One Mistake Enough to Alleviate Transference?

So I've been in the midst of strong maternal transference feelings towards my T for the last three months. At times it was very overwhelming and difficult. I did bring it up and we talked about it quite a bit over that time. Talking it out didn't feel like it did much to resolve it, to be honest. Anyway, last week I showed up for my appointment and my T said that she had another client booked for that time, and she had me down for the next slot (one hour later). She didn't apologize or anything, just asked me if I was okay waiting around for the hour until the time she had me scheduled for. What gets me is that I distinctly remember her booking the original time with me! I am OCD about this and always verbally confirm our time three times every time we book an appointment. Because I'm not assertive, somewhat timid, and tend to question myself a lot, I agreed to wait for the hour and gently said I didn't get why she had me down for another time (even though I KNEW I was right). She didn't apologize, giving me the distinct impression that she truly believed she had the right time and I was the one who was wrong.

Anyway, by the time I got into the room with her after waiting around for that extra hour, I was really annoyed and suddenly saw her in a completely different and negative light. Especially because I dealt with lots of traffic to make the original appointment time. I mean, I should have said something and then maybe she would have apologized, but I just couldn't bring myself to in the moment. I don't think she would have genuinely believed me because of the way she handled it in the first place. I felt off the entire session, and now I can definitely say that the attachment towards her feels non-existent. Throughout the whole session, I even had myself questioning why I felt anything for her in the first place! I don't plan on telling her any of this, because it seems pointless and if she apologized I wouldn't believe it to be genuine. If anything, it's a relief to not have positive feelings towards her at the moment.

I'm wondering if anyone else has similarly had an extreme reversal of their feelings towards their T? Did they evolve or change?

I'm just wondering why do you think that your current feelings aren't transference? Transference feelings don't include only loving or attachment feelings. They could be anything. Although I think that in current situation there is probably a real and valid reason for being annoyed and a sincere apology from the T would certainly be in order, there are also possibly other feelings that are evoked from somewhere from the past, e.g. transference.

The second thing is why don't you plan to tell her anything about it? I mean, you have OCD around those things, your T, who probably knows it, manages to mess up in such a way and doesn't even apologize - well now there is so much therapeutic material to work with that I don't understand why you want to waste it.

But yeah, sure, I've had things like that happening. Just last week my T was in the middle of a phone call when he asked me to enter the consultation room and he continued that phone call still for another couple of minutes, even stepping out of the room for a while. And this phone call wasn't about any emergency situation but something about make over or furniture! I mean, that was something completely outrageous to me - my T (a psychoanalyst) is always on time, you step in exactly on time, unless you're late of course, and you step out exactly on time, regardless of whether you've been late. And now this. Well, I did not take it well. In addition to that, while he was outside the room, I spotted nail pliers on his desk. I immediately felt repulsiveness and I had to push away images of him clipping his nails while waiting for patients. I was wondering why on earth I'm spending so much of my time and money on this person. But regardless of such feelings I know from experience that the only good way forward is to honestly talk about all those things (and my experience is 400+ sessions with this T) and although it was a very stormy and hard session, in the end we were fine again.

Transference is often a kind of fantasy. And the spell can be broken.

Demoting your T from a god-like being to a fallible human is healthy in the long run, I suspect.

(It would have been easier to accept Madame T as human if she hadn't spent her whole time hiding behind the blank slate, but that's another story.)

I am experiencing something similar. T did something that I labeled in my journal as her not being the "good enough" parent and I have pretty much an instantaneous lack of depth in the connection I've had to her since. I still love her very much as an adult child would his mother. It is a different feeling of love. For me though, I am missing the feeling my child self had towards her and I want to get it back; rather than wondering what I ever saw in her.

This is really common, its talked about over and over in psych media. Idealization comes to a halt when let down. Or idealization/devaluation.

I had a strong idealizing transference (in love, not seeing as perfect though) for a long time, it comes from a young place. I still have it despite being angry at him for being so withholding. Mine doesnt ebb flow that much, i feel ive always had fairly realistic expectations of him.

But if you sort of see your T as perfect, which is anothet type of idealizing transference, a mistake will change your mindset of course.

Yes, that happened to me too. But in the end she wasn't good enough even for that.

What is 'maternal transference' if not the playing out of our attachment styles? I would say you are experiencing the 'other side' of transference - the ambivalence of disorganized attachment - rather than it being alleviated.

My marriage counselor has done or said a few things that have shifted my views about him as an ideal father (or husband). Like mentioning how he'd yelled at his son (despite realizing he was getting too angry and should have stepped away) until his son was crying and asked if he still loved him. Honestly, I found some of these type things more confusing than anything. Like, wait, how could this person I idealize also do things like this?

And there were a few times when things he's done have hurt me, like saying last year during our second individual session about transference that his door was always open to me--meaning for individual sessions. But then when, a few months later, I tried to go through that door and request another session, he basically slammed it in my face (though was still OK with phone calls and e-mail). That was incredibly painful for me, but I'm not sure it necessarily lessened the transference. I think maybe it just intensified my abandonment fears, honestly, and made me almost cling on tighter.

But transference is clearly different for everyone, so if this is the first time you've seen this more negative side of T, then maybe it will lessen the transference?

This is a really good point. With my T, for example, I've had both negative and positive maternal transference. So something like this could trigger the negative side.

Also a really good point. You should talk to her about it. When I've felt hurt by or angry at T or MC, talking about it has been very helpful. It's tempting to just push it aside or else run away from the relationship entirely. But by talking about it and processing it, I can learn from it, and maybe even improve/strengthen my relationship with T or MC. MC has said before that relationships become stronger when they're tested and you work through it (he was referring specifically to our marriage, but I'm sure that would apply to relationships with a T, too). I'd definitely bring up the fact that it upset you.

Oh, yes, I know the feeling when sudden disappointment in someone feels like liberation. I am not sure it was my experience with any of my Ts but with other people I've had that plenty. It's like the spell has broken, as someone here has said. A rude awakening to me has always been one of the best healing experiences.

Thank you for these insightful responses everyone. I appreciate the feedback. I will consider bringing it up at the next session. For whatever reason, I'm convinced it will serve no purpose other than to make her secretly resentful of me. I'm sure this speaks volumes about my trust issues, but it's the part of me that needed her off the "pedestal" - so I could stop obsessing about therapy - that is relieved by these new negative feelings. I can see how this is a valuable thing to explore, I just wish I could control my fears around doing so.

It's amazing to me how easy it is to lose sight of the fact that a T is a paid professional that one hires for a service. In my case, it seems to have very quickly revealed a power dynamic where I am often more concerned about my T's feelings than my own when I bring up things with her.

Interestingly, the part of me that enjoyed how I felt about her (my inner child) is still buried deeply within me, I just found it so hard to tolerate the painful longing associated with it. I suppose time and more sessions will tell us if we can recover those feelings and, at least in my case, learn to allow them in a healthier way.

Ok, maybe I'm an emotional masochist because, yes those longings are/were very painful. I guess that might a good thing to explore for me - why do I want something back that had such a painfulness element to it.

Yes, the healthier way is one of the things that pops up in my head as well. That maybe what I am feeling now is healthier.