I have
a tremendous amount of transference going on with my therapist to the point
where I can say I feel almost in love with her. I resent the fact that she
has a life outside of our hourly weekly session. I resent the fact that she
has other clients. I know that this is her job, but want more from her then
she can offer within the confines of therapy. I have spoken to her about
this, and she says she can love me with “words.” But as time goes
on, I feel more and more dependent and angry with her for not giving me what
I want. She keeps trying to get me to express my anger with her, but I have
a hard time doing it. Should I terminate with her or keep talking about the
feelings? I’ve been seeing her for four years. When I first met her,
there was no impact or impression for me, but has time goes on, I feel almost
obsessed with her.
The more you “keep talking about the feelings”
the more you will learn about yourself. In fact, when you say, “I know
that this is her job, but want more from her then she can offer within the
confines of therapy,” you are actually stating the very reason you are
angry with her.
Most likely you have felt this way—i.e., that you want more than anyone offers
you—about other persons in the past, especially your parents, so what is occurring
with your psychotherapist is really nothing new. Therefore, when you tell me
that you are “almost in love with her” you are really trying very hard
unconsciously to
convince yourself that you are “almost in love with her”.
Why? To avoid the facing the truth of your anger. If you love her, you can’t
hate her, right? Or so we all would like to believe. Thus you are on the edge
of encountering the ugly truth about
“common”
love that everyone resists admitting: that in this case, your feelings
of love are nothing but a form of bribery to avoid your own feelings of
frustration.
Sadly enough, when
you say that you want more from your psychotherapist than she can offer,
you are unconsciously admitting that she really can’t give you anything
that you really need: the deep philosophical understanding that this
erotic feeling is just an
illusion to protect
you from your own emotional pain and frustration. Her saying that she can love
you “with words” clearly missed the point, and so she made a huge therapeutic
blunder. In effect, she teased you with what you wanted while she failed to explain
to you the futility of what you wanted. So, ultimately, you may just have to
terminate with
her, not because she won’t give you what you want but because she lacks the
understanding of how to teach you what you really need. Thus, you really have
wasted four years with her.
So, maybe you will
risk taking all your frustration into one of your sessions and therein find your
“love” suddenly flip-flop
into hate. And then maybe you will learn exactly what you need to learn about how
you have been fooling yourself all these years with the false belief that “love”
can cure your emotional distress.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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