Has anyone successfully worked through their transference?

Well.....has anyone successfully told their T about their type of transference (maternal, paternal, erotic) and the T was able to work with it, understand it and help you get past it? That is if they did not transfer you to another T or terminate you.

I have strong paternal transference for my T. He embraced it & it is a big part of our therapy. Definitely no referral elsewhere.

How is it a big part of therapy? I do not understand how it is used as a modality? Is your T older or younger than you?

My T is older - almost exactly my father's age, actually - off by a couple of months.

He has expressed his own paternal countertransference, and we freely talk from these places a lot. Meaning he will express that his paternal & protective feelings are quite strong at times. (E.g., when I have shared about a trauma). Although in much warmer terms than what I just stated...I'm not sure I'm comfortable expressly sharing some of what he's said verbatim. I'm slightly embarrassed by what I find comforting, I guess.

Nope, not at all. I'm not sure that I believe it can be done any more.

This was a good thread on similar topic, I also posted in it about mine in a link to yet another thread:
https://forums.psychcentral.com/psyc...t=transference

I think I've definitely worked through my main pattern, but not with a therapist. I actually believe that it can be more effective to do this using ordinary life experiences and relationships and examine them deeply and honestly in the context of both psych literature and our own life and personality. I think often trying to do this with and though a person we experience transference for can hinder the process and make it really messy, painful and ineffective. Doing it alone does require a good dose of detachment from the actual experience and looking at the larger picture, IMO. But it can be better sometimes, especially if one's pattern does not fit well in the common, textbook cases. When I tried to do some of it with a T, it went in all sorts of wrong, because they T was somehow unable to detach himself from his own pet peeves and fave theories and just kept projecting those onto me, which made me mad because it did not fit at all. I would definitely suggest doing it with a T who is pretty open-minded, creative and can deal with the unknown and evaluate individual patterns in their own context, not just the common literature.

For me personally, this process has been highly beneficial because my transference pattern was not really related to a desire for care and love not received in childhood, but a form of youthful identity search and finding/developing my own values, though associating myself with people who seemed to carry those things - maybe parental in a sense that my parents did not meet some of those quality expectations, not as parents but more as human beings. This is part of my I could do most of the examination on my own and use the findings for self-improvement. I am not sure how it could work with transference that is strongly parental in its nature other than maybe learning to "parent" ourselves and become more self-sufficient and having better self care.

No, my t does not understand it or is trained to help me. He does try to understand and helps me know what supports i have in my life. I think in the next year or so i will be seeing another therapist at the clinic my therapist is near to retire

In my experience and from the dozens of accounts I have read about it, no it’s not possible to work through something like that.
A lot of these « transference » cases are straight up addictions. The only way to stop an addiction is cutting off supply. Was that way for me. No amount of talking about it with my ex therapist was going to change anything except the state of my bank account.

From what I’ve noticed people who say they have worked through it are always still in therapy.
Not exactly a sign that things have been « worked through » imo.

As someone who has experienced different kinds of addictions, at least one of them very severe, destructive and life-threatening, I tend to agree with the above. But exactly because I was lucky to be able to resolve all of them so far (and therapy did not help in that area), I would confidently say that there are many things one can learn from these experiences that can lead to profound personal growth. Still, if I could go back and choose whether I want this way of learning or not, would definitely choose NO. It comes at way too high cost and often through too much irreversible destruction. I did not get nearly as severely addicted to therapy as to other things, probably in part because the other experiences happened before all of my therapy (and a bit during). I was in a severely addictive personal relationship though before therapy once and there was no other way to resolve that but cut it off completely and even move a few states away from the source. But evaluating the costs and benefits in retrospect, full-blown addictions are never worth it in the grand scheme. And I fully agree that it is only possible to "work through" what drives them once the reinforcer has been stopped for a while. It is just not possible to see truly clearly while still using it and, for most people, moderating it will never be possible again. I am personally very happy that I was able to say 'no' to exploring my obsession with therapy with the therapists themselves. What people most often describe on this forum as "attachment" in therapy (or attachment issues) resemble substance abuse and other behavioral addictions so much to me, I am not sure I would dare to say they do not fit at least a milder form of addiction. And I generally agree with the futile nature of trying to resolve an addiction while still using, trying to think and talk ourselves out of it. What happens more, IMO, is that the reinforcer loses its efficacy over time and then people can move on. But spending decades to achieve that?! Plus, for those that are prone to it, they might just move on to trade it with something else.

