Working through attachment/transference issues with a therapist

Has anyone here been able to improve deeply rooted attachment/transference issues with therapy? And I don't necessarily mean transference with your therapist (albeit of course it could involve your therapist), but perhaps (paternal/erotic) transference that you may experience with other authority figures also.

As I explained in another thread I have deeply routed transference issues with older male authority figures that have narcissistic personalities. I am aware of this, and I know I am re-enacting relationships out of my childhood, trying to 'set the record straight'. In other words: I try to re-enact emotionally abusive relationships with my family members with an emotionally distant or abusive older male, to try to get him to love me and take care of me. A feeling I never managed to get from my parents. It's a recipe for disaster, that has thus far resulted in several exploitative sexual relationships with my professor and my doctor that I feel have changed the course of my life. Just recently I ended up in a sexualized consult with my other doctor/specialist (in which we hugged all the time and he kissed me on the lips) and I really feel I must make a change in all these transference problems I have. Since it is destructing my life.

I have contacted different psychotherapists but have not found anyone that seemed either willing to work with or to have a lot of experience with deeply rooted transference/attachment issues. I live in a smaller country and the mental healthcare is not top notch here. Any advice how I could recover from my tendencies and how therapy could perhaps be of help in this?

thanks a lot!

Hi Rachelle1. Welcome to Psych Central. I am sorry you are in a situation where your healthcare situations are becoming clouded by sexual feelings. In US such behavior is grounds for a doctor to lose their license. My gut feeling is that when those professional relationships have deteriorated to the point where sex feelings are being acted on by the professional, they are no longer able to help as a professional. Seeking new mental health professionals or other doctors would be the course that makes sense to me.

These articles may be a help
Unrequited Transference – Eight Ways to Know You are in Love with your Therapist | Therapy Unplugged

How are therapists taught to deal with countertransference?

Transference: 13 Reasons Your "Connection" Could Be False | Caregivers, Family & Friends

Stay away from men and try to bond with women. Which might prove a big challenge, but a worthwhile effort, unlike getting male father figures to love you and then exploit you.

Also, become aware of your responsibility to others by empowering exactly the narcissistic types who should be shunned.

Try and focus on your own troubled relationship with everything you perceive as weak. Start developing solidarity with the oppressed instead of seeking protection from oppression by the oppressors. They work like a protection racket.

Love yourself. Do not depend on other people's love to you.

Great advice.

I had a tendency to idealize and obsess over mother figures. I spent nearly a decade trying to work through it in therapy with very little success. Now, I have learned to recognize early signs of idealization and avoid attachment with triggering people. I view it as a weak spot and work around it.

Can we work through the weakness in therapy? I’m not sure.

I appreciate your input. However, I have a chronic (physical) systemic disease, and unfortunately most of the specialists/doctors I have had to deal with are males in this particular field of medicine. So it is not as easy as avoiding these males.
I have had to have long term treatment with some of these specialists. This has now two times resulted in a sexual(ized) relationship. These transference issues I experience are very overwhelming and overpowering for me. It goes something like this: my family tells me how worthless I am or that I am making up how impactful my disease is and that I am in fact lazy. (While my disease is in fact affecting different organs by now). Empathy has been non-existent in my family when I grew up. After feeling at a loss and isolated, I run to such a figure I have developed feelings of paternal transference for to 'protect me.' Since with my disease I became socially isolated. If I had been less socially isolated, perhaps I would have less intense transference issues. It seems likely to me. The fact they are my caretaker probably plays a role in these transference issues I develop also. As well as the fact I feel terrified and alone in how this disease is breaking down my body. And I seek understanding with my doctor.
Indeed you would think I would understand by now I can not find 'safety' or 'protection' with these authoritarian male figures with narcissistic personalities. But unfortunately that is not how my mind works. That is why I stated I experience intense transference issues. My mind feels excruciating pain that these males that act like my father would, do not care for me or take care of me (but may step into a sexual(ized) relationship with me). As said: this is why I think I need psychological help.

"Also, become aware of your responsibility to others by empowering exactly the narcissistic types who should be shunned."
I am not sure of this comment and how I should interpret it in my situation? So I get treated by doctors that I end up in an exploitative sexual(ized) relationship with. I am sorry but I don't really understand what my responsibility to others is in this? I do comprehend I have a role to play in this also, and can not put all the blame on the other person, aka the doctor. And I do feel I need to work on this, since it is destructive. But I still do not understand what my responsibility is to others in this since I would be empowering the narcissistic types who should be shunned, with these relationships. But perhaps I need to broaden my perspective with this regard. For example, my current treating specialist is idolized by numerous patients and doctors worldwide. What is my contribution to this with the sexualized relationship we now ended up in? It is also not like I can shun him with the chronic disease I have, as you suggest: he is the most acclaimed doctor in this particular (sub-)field of medicine and has developed, published about, and extensive experience with some specific treatment options other doctors barely know how to implement. Patients (and doctors) come to see him from all over the world. With my disease I feel dependent on his help. It is not without reason that it is said that these doctor-patient relationships have aspects of dependency.

Perhaps I should also add that all of my personal and/or the few love relationships I had with males that did not develop from transference issues have been almost without exception with not-dominant males, some that would qualify as 'underdog', the 'oppressed types', that you are talking about. This is also the type of person I tend to sympathize with more, and feel drawn to more if I'm not experiencing transference.
But these transference problems are overwhelming/overpowering to me and seem to trigger memories out of my childhood. Unfortunately it is not as easy as letting go of this. It ends in suicid*l tendencies, etc. So these are very intense feelings I'm dealing with.

