I've been contemplating this for a while, and I have a few questions, and I'm hoping a few lovely people might be able to share their experiences …

From what i understand, there are two key transference feelings in therapy one might experience with / towards their T. One is wanting your T to be like a mum and care for you and protect your like a mum should. Then there's erotic transference, where you don't want them to be a mother to you, but a lover / partner.

My Questions are:

1) Can it change from one to another over time?

Or if you feel one way, it will stay that way, while you work through it?

2) If someone is experiencing erotic transference with their T, does that mean its 'progress' in that it's a more 'adult' version of the type of transference where you are coming from a child part and want to be held and 'mothered'?

3) Does erotic transference mean you've worked thoroughly worked through one set of painful feelings (i.e., wanting to be held and your T to be a mother type figure towards you), and they wont come up again?

I'm just looking back and trying to work out what it was I've felt with different Ts in the past, and what I'm feeling with my current T … I'm ok with the feelings I'm having, i don't feel ashamed - not that I'm 'there' to talking specifically about them with her YET, but it's not in the 'this i will NEVER talk about' - and i have discussed some aspects of transference with her already, albeit briefly - i sent her an email expressing my fears and pain, and how the therapeutic relationship mirror that of the one i had with my mother

1) someone potentially kind and caring at the end of it, but who cannot (my mother) or will not (my T) care for me in the way I'd like or need;

2)the power imbalance and how much more heavy my feelings are towards her than her towards me - with my mother, i needed her desperately, but at times she was pretty indifferent to me - it was like she could take or leave the love i had for her, whereas i NEEDED her to love me; with my T - it's more like how if i disappeared off the face of the earth, she would get over it pretty quick; whereas if something happened to her, i'd be truly devastated.

3)similar to that - is that she (my T) will always be more important to me, than i am to her. With my mother, i never gave up trying to get her to love me - if i was better behaved, if i managed to take better care of HER needs; If i got it RIGHT, she would love me back like i needed her to. But with my T - i know already, nothing will change how she is with me - nothing i say, or do, will 'have her care about me' in anywhere near the same depth i care about her. it already feels futile - Ouch.

We haven't really talked much more about it since - but a lot has stemmed from that email and discussion on it, in that being able to tell her how i felt was a HUGE step for me (even fi it was via email). I've never faced head on, any transference feelings I've had with a T.

it's both exciting, scary, happy and sad; loving and painful all in one!