** Re: Heavy transference issues

Hello, I don't know if you can give any advice on this...and help me normalize some feelings.

A little background: I am 33 year old male. I have been seeing a psychotherapist for the past 3 years. I have been on a break from therapy for the past month. (The break is because health insurance stress, work world stress, and the issues I'm dealing with in therapy have come to together to just feel a bit overwhelming). I am seeing my therapist for issues relating to a devasted self-image generated from a complilation of neglect, physical and mental and sexual abuse from family and peers. I have zero relationships outside of the aquaintances at work and my psychotherapist. My family (who has is part of why I'm in therapy in the first place) lives on the other side of the country and I don't feel comfortable talking to them about the issues that I'm dealing with yet (maybe someday I will feel comfortable enough to talk to them about it).

The question I have is about my current therapeutic relationship with my psychotherapist who I'll call: "Judy".

Part of what has been missing in my life from the start (at least from age 5 onward) has been a stable and consistent relationship of care and love. I have been to many therapists in my life, about 7 before I found "Judy". From the get-go 3 years ago, I felt comfortable with "Judy", I felt safety that I hadn't found since before age 5. She has been gentle, she listens well and feels very "human" as opposed to clinical and sterile like many other therapists I've been to. We have been working on sexual abuse and self-hate issues and I've been very slow and perhaps afraid to let go of my self-hate, even after 3 years with her.

With people like "Judy", I have had a history of "falling in love" with them. Though with my history, I'm not sure I know what love is.

But anyway. I know in my head quite well that my relationship with "Judy" needs to remain professional. And she has never done anything to lead me to believe otherwise. (I guess she has never done anything to lead me to believe that, other than her being very caring. But I've been starved for "love and caring", so I take whatever I can and hold on for dear life.)

But while my "head" knows our relationship must remain professional, my emotionally damaged "heart" both needs love and is starved for love and so wants "Judy" to love me. And coming from my history, "my heart" has so often seen people claim they "care about" me...but there are always strings attached. "Judy's" care of me has "strings" attached, meaning she can care about me but she can't love me and that she there are always barriers in her "fully" caring for me because it is not "safe".

Again, my mind understands why these safety and professional things are in place. But no matter how much my "head" tells my "heart" the truth and says "because she can't fully "love me" it doesn't mean that I'm not lovable"...a part of my heart will always feel some "in-love" feeling for "Judy". And this isn't the first time I have fallen "in-love" with people who have offered some care. It always ends up with me hurt and running away and scourging myself and yelling at myself and telling myself how poisonous I am.

The two main things asking for your help in working through:

(1) I might be able use the "troubling feelings of needing love" to work through the background issues of past, present and future relationship troubles and the issues that decimated any favorable self-image. My "troubling need" of her love feels like it is "bad" and "wrong" and sinful" and "criminal". But perhaps the longer I put up with it, the more I might be able to see my "need" for love in general is not bad and by association, I might be able to see I as a whole am not as bad as I've been thinking for the 20 plus years.
The trouble is, I want to run and never return: how do I help myself stay long enough to get through the discomfort (discomfort is a mild term)?

(2) this "troubling need" for love from "Judy" adds a lot of confusion. It might be tainting the therapeutic process at times, though this "troubling need for love" is partly why I'm in therapy in the first place. I don't know, maybe it isn't tainting things. Maybe it is because I don't think I deserve any kind of care at any level, and feeling any care for and from her on any level is viewed by me as "bad" and "criminal". So to stop the feeling of being "criminal" for needing love, I want to run. But anyway, because no matter how professional my therapist acts and how much I logically understand how things "have to be" - my emotionally damaged "child-like" heart wants her to love me (on many levels) sees her NOT reciprocating that need. So the emotionally damaged heart (despite my logical mind telling it otherwise) tells me that she doesn't reciprocate because: 1. there is something wrong with me and I am unlovable and disgusting 2. she hates me.

How do I "put up" or work through these uncomfortable issues?

If I were to leave "Judy" for some other therapist, I'd have to start all over again. It took me years to find "Judy", someone I feel safety with. The prospect of trying to find another therapist that I connect with and feel safe with is just too much. I feel I will just give up trying to heal and just stay alone for the rest of my life, accepting that I am unlovable.

Part of me feels that what I really need to heal is love. But I am not emotionally and socially equipped to find "real love". I have the poorest social skills and my self-loathing keeps me from believing I should subject anyone to my poison. So I need to go to therapy to help change that. But if I need "love" to heal, and I cannot get that from therapy, then what is the point of going to therapy?

In my mind, it's a Catch-22: I need "real love" to heal my self-image enough to find "real love" in the world. But if I need "real love" to find "real love", then I can never have real love. And since I cannot get that "love" from "Judy", what is the point?

Maybe I don't need love. Maybe love is just a "chemical imbalance" that needs to be controlled like all those psychotropic medications for all other "disorders". Part of me hates that I wrote about love as a "chemical imbalance" that needs to be controlled, but my "need" has been so hurtful in my life that it is hard to not wish sometimes that I didn't need anything.

You might wonder why I don't discuss this with my therapist "Judy". I have, several times, but because my "transference issues" at this moment are so high, it is hard to me to "hear" what she says in this regard. It is hard because highly resembles a hurtful incident from my past. About 17 years ago, I did bring up my concerns to someone I was "falling in love with". My intentions were good, I was trying to conscientiously work through it and understand my need even back then. But it really blew up in my face because the person was not equipped as a counselor (she was a high school teacher who casually helped me emotionally after an incident in my life and I ended up "falling in love with her".) It was such a hurtful incident that the date it happened has been etched in my mind and each year since I've re-lived the "pain" of that day, in a very post-traumatic way like it is still happening. I still have literal nightmares about it. That is one of the big issues I'm trying to work in therapy. It was very, very traumatic. So that past event from high school reminds me of my current "transference feelings" for "Judy". So while I have talked to "Judy" about the questions I'm talking to you about, I am usually very timid about it because of the past and because of the past I'm fearful of pushing the issue, because the trauma of the past has instilled some fear in me that I'll be abandoned if I express myself and my feelings. Actually, my logical mind can feel that "Judy" being a capable therapist would not leave and would understand it for what it is. But I'm so deep in it now that I'm have a hard time. So I'm hoping for a "sterile" third party opinion.

I don't know if you can help me, but whatever advice you can give on how to work through this heavy transference issue would be appreciated.

I apologize for the wordiness, I tend to ramble.

Thank you for your time.