.

He seems to think I treat him like my father/brother/husband. I just thought he was a guy I could learn to trust with my crap and sort it out in a safe space??

My T has never brought up the word. I don't know if she believes in it or not.... I ought to ask her, but didn't feel like opening up a can of worms.

But you have talked about ET in these boards, so maybe he's on to something? Perhaps he took you by surprise and you're feeling a little vulnerable about your feelings?

My T brought up the words transference and countertransference randomly several months ago. There was no discussion about why, or what they meant. She just 'name' dropped them out of the blue and there hasn't been talk about it since. Perhaps if I'm daring one of the days I'll ask about it.

Seriously, it was like, "My dog has blue hair. You know there is something called transference & countertransference. I'm not sure I like his blue hair". It was odd.

My t's never used the word 'transference' but she has referred to 'projections' and in the context she used that word it sounded an awful lot like the same thing. Not that I understand transference, mind you.

You have some figuring out to do but can he support you whilst you both figure this out together?

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It certainly sounds like he suspects it. Perhaps wait until it comes up again to say something?

In my last session I was asked if there was something between us but the word was never used. I lied of course but I have a feeling it's going to come up again. I have ET bad with my male T and it hit me out of the blue and I feel like I was just blind sided by it, mainly because I'm bi and mainly prefer women, I have no romantic feelings for men just sexually and it's rather rare. So in my case I'm going to wait until it's brought up by him again but I'm going to go about it in a rather... "what do you mean?" / play stupid sort of way at first and see what he says. I don't know how else to handle this because it's NEVER happened before.

EDIT: I lied because I sure as hell was not ready to talk about that, I haven't been seeing him that long. It's bad enough I can barely look at him in the eyes.

He probably suspects something and might just be trying to open the door to talk about it.

When I first told my marriage counselor about my feelings for him, he didn't use the word "transference" at all. Like he just said that such feelings were common in the T setting, etc. The word wasn't used until we actually started discussing it in a session and I used the word first. I think maybe he avoided using the word because he didn't want it to seem dismissive? As in, "Oh, that's just transference, everyone gets that!" Like he was waiting for me to articulate what was going on in my head.

Some therapists believe that resolving transference is the start to recovery.

Transference definitely brought some issues to the surface for me, particularly childhood stuff, abandonment issues, etc. some of it has been quite painful, to be honest. But I feel like I've made more progress and had more breakthroughs in the past 9 months or so since it started than in the whole 3 years before that.like from discussing the feelings and working to resolve them (that's still a work in progress though!)

Ship, I wish my T would say that word, he doesn't even know that word. When I told him I was in love with him he said I crossed the line?

God, I live at the bottom of the Transference Ocean. IT SUCKS! Keep telling me it's part of recovery, because it's pretty painful. Re-experiencing the crappy parts of childhood through my T is pretty brutal, but at least she's gentle, patient, and compassionate.

Yes Echoes, I have posted about erotic transference before, but those feelings have faded. I will still always find him attractive, but thankfully he doesn't occupy my mind all the time. Lately it's been more about dealing with my past, bad stuff that happened when I was a kid. And he brings up transference now? The time would've been a couple of years ago when I started seeing him, not 2.5 years later..