Hi PJ,

Just wanted to say hi and welcome. Can't comment too much on the transference because I am finding it very painful for me right now.

It's great that your T is so accepting of all your thoughts and feelings.

Liese

Transference encompasses the most painful emotions I have ever felt.

welcome to the forums, Pam! transference sucks big time! it makes sense that we do this, but just the knowing doesn't make it any easier to deal with or GET OVER IT! thankfully, i've yet to experience erotic transference and dread that it is even a possibility. kudos to you for talking about it with your T. it sounds like she's very responsible and responsive and helping you with it.

Hey Pam. Welcome And I've been feeling that toward my therapist a lot too. I told her last session that I see her as being my girlfriend most of the time. I couldn't look at her when I told her that but she seemed to deal with it well.

The feelings are immense and very, very painful. . I told T that this is a nightmarish relationshi for me a lot of the time.

I know this is meant to be good for you. It does hurt like hell a lot! I hope you are dealing with it okay? x

At times, the relationship has been so painful that I've told her I had to stop coming. She talks me through those rough patches, reassuring me that my transference feelings are a normal part of depth therapy. Because I sometimes feel as though I am losing my mind!
I do love my therapist. We even have the same birthday :-).
Pam

Hey pj, interesting you say that because only recently for the first time, I considered not turning up to therapy and quitting on a whim. My cursor was actually on the 'send' button with the e-mail I was about to send to her. I was crying because the feelings were so harsh and I didn't know what to do. I ended up saving it in the draft folder and giving myself time to think it over. I'm glad I didn't send it. It was after a month of not seeing her, I think I was scared of all the feelings coming back as they have been harsh.

The feelings can be very harsh indeed! I recently went from 3 sessions per week to 2 because I couldn't handle my feelings of intensity towards her.
It's beyond words what I feel about her because so many of the feelings come from when we were infants and pre-verbal.

Pam

Ouch, gosh I totally understand pj *hugs*. I only see her once a week and my need for her can get so intense sometimes. I told her last session that I had to quit the fantasies of wanting her to be somebody that she isn't and the issue with that is that I could then easily forget her. Its very black and white.Either I want her totally and utterly or not at all.

Difficult. How is 2 times a week going for you?

Yeah the whole infancy thing always comes back to haunt, doesn't it? *sigh*

She urges me to go back to 3x/week because she feels that I am running away from attaching to her by backing off to 2 sessions a week. It's a resistance to digging more deep in her mind- I agree but it also allows me some protection and an illusion of control. It's an ongoing issue - I suspect I will go back to 3/week later this year.

I don't enjoy feeling infantile AND sexual at the same time. Very intense.

PJ, the next time your T accuses you from running from the attachment, try telling her you are trying to "titrate" or "manage" your attachment. That is what my T would say and it makes it sound more positive

Incidentally, the infant-level attachment feelings almost killed me in themselves. If I had to cope with erotic transference at the same time I would probably be

Thank you SO much for validating my feelings. You can get so wrapped up in it that you know you're going insane!
Do you feel that the benefits outweigh the risks/pain?

Pam

I'm sure the benefits outweigh the pain, provided you can actually tolerate the pain. In my case the pain with my old T was getting to be more than I could tolerate. The transference was too strong, she was pushing me too hard, and her availability was inconsistent enough to drive me pretty crazy. Since I switched T's things have gotten much more tolerable. My new T is really into taking things gradually and resourcing and other stuff to help me cope, as well as being very very consistently available. I think doing depth work in therapy without some way to contain or manage it is kind of like doing surgery without anesthesia...it might help, if only you could keep from running out screaming!

This is my first post ever, so forgive me if I ramble.
Last night I gave in and told my T a little bit about how I feel. Of course, being the smart, handsome, sweet guy that he is, he figured out what I was saying without too much information from my end. Even with the little bit of information I gave him about how I felt I was very embarrassed about letting him know. He said he was worried that my feelings might hinder our progress and he had concerns over my feelings for him and my husband. I practically begged him not to cancel our sessions. We've made real progress with my issues and (I didn't tell him this) I would rather be in pain with him than without him.
Yes, the pain is almost unbearable! At first, I liked the pain. It was like a masochistic thing; if I feel this bad about my feelings for him then I’m alive and my feelings are real. But as time has gone on the pain just reminds me that I want something I can never have. If I stop our sessions I think I might spend the rest of my days longing for him. If I keep going progress will be made but I don’t see my feelings changing at all.
I take comfort in knowing that I’m not alone with this; a lot of people go through erotic transference and I’m not some kind of freak. It’s funny that the thing that is supposed to help me is hurting me.

Hello Whats in a Name

I can relate totally to everything you have written. I have been, and still am to a certain extent, going through EXACTLY the same feelings as you are.

I told my T of these feelings quite early on in my therapy and i got, and still get, the same response that you do; that she is worried that it will hinder my progress or even do more harm than good. I was worried that I would be referred to another T at some point as her supervisor advised her to terminate me immediately. To her immense credit, and to my immense relief; she went against his advice, and we have worked through this together over the past nine or ten months. The pain of the process was unbearable at times. I have cried more tears over my feelings for my T in those few months than i have in the rest of life put together, and my OCD behaviour in looking at her various blogs and websites defied belief on occasions.

