I wish
my therapist was my mother. On some days when I look particularly unwell
she says she wishes she could take me home and look after me. I totally
understand that this can and will never happen and the therapy is always
completely professional—no touching, no hugging etc. I know that I feel
like this because my own childhood and relationship with my mother was lacking
in many ways. But at the same time I desperately crave the closeness of a
mother/daughter relationship with her. We’ve talked about it. I’ve
written for hours about it. But I still can’t get rid of this enormous
longing and pain. What am I missing here?
First of all, keep in mind that psychotherapy is more often
than not a process of identifying and naming the parental failures that caused
you to develop your characteristic
psychological defenses for
protection from the pain of your mother’s failures. This is reality. And you cannot
“get rid” of reality. That is, it’s expected that anyone who starts psychotherapy
to overcome the pain of a failed mother will develop a
transference reaction to the
psychotherapist in which all the yearnings for what a mother failed to do are put
upon the psychotherapist.
With that as an introduction,
let’s understand that psychodynamic psychotherapy actually has two distinct, yet
interrelated, aspects to it.
The first aspect
is insight. That is, in order to achieve healing for the
unconscious wounds
that trouble you, it is necessary to look back into your past to recover
any emotions that
you have suppressed about past events. Then it will be necessary to understand
how those emotions continue to live within you now, right in the present,
as unconscious motivating forces for all your current experiences. (Because
unconscious motivations “drive” your behavior, these unconscious
motivations are technically called drives in psychoanalytic
language.)
The second aspect
is behavioral change. That is, once you understand how the past continues
to live within you emotionally, you then have access to the ability to make
conscious decisions to act differently in the present from the ways you are
being driven to act unconsciously.
Both of these
aspects take a lot of time and hard work. Although the insight work initially
precedes any behavioral changes, ultimately, as the therapeutic work progresses,
the two processes occur together. Moreover, even after you have concluded
the psychotherapy work, the rest of your life will be a continuous process
of insight into your unconscious motivations followed by immediate conscious
decisions about how to act in psychologically healthy and
honest
ways.
Now, from what you
say, you have done some good work in regard to insight. You understand that
something was lacking in your childhood, you feel the emotions related to the
lack, and you recognize the emotional yearning in the present for your mother
in the person of the psychotherapist.
So, what is missing
here?
Well, if psychotherapy
is nothing more than insight, and if all that you do is dwell in the emotions of
what you lacked in childhood, you will get stuck in self-pity. You will repetitiously
act out your yearnings for your mother in your relations with others. And all that
repetition will take you
nowhere but in circles.
Now, it’s sad that your
psychotherapist has made the blunder of wanting to
rescue you.
That was enough to lead you astray.
But you can recover if
realize that your psychotherapist’s blunder has brought you right into the place of
your anger at your mother. That is, in your anger at your mother you want to make her
say, “I’m sorry” and then start giving you the love you crave from her. Now, in the
transference, you’re angry at your psychotherapist. Although you say that you understand
that you cannot have from her “the touching, hugging, etc.” that you would like, there’s
an unconscious part of you that does not understand and is angry. And the anger expresses
itself in your wanting to “get rid” of the pain. Contrary to reason, you unconsciously
want your psychotherapist to say, “I’m sorry” and give you exactly what you want—that
is, the love your mother did not give you.
So, what’s missing here now?
What’s missing is your understanding that you can succeed at life without your mother’s
love. Even if your mother never says, “Sorry” you can succeed at life because now you
have other resources than your mother—such as your psychotherapist. And you can still
succeed at psychotherapy even if your psychotherapist does not “love” you. Thus, you
don’t have to “get rid” of your desire for your psychotherapist to love you—you just
need to realize that you don’t need her to love you for you to succeed at psychotherapy
or at life, and then you will be healed.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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