Any therapists / counsellors out there who can give advice about transference?

[LostThePlotEncore]

As the title suggests really. I’ve been seeing a therapist since the end of last September and becoming a bit obsessed. I crave the space to feel heard and appreciated. I’m dealing with complex ptsd from SA.

What do you want people to say? You got into therapy because you hope to get unstuck from the pain of the past. The pain of change is always difficult. You can either persevere or give up.

We say there are 4 ways to solve any problem:

1. Solve or avoid the problem.
2. change your attitude to the problem.
3. tolerate the problem and your attitude to the problem.
4. stay miserable.

That’s it.

You are making therapy the problem but you chose therapy to solve the real problem which is that your abusive and traumatic childhood makes life difficult and unhappy.

Spend some time thinking about what you really want and go get it.

The days between sessions can be really hard as it is dredging up lots of stuff that you have buried. Cry and let it out, and try to be kind to yourself. I found the first 2 or 3 days after sessions particularly hard and my mind would be whirling. I am about 11 months in and still find it hard sometimes. I know it is difficult but try to stick with it. Write stuff down if it helps. Had therapist given you any grounding techniques? I get the transference- it does mess up the head!

Virtual hugs.💞

Agree to an extent, but it’s not always this simplistic when you’re working through trauma (emotional trauma in this case).

OP, With mum/dad issues you might be lacking a basic sense of safety/security. It might be that it feels really bad because you’re feeling how bad and lonely it felt to not have parental support in your childhood.

I’d suggest looking up Pete Walker’s work - his book ‘Complex PTSD’ is great or there’s bits of it on his website. Look up his ‘steps for managing emotional flashbacks’. You could be essentially flashing back to how things felt in childhood with little/no support around you, so there’s an element of having to remember that you’re an adult now, things are different, you have the ability to get what you need etc. You’re not stuck under your parents’ roof with your parents’ way of doing things anymore.

Also in trauma therapy you need to go slowly - really slowly. Right now, maybe you’ve gone too fast into the scary feelings and it’s overwhelming you, so you want to run away. That’s a sign you need to ease off a bit - talk it over with your therapist and explain how recent sessions have made you feel. Establish some sense of safety again before you go back into feeling the scary feelings again. Come up with a plan to keep a sense of grounding and safety between sessions. Some of this might be you and your therapist coming up with a plan, and some of it might be you figuring out what your adult self can do to keep you grounded through the week. Maybe that looks like easing off journalling/thinking about stuff during the week, making sure you take care of your body with food, exercise and sleep to reduce the risk of overwhelm. Maybe make sure you plan a catch up with a friend or a fun activity to distract you during the week. Maybe in therapy, it looks like your therapist getting to know a bit better when you’re showing signs of overwhelm or wanting to run away or shut down etc, so she can bring you back into the room/the present before you leave the session.

At some point this stuff does catch up with you. You can run away if you want to, but it’s always going to be with you until you brave going into it. You’ll be okay though, given the right approach and support.

www.pete-walker.com/13StepsManageFlashbacks.htm

Thank you so much Calypso. I needed to read that. There are various layers of baggage. Starts with childhood issues, mum had bad post natal depression which affected her ability to bond with me. Subsequent stories off of that but never anything awful or criminal. Just sad. Then r*ped as a young adult. There’s a lot to unpack. And I know I need to do this. For me and my kids. But not knowing how long this will take and what it will look like is so hard.

I agree with the Pete Walker rec.

I have just ordered the Pete Walker book. Probably help me keep my head busy!

That is a huge amount to unpack. And I understand uncertainty and not knowing how long it will take. I once heard someone say that welcoming your feelings is like having a small child asking you for something. If you meet them with impatience, run away from them or push them away, it’s only going to make them cry louder. It’s like that with your inner child (that part of you that’s in distress and needs soothing, comfort, rest, recovery etc). If you meet your inner child with impatience or wanting to get it all over with, it’s not really healing. It’s really difficult to learn this on a feeling level (rather than just knowing it rationally) and lean into feeling the feelings and needs.

It’s like that Carl Rogers quote - something like: ‘The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.’

Just try to rest and give yourself whatever you need to feel rested and calmer again today. You can worry about tomorrow tomorrow! And you might feel more ready to go back to therapy another day soon :)

At the same time worrying the therapist might win the lottery and leave me half unpacked!!!!

