Hi emerald. I get what you mean, making up in our minds what our therapists may really be like and I have done that with a lot of people, not just therapists. I have had transference experiences with bosses and teachers, and have done this. The transference "fantasy" seems to ease the more I get to know them.

My most recent obsession was my son's T. I'm still not sure it's transference but some of the feelings seem to fit so that's what I'm going with. But, I never put my son's T on a pedestal - I saw her faults and it made me appreciate her more. We live in a small town, she works at my son's school, her kids go there. She has talked a lot about her kids and she said it herself, she has self-disclosed a lot and maybe wasn't too good with boundaries. I've seen her flustered and I've been annoyed with her. I saw that she was a real person with real faults but still she was able to reach out to me and give me what I needed more than anything in the world.

I think that's probably why I got in my mind that friendship was possible. I felt like I was on an even level with her. I didn't' feel like I was talking to a therapist when I talked to her, I felt like I was talking to a friend. I didn't think she could save me, or even give me just the advice I needed to solve my problems. But she was there, she was able to just listen and offer me support, and I felt like she really cared.

I know more about her than most people know about their therapists, but I realize I still don't know the real her. But that's the way it is when you start a friendship. You feel a connection and then you get to know each other better. Then you may either become closer or grow apart.

Where it became different from a typical friendship forming, for me, was when I realized that I could really depend on her, and that I never had that in my life before. She told me to call or email whenever I needed to and I did. I took full advantage. She did make the boundaries clear at that point when she told me I needed to make friends and get my own support system. I realized she couldn't be my friend and that she was acting as a therapist. I began to question why, and when I saw that there were rules against us being friends, I began to worry that she was just doing her job and that she really didn't care as much as I thought. But then I asked her and she validated my feelings. She said she would love to be friends if it weren't for the way we met. Then I just became angry at the rules and the obsession got a little worse.

I think it could have worked if she had stayed my son's T. We could have talked out all this transference stuff. I could still get what I needed and accepted the boundaries. It could have been very positive, just like some other experiences here on this board. But that didn't work, my son is getting referred to another T for some more serious issues. So the prospect of her not being there for me became all too real, and the obsession grew more.

I still haven't accepted that she is out of my life. School is starting again tomorrow and I still keep thinking in the back of my mind that it's not over. She has been so important to me that I just still can't imagine it. I'm 100% sure I will see her, it's unavoidable, I'm just not sure how hard it's going to be. I still really have the urge to talk to her about it all, if for nothing else but closure. I'm not sure it would work out the way I wanted it too, though, because I'm pretty sure she doesn't know how deep my need goes.

Wow, that turned into quite a long post didn't it. Thanks to anyone who stuck through and read it.

OW