Posted by Penny on January 12, 2004, at 14:12:09
In reply to Really nervous about talking to therapist..., posted by Pandabear on January 11, 2004, at 22:10:54
I was experiencing a lot of those feelings with my former T when she was pregnant - and it was strange - I knew she was pregnant before she told me, but not because she was showing, but because I sensed something. And it turned on all of my fear of abandonment stuff, even though she did return after her maternity leave. But that was an extremely painful time - feeling so very attached and dependent upon her.
I wrote her a letter and then read it to her in our session. I cried while I wrote it and had a hard time reading it, but I managed to make it through. And I'm glad I did, because she handled it exactly how I'd hoped she would. She told me that she thought the letter was very affectionate and that she did care about me and really wanted things to get easier for me and so on. I'm sure I have the details written in my journal. Anyway, she totally understood my transference issues (if that's what you want to call it), and my fear was that calling it transference somehow 'cheapened' my feelings in a way - made them seem less real, not that they felt less real, but I had a fear that perhaps it meant they didn't mean as much. But she disagreed. Whatever you want to call those feelings, she agreed they are powerful and meaningful and they can be good fuel for therapy.
Here's the thing - it's been nearly a year since I last saw my former T. I moved and continued seeing her occasionally on the weekends and found a new T, who shares some commonalities with my former T but is quite different in other ways, and this has been one heck of a year, and so much has happened, but I have formed (I think) a healthy attachment to my current T. And I KNOW I wouldn't be able to feel this way for my current T had I not worked through so much with the first T. My attachment to my current T isn't as dependency-related, right now anyway. But these attachments, IMO, go through ups and downs - sometimes I think I couldn't live without her, and other times I'm okay if I don't see her for a couple of weeks. It just depends.
Anyway, I hope your session went okay with your T today. I completely understand how strong such feelings are and how crazy they can make you feel sometimes! But it CAN get better. IMO it means you are doing something important with your T. Let us know how things went.
P
poster:Penny
thread:299599
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040110/msgs/299874.html