Posted by Bailey777 on August 22, 2005, at 21:13:48
In reply to Re: Do you tell your T about transference? » Bailey777, posted by Tamar on August 21, 2005, at 14:49:06
> Hi Bailey, and welcome to Babble!
>
> Well, I usually think it’s best to tell. I think most therapists handle it sensitively and gently. Having said that, there are a few who don’t handle it as well as they ought to, so you should trust your judgement. But if you’ve been in therapy for two years with this therapist, maybe you have come to trust her enough to tell her?
>
> I’m amazed that your gaydar works in therapy! I can’t imagine my gaydar being any use in a therapeutic setting! I can imagine that seeing your therapist at a lesbian event would make you think about her sexually, and it’s perfectly natural to experience erotic transference. From what I’ve heard, many people decide to quit therapy rather than tell their therapist, but I think that probably makes everything harder rather than easier. I didn’t tell my therapist (I kept going for months) and now I wish I had told, because now I’m sure he would have handled it well. I finished therapy five months ago, because I was no longer depressed, and now I very much regret never having told him how I felt about him.
>
> So it’s just my two cents, but I reckon that if you tell her it will be quite a relief.
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> Tamar
>
>
Hi Tamar --Thank you for your response. You bring up a very good issue and that is the one of trust. After reading your post, I thought that this may not about having transfer issues but my inability to trust someone and disclose my feelings and thoughts (and you have guessed it that I do have trust issues, anxiety, depression, fear of judgement, etc), so in some ways it makes sense that I am actually holding back because of those issues, not because I find her attractive. I've set a lot of boundaries in therapy, which she does respect, but I think I may be finally at the point where I can express myself without fear. And maybe that for me is the scary part. Thanks for letting me think about this in a new perspective.
poster:Bailey777
thread:1466
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050813/msgs/545370.html