Unfortunate how tough it is, without a neutral third party observer, to tell the difference between "negative transference" and "having a lousy T/poor T match."

Sorry Wish I had more insight...

hey effed.... does your T think you are having negative transference and has she discussed it with you or questionned you? If your T knows how to work with negative transference it can be very productive and helpful. Of course she is going to have to remain non-defensive through this in order make it work.

I often have a neg transference reaction towards my T. He remains non defensive and is always open to discussing it with me and it's never about him in the end.

Of course if you are seeing other red flags that indicate your T is not doing her job with you then it deserves further discussion.

Sorry I can't be of more help.
TN

Thanks, guys


TN, T leaves everything up to me to bring up, I doubt she'd ever question me herself on my negative feelings. I wish she would, it would show interest in resolving things You are very wise. It's tough for me to really feel like it's 'never about her' though. Maybe that's my problem. I think a lot of it is her, too. I have a feeling my feeling this way annoys her to no end...

effed,

You know I have had trouble with the same things you describe. I’m still in the middle of it with my T. I am so often frustrated and disappointed and even pissed off at my T. And I feel like the whole thing is a sort of mental torture. I have told him about it and I have told him that I want to quit working with him and we’ve been around the block with it several times.

I have the same sense of not wanting to give up and thinking that there has to be a way to make it work. If I keep at it, I can figure it out. I hate it, but I can’t walk away from it so far. Then I think that sticking with it is stupid and that what I need to learn is when to let go of something that doesn’t work or to let go of the idea that I can make things the way I want them to be.

Recently I read some old journals from high school and college, and I see that I was often defensive and angry with people in authority who tried to help me. I was critical and dismissive, but somewhere down deep I wanted to be important or special to them (gulp).

So, I think something is similar with us. I also feel frustrated because I feel like everything in my relationship with my T has to come from me. Man, I can feel it even now just writing about it. ARrrrgggg.

OK, so now the hope, maybe. I keep telling him about all this little by little and more and more. A couple of weeks ago when I got mad with him “being stupid” in the middle of a session in the middle of a really important sensitive topic that I purposely brought up, I told him about it and we stopped and looked at it. This man now knows that I think he’s stupid sometimes. God I’m an a$$, but it’s true.

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T leaves everything up to me to bring up, I doubt she'd ever question me herself on my negative feelings. I wish she would, it would show interest in resolving things

I wanted him to do this, too. But now finally we are getting somewhere with it. Yes, I had to keep bringing it up. I also told him that I knew I had to be part of my own frustration because I’m pretty sure it’s not all him. Last week he said that I’m primed to be frustrated and he keeps “helping” me be frustrated by misunderstanding me and not noticing things and being dense or oblivious. He also said that WE could figure out what is going on and help me become less frustrated. Hearing WE, although I still don’t quite believe in it, makes me feel hopeful.

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And yet, I can't seem to let it go, leave therapy or find someone else. I feel like deep down, there is some cosmic significance to all this, and she'll turn out to be the 'one'. I have this incessant need to make the relationship right, fix it, make it right, fix it... it's got to work or or or... I don't know.

Right now with another T I am looking at exactly this—I can fix it versus I should let it go. I have hope right now for understanding what’s going on better. Both of these Ts now are validating for me that this is important.

Sorry this is so much about me, and so long, but this is how I do it, I guess.

Maybe you have to keep telling her and keep bitching and keep explaining how it is for you.

I'm keeping some hope for you, too!

Quell

quote:

Last week he said that I’m primed to be frustrated and he keeps “helping” me be frustrated by misunderstanding me and not noticing things and being dense or oblivious. He also said that WE could figure out what is going on and help me become less frustrated. Hearing WE, although I still don’t quite believe in it, makes me feel hopeful.

If you were NOT frustrated by these "tricks" he's playing on you, it would be odd. I am talking to a consult T who has told me there is NEVER a good reason to provoke a client into a reaction. If something is meant to come up in a session, it will. Provoking a client is not honest and will not help the T and client arrive at an honest assessment of what is really going on.

Sometimes it's a good idea to trust ones OWN instincts on whether a relationship is worth preserving. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it's not.

Why is frustration a "bad" thing? It may have something valuable to tell us. Tolerance is a virtue, up to a point, and can become a liability. I don't tolerate dishonesty. This is when I politely tell the other to STOP being disrespectful, or I will have to leave if it continues.

Maybe the lesson is to learn to know when to stay and when to leave, and develop a reliable set of criteria for making these decisions. It took me a while. i'm still learning.

PS: If you and T agreed that it's OK for him to play the "provocation" game, then it's not for me to say it's wrong, either. Hope it all works out, seriously.

((((EFFED))))

The more thoughts you can verbalize to your T the better with the caveat being that hopefully the T will remain non-defensive throughout it all. So if you decide to open up about what's going on for you, you have to pay careful attention to her reactions and your reactions to her reactions.

I say that because me being me, I give so much weight to what other people think and say that I invalidate myself when confronted by someone in authority or someone who is very confident about themselves, like a therapist.

It's definitely a step in the right direction to question it because it sounds like you are in a lot of pain over it.

I don't get the sense that you feel like she cares about you. For me, that was key. It took a long time to get there but it was key.

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the other day, I lost it, and asked her tearfully what I did to make her hate me.

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I wish she would, it would show interest in resolving things

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I think a lot of it is her, too. I have a feeling my feeling this way annoys her to no end...

All important feelings. Don't ignore them.



Liese

effed, hi.

I'm in the middle of this, I believe.

It is so terribly confusing!

I think it might help to study into the dynamics of Transference in a book on psychology. Try to figure out just what's going on back and forth.

You probably already know transference re-enacts situations you got into with important people in your life way back. Somehow, this T may be bringing that out like no other. But that's the perfect chance to get a hold on what goes haywire in your life.

I think that reading more about transference in psychology could reveal a lot to you so you can get a handle on that. You would be way ahead...in my humble opinion, if you know more what's going on underneath your angers & frustrations at him.

It did work for me to study seriously into what Transference really means.