I do think if I were less socially isolated, less affected by my disease that is literally doing a number on my body and causing chronic pain, I may be less inclined to fall in this pattern of transference issues. I know that prior to my disease, when I had a good social network and was enjoying life these transference issues were far less present in my life.

Thank you very much for your helpful response CANDC. I would like to change doctors, but given the course of my disease, and the fact I'm receiving specific treatment only my current specialist has a lot of experience with (he is world-renowned in this field of work, has published extensively about this treatment and invented and first implemented the treatment), I feel I can not leave. I wish I felt less dependent on his medical care.

I did contact a female psychologist a few days ago that seems to have decent experience with attachment issues. (At least she wrote a publication about it). I honestly wrote to her I have intense attachment problems with male figures in an authoritarian position and feel I am in need of therapy, since the outcome of these attachment problems has been invasive. Perhaps I should not have stated this? But I want to be honest, to be sure I will find a therapist who knows how to work with this. In the past when I searched for a therapist and told about the problems I was dealing with, I was told they did not have experience with these kinds of things :-(. I live in a smaller country, not sure if that is the issue also. But I also had a bit of a feeling that these are problems they do not wish to work with.

I think to candidly state your problem cannot be a mistake in your situation. Also, in regards to what I wrote earlier - do you see a possibility to strictly disconnect transference from sexual realization? Because it is totally obvious, even to you, that, with sex, constructive ways of dealing with transference are obstructed. I mean - and this might sound a bit simple-minded, can you imagine using will power to simply avoid sex where sex would be deemed inappropriate?

I think it's quite worrying that all the therapists you have contact have said they wouldn't feel able to help you with this. I think most therapists, at least in the psychodynamic/analytic field should feel that transference and intense attachment issues are their bread and butter. It's totally central to therapy and working with it should be familiar to all therapists. In theory you should be able to change your attachment issues in therapy, it's called neuroplasticity. If you're interested in learning more about it, have a look at a podcast called Therapist uncensored. I've become a bit addicted since it's all about attachment and the science behind it. So fascinating.

As for your experience itself, I totally empathise with you. I struggle with very intense attachment issues although they are slightly different. Mine tend to be a tendency to cling onto potential mother figures and to become so obsessed in them that I'll spend hours finding any little bit of information about then or their family members on the internet and can't sleep and feel constant agitation and intrusive thoughts around this. I had 9 months of unsuccessful therapy to try and fix this. Needless to say I became totally obsessed with my therapist to the point where it started to ruin my life. The only good day I'm the week was the day before therapy. The therapy day was anxious anticipation and then afterwards unbearable pain having to deal with the separation and being apart for a week. My therapist was confident in being able to help me with this but wasn't able to help me with a rupture we had that resulted in me terminating the therapy. I felt she was unreliable.. forgot to reply to texts, promised things she then didn't do and then finally didn't act in anyway when I told her I was suicidal and she knew I was high risk for acting on these thoughts. Obviously I didn't so maybe her risk analysis was correct. I could never forgive her for leaving me alone in that situation though especially after the multiple small issues where I felt she'd let me down. I'm still unsure about whether I did the right thing with termination but felt that with my mental health deteriorating steadily in the nine months I saw her she probably just didn't know what she was doing. I'm now starting again with an obsession over my psychiatrist. It is so difficult and depressing and tiring to have this problem. And it's hard to explain to anyone that hasn't suffered from this kind of a thing how deep this need can be and how difficult it is to fight against it. It feels like trying to tell myself not to breath.

I'm still hopeful this can be resolved. I'm on a waiting list to start therapy again. If I were you I would keep looking for a therapist who is experienced in dealing with attachment issues. Hopefully you will find the right match. Good luck!

I had a destructive experience with one therapist. I don't think of it in terms of transference. That's a manipulative and obfuscating term. It was a dsyfunctional and exploitive relationship independent of anything in the past.

The problem was not transference. The problem was therapy.

Therapy created lots of new problems. It solved none.

Chronic illness and other factors made me more susceptible to the therapist's savior complex.

I think subjecting relationship patterns to this farcical and dangerous practice is not a good bet.

A one-hour-per-week attachment is a contradiction in terms.

As for doctors, I've spent hundreds if not thousands of hours studying health so I can minimize contact with all organized healthcare. Instead of looking up to these people i now view them mostly with contempt and horror.

My focus is on learning how my body works and how to take care of it, rather than entering into all these co-dependent or parasitic healthcare relationships.

At least you are aware of this issue and can stop it, even if you can't find a therapist. How did you become aware that this was a transference enactment? Have you ever tried therapy before?

How come you have not named your disease. It is a big part of your story. Do you feel shame?

But what does that actually mean... working with it? It's all so vague.

I read a book by a psychologist who suggested therapy could rewire the brain and therapists are like neurosurgeons. But he said little about how that would actually happen. And he never mentioned the possibility that this brain rewiring might go wrong.

Most of these people seem blind to the risks, unable to articulate what they're selling, and prone to magical thinking... eg I can rewire your brain with my special relationship. Or it's salesmanship.

One suggestion: Never, ever see the medical doctors without another trusted individual with you IN the room at all times. Never, ever see the doctor without AT LEAST one other person in the room, even if that is just a nurse or other medical assistant. YOU can make this an expectation and rule for your medical treatment which will at least prevent your contact with those medical professionals from becoming sexual.