[cold_nomad]

I posted a thread here back in December. Please read my backstory: https://forums.psychcentral.com/psyc...e-therapy.html - This is continuation of that thread, an update of thoughts if you want:

Transference. Attachment. Love. Pain. How to call the most wonderful feeling that i ever experienced in my life, the life that offered me so few good moments. This very feeling that has kept me alive all this time, since i started therapy 1/2 years ago. This feeling that made me feel alive again after many years of total darkness, always followed by the most intense emotional pain that i have ever experienced. Physically, like a dagger stabbing my chest that i am unable to remove it.

The blows that I have experienced over the years have left their marks, and an emptiness. My scars long have yearned for her tender caress. I started to feel like i mean something because of her caring, compassion and empathy. I have spend most of my life trying to find myself. Always failing. Always asking myself why can't i form bonds with others. I needed a guide like her, to show me who i really am. And she did, she formed me, she allowed me to expose my true self. But it was never enough.
Her eyes are striking, her personality so beautiful that fills my small heart with so much love and my soul with positive energy. I always feel warm and secure when we are talking during our sessions. She gave a place to be, a second home, a better home. It is the first time that i felt like this, after 28 years. I was emotionally neglected. I wished so much that my therapist will fill the void that has been created during my life.

I am nothing but a stupid broken person. In her eyes, a weak client, nothing more. It pains me that i am not able to spend some more time with the only person that truly made me happy. It hurts even more, up to the point where i cant breathe, when i think about her and her husband. She is happily married. I know it is not possible to get involved romantically, i am not sure if this is what i desire. I wish to be to her as important as she is to me. I want her as a friend, at least. I wish for me and her to be a team, to help each other. I want to feel her caring. I miss her so much, i think about her all the time. Nothing seems to be important, nothing seems to make me happy because she is not here with me.
I told her how i am feeling, that i wish to remove this pain somehow. I have the impression that she does not understand me, or she does not know how to manage this situation. And i just don't know what to do, i don't know what to do when she makes me sad.
I wish that my life would offer me something good, something to make the pain less intense and to replace my thoughts of her. But i does not, it never does.

I wrote her a long email before our previews session. I mentioned that i love and adore her, and my desires. At our meeting she chose to ignore that email. I asked her "can we discuss the letter that i send you last week?" She said we will talk about it at our next session which is next week. I am feeling left down, neglected and disappointed. I feel like i failed her, and she is giving up on me. I came to the realization that her caring is just in the professional level. I don't think i mean something to her outside of her office.
I am not sure if i am going to tell her that my suicidal ideations are back. How to tell my therapist that i want to end my life someday, because of her, because of transference that interrupted the therapy and my healing process. Someday she will be gone, someday she will turn her attention to somebody else, and this is the time for me to go. I will have nothing else to look forward to. I am so emotionally drained, tired, alone, i cannot stand it anymore. At the beginning, i cried because her caring was something new to me, it was a beautiful feeling. Now i cry because the pain is unbearable. She, her husband, her life without me, it is all to much.

I am thankful that i have met my therapist, and she did help me in the first months of therapy. But then, transference happened and it all started to go downfall. I never experienced reciprocal love. It's sad to die without knowing the feeling of being loved, isn't it? I have no idea why i am writing this. Therapy was the last chance, my last hope to change my life. I don't know what to do. I am at work and can't concentrate, i am listening to sad songs. I started taking non prescribed bromazepam to relax, but it is not working. There are many kind people in this forum, with a good heart. I wish you all the best and please don't fall in this trap like i did. Farewell.

[Out There]

I'm sorry this is so painful for you. It taps into needs that come from a young place where our needs weren't met and we still desire them to be met. As grown ups we put them into ideas of romance and things because we have found someone " caring " for us. I have felt it fleetingly on occasions- it may pass or could be worked through , I hope your T may help you more in your next session.

[maybeblue]

I understand the concept of transference. I've experienced it myself. It's reacting to the therapist as if she is an important person in your life. I'm not sure that is all that is happening here though. You have fallen in love with someone who is unavailable to you. It's totally understandable given your history and shyness. It isn't your fault. But I think that you are the one who has to decide what to do with it.

I think that you might need to consider that maybe the best person to work through these feelings with is not the person you love. I'm guessing that she is pretty young and she might not be really equipped to deal with this. It's not that she doesn't care. It's just a tough thing. And maybe someone outside would be able to give you a better perspective.

I had to do that once. I had to see a different therapist because the one I was seeing triggered the most painful feelings in me. And the new therapist (who was the same gender as me) helped me understand those feelings and figure out how to get my needs met some place other than in therapy.

If you do decide that you need to see someone else, I would suggest finding someone male or a woman who is much older than you. Someone that you would have a harder time imagining yourself with.

I refer to it as Transference hell.

I am sure if a lot of us knew how painful it would be, we wouldn't have walked into T's office that first time. I have said on multiple occasions to my T that I have wished I had never met him. I think the more honest you are, the better. But you need someone with experience to help you through this because even with someone who is experienced, it's extremely difficult. You don't want to become stuck or have things become even more unbearable that it is now.

If your T can't help you with the transference then you need to ask her to suggest someone who can. Especially if you feel you get to breaking point.

[SalingerEsme]

There is something about your posts that always speak to me- a sincerity of voice and some trueness to them. I am 100 percent sure you will have this love, a love as absorbing as this, in real life at some point, if you grow your way through this stage and accept it as growing pains.

Therapy is terribly powerful for those of us with childhood violation of our humanity and human needs. Real life stands no chance as competing. I have loved and been loved as an adult, but still somehow my T mesmerizes me, and takes me away from the real people in my life by my own preoccupation with him. It is scary, and they don't realize what is happening on a bone deep level unless they have been through it. I can't sleep, and am bleary-eyed and kind of war torn at work today too. My heart hurts, and my brain feels bruised. Going back for more is like a punch drunk boxer who keeps swinging for cash, but there is this belief it is a corrective relationship and you can take and keep all you learn into the world with you. It is likely that the pain you feel now is all you felt and accumulated as a child, focused on this T but not because of her.

I don't know what will happen between you and your T is this period, but I hope you will not say farewell to us or give up home. Maybe when you are 38 instead of 28, you will be be in love, and the love of someone's life who is out there right now waiting for you to struggle though this period of life.

[musinglizzy]

Thank you for sharing this with us, I hear you. I hear you. It's a very difficult place to be in. My T used t offer me SO much, then took it away as she got to know me better. That was earth shattering to me. That I let her know me well enough that she had to change her behavior. She really used to love and care about me. But now that she really knows me, I dot believe it's that way any longer. But I am still with her. Twice a week for three and a half years, I've gone through this cluster***k I call therapy. I wish I had never started therapy at this point, my life was easier before therapy.

But here I am, stuck in the attachment.

I had found another therapist, who I thought I'd try, so maybe I could quit the first one. Things went extremely well with this therapist, but eventually there was a disagreement about my care, and I got kicked out without even a termination session. No chance to talk to her about it. She wouldn't answer my Emails, nothing. So, now I'm mourning the huge loss of THAT therapist. Who I originally went to see because of the pain caused by the first therapist. I wanted to die. Seriously. Life was so much less complicated before therapy. I get too attached myself. Try to do something good for yourself. And be proud that you spoke up!