Timeline of transference - therapist self disclosure

Having been through transference myself and made it out the other side in tact, I must say I did this by doing a LOT of painful soul searching and looking into what I THOUGHT was romantic love for my therapist (it wasn't, it was infatuation, I "loved" an idealized version of my therapist). I thought SKYSCRAPERMEOW'S comment was the most mature comment I've read on Transference on this entire forum.

There is a reason for the transference. Everyone deserves to learn what the reason is.
Of course we can love our therapists for caring for and respecting us unconditionally, but that's their job. They're empathetic by nature, that's why they're therapists, but they're paid to be on their best behaviour during our sessions. That is, to be caring, non judgmental, unconditionally accepting of our authentic self, etc.

Anyway, I'm glad I talked to my therapist about the transference and I also did a ton of research to figure out WHY I started having romantic feelings for her after I discussed my childhood sexual abuse trauma. There was a reason. I learned a great deal about myself.

I love my therapist for showing me that I deserve to love myself unconditionally the way she cares about me. But I'm not in love with her, even though I thought I was going crazy because I couldn't stop thinking about her for a long time.

I wish you well.

Agreed 100%.

I think she was speaking more from experience, as she described my spiral into transference/infatuation, the work I did to make sense of it--discovering it was masking a hell of a lot of pain that I didn't want to face (and I had tremendously loving parents. It's not always about the parents!)... and how freeing it is to actually come to the realization that this love is NOT true romantic love. The therapist is showing us how we need to love ourselves!

With great respect,
Remy70

Hello!

It's important to realize that ransference is a totally normal and natural part of therapy. It's actually within this dynamic that we learn the most about ourselves. I'm speaking from experience here. We HAVE to look past the romantic and/or erotic feelings and see what their purpose is. My transference began as SOON as I told my therapist about being sexually abused by my pediatrician at age 8. I did not want these feelings towards her. Not at all. I was falling head over heels in love, but I knew...I just knew it couldn't be real, because I don't know her! I only know the "her" she shows me in her office, and that's an idealized version. Here are some thoughts:

Once the reason for our transference is revealed through hard work and much soul searching, we come to realize a few things:

1) By being empathetic, showing unconditional acceptance of our authentic self, being kind, patient, and non judgmental, the therapist is actually SHOWING and TELLING us how we need to be treating ourselves!

2) The transference starts because it's the first time anyone has ever showed us unconditional acceptance...the love we never received before (that doesn't mean or parents didn't love us, or we had a horrible childhood: my parents loved me and my brothers more than anything in the world. But I knew I was different [lesbian] at a very young age and got cues from my entire little world around me that this wasn't ok, so I hid that side of me until I was 22. So right there, I was denied unconditional love simply because no one knew the "real" me. I was a small kid and didn't dare tell anyone. There was a traumatic experience in my childhood that caused me to close off ANOTHER side of me to the world. Anyway, to have a therapist who knows all of my darkest secrets and greatest accomplishments and accepts all of me and asks that I ALWAYS be my truest self with her...that leads to ...

3) Who WOULDN'T love someone who cares for them unconditionally and gives us their undivided attention every time we talk??
That's love, but not romantic love.

4) Think if it this way: if you experience transference with your therapist, and you discuss it (I thought it was so embarrassing, I emailed my therapist about my transference), I think it's greatly to EXPLORE what makes you so happy. Explore what it FEELS like to be intimate with someone who knows all of you and accepts you unconditionally. If you can learn to love YOURSELF and accept yourself in this way, the idea is that you will bring this into your personal relationships OUTSIDE of therapy.

5) We'll never have a relationship like the one with our therapist, we DON'T know them. We're learning about ourselves through them. Projecting, mirroring, etc.

Transference goes on in every facet of our lives.
We're constantly judging/sizing people up based on our past experiences. We HAVE to have a frame of reference.

My goal in therapy is to learn to love and accept myself the way my therapist loves me unconditionally. I want to learn to accept all of me the way she does.

Getting to this stage helps diffuse the transference.
And that's a beautiful thing! I think that's when the work really starts.

Go easy. Be kind to yourself (I'm working on that myself ).

And I must say, please do have a conversation with your therapist about his use of the word projection. I suspect what he means is you are projecting what you want in a relationship-- in a relationship with someone outside therapy, or perhaps with yourself...to truly appreciate and accept yourself (again, something I'm now working on, too!)

This is a great thread - I'm learning a lot here - thank you to everybody for their input.

Love is the default state of humans. It's always real when it exists. Love is a measure of how willing people are to cooperate and inclination to prosocial behavior.