I didn't ever see my feelings change for her; but do you know what? Slowly I think that they are. I am a long way from being free of those feelings, and they do still flare up at times; but slowly and patiently she is teaching me what these feelings really are about and how to manage them in the appropriate way.

I no longer think about her every second of every day; i no longer check her websites dozens of times a day to see if she is okay; and just recently I have even taken her photo from my mobile phone home screen wallpaper; so things do change over time.

As Dragonfly said; you are not alone with how you feel, and the transference is a huge part of the healing process. It does get better, just keep talking to your T about it whenever you feel you need to and are comfortable doing so. He will be able to help you through this.

Hope this helps a little.

Avoidant: that is awesome what you wrote - you really have made great progress with the ET. Well done. Each of those things you have mentioned are huge things. I often wonder how you are going with it because even a couple of months ago you were in so much pain about it.

Your post is very hopeful to everyone going thru it.

I don't have ET or maternal transference - but I do have transference - I am still working it out.
Somedays.

((Somedays))

It was quite hard and even emotional to post the reply.

I think I needed to write it down just to confirm to myself that the
ET is lessening because there are still days ehen I dont want to
believe it myself. As Whats in a name so
rightly said the sort of machosistic pain is
hard to let go of. Sorry if I did write this
to partly validate my own thoughts but I'm glad you think it
useful to others as well.

AV.

Thank you Dragonfly and AV for those insightful words. I'm looking for all the help I can get lately. After telling my T how I felt I've noticed that I've slipped into a kind of depression that is all too familiar. My feelings for him had died down slightly but now I feel like he turned me down because I'm ugly, fat, lazy, stupid; all the things I've worked hard to fix. I know I was turned down because he is a very professional and ethical guy and it has nothing to do with the above. My mind knows this, my heart does not. I'm not looking forward to our next session; I would rather just pretend that the last session didn't happen and walk away with my tail between my legs.

Let me also say (write) that I appreciate all the advice and words you all have offered. It's hard for me to write my feelings as well. I was nervous at first about posting but when I saw that there are a lot of people going through the same things and how they got over it (sort of) that made me feel better. I do have a question: if I'm not being too inquisitive, how exactly do you work with your T when your feelings are made known? I've read that people "work with their T" about transference but I don't know what that means. If anyone can share without getting too personal I would appreciate it.

What's in a Name

I do know what you mean by falling into a depression after telling your T how you felt. I think it's because we open up fully to them and bear our souls to them and then don't hear the answers or words we were hoping to hear. I have left many sessions feeling very despondant about T's reactions to my thoughts and feelings, and wept on the way home a number of times too.

It IS because they are being professional, and ultimately, caring to us, that they do this I'm sure. Rationally I know that they are right to react this way too, but emotionally I still have that feeling of being unloveable or unworthy of their love because i wasn't given the answer or the reaction I was hoping for. I think of it in terms of me being starved of something, say food for example, and instead of giving me a pile of fast food to get me through, I am being given some seeds to plant for the future that will help me to feed myself for ever more. I want the quick fix from my T for sure, but she knows, and i know if I'm truthful, that in the long run I'm best served by her helping me to help myself.

On the subject of working with our T's about transference; I'm not sure that it is a subject in itself to be talked through, but more a phenomena that occurs within therapy naturally, and simply being totally and sometimes brutally honest and open with our T's about our feelings towards them IS working through it. By not shying away from the issue and getting it out in open is how deal with it. Every time i have had a week of particularly intense feelings towards T I have told her about them, when and why they happened, and we have tried to make sense of them together. At first she was uncomfortable with it, perhaps more so than I was, but as the level of trust between has grown, she has become more accepting of those feelings and is now quite prepared to both listen to me and accept that my feelings are valid, if inapropriate in her words!!

You have taken the first huge step by bringing this up with your T, and rather than feel ashamed about it, you should be proud of yourself that you have done it, and know that it gets easier after the first time. Look forward to your sessions; keep on being honest and open with him about your feelings. It does take time; a long time in my case. The relationship between the therapist and the client IS the therapy in a nutshell.

You are doing all the right things, and keep us informed of how things go for you.

Wow, you guys are awesome! I've got therapy tomorrow and was not looking forward to it. Now, after reading some of the lovely things you all have written I feel like I can go in there with some confidence. Don't get me wrong, it's gonna be hard to look him in the face (not only from being embarassed but because he is cute as a button) but at least now I will show up and be ready to work. And, boy, do we have work to do.

have a really great session and
let us know how it goes.

So, I had therapy last wednesday and it went smoother than I thought. I still have some feelings and even some urges towards my therapist but they seem pretty manageable now. I'm gonna just have to be secretly in love with him for the rest of my life and leave it at that. At leaset it doesn't hurt any more.

What's in a name.

That's great news that the transference feelings aren't hurting so much now, and well done for getting through your last session.

It will get easier and easier for you, although I think we'll both have to secretly love our T's for the rest of our lives I know that I'll love my T simply because of the help and the hope she's given me.