You're in a very normal phase of therapy. It doesn't last forever and you CAN function between sessions. You ARE functioning. I know it feels intense but you're actually doing very well. We all go through the clingy stage.

Im glad it is normal. When will it end?????

Wrong question! 😉Spin it round - ‘how much can I love this?’

Thanks for replying calypso but I’m afraid I don’t quite follow… 🤔

So I spoke to my therapist last session about some mum issues. I’ve now discussed them again with my mum and it seems that I have mis remembered them. I don’t think my mum has mislead me on purpose, I think the story has just got muddled. Now I feel like I’ve lied to the therapist and that I need to tell her the real story which is a little better but different. My head is so anxious.

so Wednesday was a bad night and after I typed this I had a really bad anxiety attack. How can I support myself in between sessions and dealing with all this shit?

It sounds like you need to do some grounding. Let the therapist know your body is becoming anxious in between sessions

it’s sounds like a trauma response - there’s plenty of stuff on the internet around managing trauma responses. Try to think about what it’s trying to do or tell you

it may have been stimulated by attaching to your therapist - the body remembers how unsafe close relationships were in the past and get triggered

Thanks marma, this is definitely it. Do I tell her the mum story again with the corrections? I don’t want her to think I’ve lied.

What makes you believe your mum’s version and not your own truth?

could this be a root to the anxiety?

Bring the entire sequence back to your therapist:

I told you X
I went to my mum and she “corrected or explained” my version.
Now I am more confused, feel guilty, and am worried about how you (therapist) think about me (patient.)

Let your therapist do her job! Let her help you!

Its a symptom of how difficult your childhood was that you are experiencing nearly continual overwhelm and anxiety over the relationship with your therapist. You imagine/anticipate/fear that she will “retire” or “win the lottery” or “think you lied” all of which are fantasies of rejection, abandonment, and which would naturally put an end to the therapeutic relationship.

I have sat in her chair, as I am a therapist, your concerns are natural parts of the therapy process. The closer you get to her the more anxious you become, for a while, that she will leave or reject you as “imperfect” or “a liar” or whatever else judgmental and cruel things were said and done to you as a child.

She won’t reject you or fault you for having said one thing in therapy about your family and then denied it. Dysfunctional, toxic, abusive, or just very fake families often produce children with imperfect memories, or who feel impelled to protect the family by “correcting” the record. In reality patients tell the truth in one session and then abase themselves and say they “misremembered “ or “misunderstood” in the next because they fear the cruel repercussions of family members for having exposed the family’s secrets and abuse to outsiders.

This black and white thinking—-that you have either told the exact photographic truth or you have lied is not useful. Whatever you told your therapist was your experience as you remembered it. The fact that your mother claims to have a different interpretation or more context is not a sign that you “lied.” Its just more context.

At any rate your therapist will havd seen it all before. Stay in the therapy. Work somatically to calm yourself between sessions. Swim, dance, meditate, take up pottery, yoga, walk…whatever feels good.

Thank you both so so much. My mum told me that what I remember now involved my dad as the catalyst and not her.

Can you afford more frequent therapy. The kinds of therapists who usually work in the transference also tend to see some patients more than once per week.

I have a question about therapy generally:

Is it actually a good idea for OP to talk to her mum about this ? when the issue is actually her childhood? When I read that OP essentially came out of therapy and went straight to her mum I wondered…. (OP this isn’t meant as a criticism of you - I totally get why you’d do this)

I’ve wondered about more frequent appointments but I’d worry the transference would get stronger.

Would you consider using chatgpt between sessions? Lots of people on this thread say they use it in conjunction with therapy and that it helps them to process things https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5338076-to-think-chat-gpt-is-better-than-some-real-therapists?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

Chatgpt is a good idea

you don’t need to think about the transference . Most clients don’t even know what it is. Let the therapist guide you and concentrate on just taking yourself

good idea for more sessions also - that would hold you more

transference is complicated to understand as a client and it’s not straight forward. therapists can work with it, or in it, or ignore it and they are different theoretical ideas - it’s not for you to worry about

I think you have a trauma response of trying to have too much understanding of the process instead of just being in it - evidence here - it’s a common trauma response to try and “find” the answer and control the process

really - just go and bring yourself as much as you can