I see transference as a useful tool in therapy, but not in exactly the way you seem to be talking about it. It's not something I've ever had to bring up specifically, just an interesting lens through which to examine some of my feelings and behavior in therapy.

So it's not like I ever said oh hey Dr. Therapist, I have XYZ transference towards you. I just do what I can to describe how I'm feeling, including how I'm feeling towards him, and what feelings being around him seems to stir up. And then together we look at where those feelings could be coming from, whether that's something about him or something he did, or something from my past and my internal world that's being evoked. Or often a bit of both.

It's difficult sometimes for sure, but it's certainly nothing like an addiction.

Yes I feel this in my bones. The only way this is ever going to stop is if I cut off all therapy. I have had this transference with every therapist because I have a massive hole that has never been filled. I never had a mother or father that took care of me and each therapist has become a surrogate. People that were raised with parents that filled their needs at least still have that parent to call on a daily basis and to talk to as needed (unless they passed away) but a therapist is a poor substitution because you can only see them or talk to them at session time and the ache becomes so bad between sessions but yet it is the closest thing to a loving parent you ever had. Even if it is a facade it is still something.

So you think the sign that something has been worked through means not needing or wanting therapy any more?

I think I used to think that I would get to a point of saying 'great, the (original) problem is solved, so no more therapy', but I've kind of changed my point of view as things have gone along.

In my therapy we don't really use the word or the idea of 'transference'. Still I have been through positive transformations that have been huge for me and in the context of my life, and the therapeutic relationship has been very important to me. So I am very thankful and I see it as a positive thing generally. I'm also quite comfortable with carrying on seeing my T for many years as long as I can afford it and as long as I find it helpful and a positive thing in my life. I am totally fine with this and I don't really see it as a negative or a sign that something has not been worked through.

For me the path to resolving an all-consuming therapist entanglement was:

(a) stop using self-defeating and meaningless terms like "transference"
(b) stop buying into industry propaganda about the need to "work thru" something that was conjured up therapy itself
(c) recognize the insanity of the process generally... developing strong feelings of any kind toward a virtual stranger and professional actor
(d) trust myself to sort out what happened

Also, I think just because people can extract a handful of insights or have some pleasant feelings during this process does not make it a good thing, on the whole, nor does it justify that existence of the process.

I agree with this.

I tried to work through “transferences” for many years but my feelings only intensified. I became a full blow therapy addict - complete with compulsive emails, inability to tolerate vacations, constant preoccupation with my therapist, ‘crazy’ responses and reactions, and pretty much total mental deterioration.

The only thing that worked for me was removing the source of my addiction - my therapist. The endless torture stopped but a part of me feels irreparably broken and violated by therapy.

I don't see what could be "worked through" since these feelings are created by therapy itself imo. Every human being on this planet has a hole they need to fill, even the most healthy ones. Therapy seems to often uncover those needs and then magnify them and boom! the client is hooked. I also think some people replace the addiction with a therapist with the addiction of another therapist. They go from one to another chasing the same "high". It took me a while to realize I was in fact addicted to therapy because 1) therapy is never described in this way by mainstream media and 2) I had never been addicted to anything before therapy so it was hard to recognize the effects. When my "supply" was cut off (ie I was terminated) I slowly started to realize what had been happening and the whole thing (therapy) crumbled. I could no longer believe in it and now that the high had worn off I could see the deception and the dishonesty. Therapy holds no interest for me anymore. Ironically I have "worked through it" but not thanks to a therapist, just by myself by questioning the whole thing and by reading stuff.

I think it's more a case of recognising it.

Xynesthesia, this has been exactly my experience as well. Thank you for expressing it so well.

No, because he died. I'm sure we would have worked through it if we had more time.

Yes. Was a major issue with my last T. He told me a certain amount is necessary. I don’t have that issue with my current t.

Geez, reading here, its like saying NOBODY ever meets x goal. I will say, stunted as i am, that yes i did. I may not be perfect, but im a lot better than i was. And working thru the transference was a biiiiig part of it.