Transference love is always real love, it just is not enduring love in the case when T is putting aside priorities that would otherwise make it harder for both client and T to cooperate in life.

This stuff about parents and "old stuff" is not true. It's all very silly. Love is who we are meant to be. Babies & children love because they have no expectations and no obligations to fulfill, they do not have to worry about survival.

So, love and work are two opposing forces. Typically the T:client relationship is an exchange of work for love, that's why the love can be so intense, no work is required from the client. It would usually be hard to love T quite as much after the relationship because there will be a more equal balance of work and love. But that doesn't mean you can't enduringly love T, just that therapy temporary is simulating a lack of work.

FAgreed. I think skyscrapers post articulates the concept of transference very well. I think the point is no matter what you see of a T in therapy sessions, it's still only one part of the whole person. You don't know what he is like in his personal life at all. I don't know if he's married or not, but either way, maybe he has a history of being a womanizer. Maybe he's cheated on past girlfriends or his wife. Maybe he's a lousy tipper or a rude customer. What you see is an idealized version of someone. Maybe he gives you things in therapy that you may not get from other men in your life, like support, postitive regard, attention, etc...Of course you're going to love him! A lot of women (or men) would fall in love with a T who gave them the things they're missing. I think the point is more to keep what's behind these feelings as well as the dynamic of the relationship in perspective.

I agree with this. It doesn't matter how many parts of a person you know, you can still feel love for them because love has no boundaries. I have felt love for complete strangers before. Even though I knew but one part of a stranger didn't make my love any less real.

Yes, transference and idealization with a T (or anyone) often confuses a client about the depth and reciprocity of the the love but I don't think it's fair to say the love isn't real on some level. Many clients love their T's, many T's love their clients, and even on it's most basic level this love is real.

Love is powerful and healing; it can be temporary or eternal. I really wish it weren't so complicated and seemingly taboo to allow ourselves more in-and-out flow of that purity of innocent love, especially in today's world. Easier said than done, even for me.

Thanks for this. I'm pretty on board with this version of love! I don't have anyone around for 2 am airport pickups, but I feel a lot of love in my life, from many different sources. Friends, family, neighbors, my yoga teacher who welcomes everyone to class like she's known us for decades, the guys who take such great care of my ancient car, my doctor who is like an old family friend at this point, my hairdresser who came to my dad's funeral. I love and feel loved by all of them. I love my therapist and feel loved by him too, which to me feels totally natural.

These and other threads make it so clear that we don't all mean the same thing when we talk about love. Some people reserve it only for certain people or types of relationships, some people take a different view. My personal bias is that we should all have a lot of space to define it for ourselves. I get uncomfortable when people seem to be trying to define the experience of others in limiting ways.

They don't all believe in that Freudian stuff like "blank slate" and transference. Actually I had no idea before coming here that so many do. Mine talks about her life all the time and it makes me feel more "normal" and less "sick" that she goes through the same things as me sometimes. She also said she can get annoyed with me but it doesn't mean she doesn't like or care. i like that because the idea of never getting annoyed seems fake to me.

Maybe love is metamorphic. I see it as something that grows; transforms over time and space (environment), rather than merely defined by time and space.

When I relate to my therapist while experiencing an infantile, regressed state of mind, I love him when he makes me feel safe and warm inside. That's a facet of me, representing my past feelings as an infant. It's an infant's love, yes , but it comes from my psyche. From adult me.

Working through all my childhood emotions is like growing up with him. When I'm in an older state of mind, I might feel love for him when he encourages me to do something I don't have the confidence to do. I smile back at him embracing more of a shared-or reciprocal-love, even from my now idealizing state of mind.

As he 'raises me through my upbringing' I feel love when he accepts all parts of me, both good and bad; all the grey added in between. Through this pseudo upbringing, I notice I accept him more and more as he provides more and more unconditional acceptance of me as time goes on. Not only is there feeling love, but love is being created.

Is this a childish love (or 'therapy love') slowly transforming into mature love? I believe so. Love can be a growth process rather than a force classified into types, names, descriptions.

This 'model' can also be applied to non-therapeutic relationships. At least that's how I see it, for example, when knowing or observing older couples who are clearly in a strong, loving relationship.

Regardless of all the different "types" of love (which are very interesting to think about), love just doesn't seem like an end state to me. Its fluid, malleable, opaque, strong, powerful, transforming. Its boundless, freeing.

Love has no rules. I hope that made sense, or did it seem like i said that love is somehow like Schrödinger's cat?!

What are some specific rejections he was referring to? Can you give examples?