special

What is it about this crazy need to feel special? One psychology book said that erotic transference, or what the lay person calls a hair flaming crush on your therapist, is simply the need to hoard a feeling of specialness. Apparently I want to hoard this special feeling in my pants which makes no sense to me, but there you are.

My specialness problems come from a long way back. I dealt with varied and numerous abuses in my early childhood, but probably the largest blow to my ego happened on the worst and best day of my life when my father packed a pair of underwear for me in a green bag and drove me to the rape crisis center where he left me and I got a new set of parents. I was exactly one month away from my sixth birthday. My new mom was a teacher at my school. She came to pick me up in an old jalopy . I had two questions for her on the way home

1. Did I have a new dad? (yes) and

2. Did he have a beard? (Not now, but he used to have one).

I sat like a mouse on the sofa while my new Mom quietly bustled around the kitchen preparing dinner. My new dad came home about a half hour later introduced himself and then both he and mom gave me plenty of space for the rest of that evening.
It soon became clear to me that I had traded up in a big way. My parents were gentle and patient with me. They were awesome people with special training dealing with emotionally disturbed children. In many ways they were the best imaginable fit for me……. So by now I should be totally cured of all ills, yes? I mean how could it hurt that my father had left me to strangers if those strangers were able to provide a home that was about a million times more loving? My dreams had come true I was born into the wrong family and it turned out I really was a princess with a castle and a king and queen waiting for me. My new perfect home.

It turns out that things are not so simple. My mother, loving woman, and expert on disorders of early childhood that she is, never recognized the anxiety disorder that was almost literally eating me alive. Instead she put me on meds for ADD, which masked some of the attention problems that come with acute anxiety. It was enough to get me through school with great grades, but socially I was a cripple limping through my childhood. I withdrew into books and felt some compensation for having no friends with nearly always being the teacher’s pet.

Now I am a 30 year old woman with an expensive degree from a top tier liberal arts college who has travelled the world. I am also someone who sleeps on her ex’s sofa because she so frozen by self-doubt and anxiety that she can hardly function. I have no career to speak of, hardly any friends and not a single hobby or interest to make me excited about getting up in the morning. So much for the fairy tale.

But there was a break in the clouds. My mother finally talked me into going back into therapy. About two months in I began making strides I had been able to go almost an entire month without a panic attack. I was feeling hope and confidence and just a little glimmer of liking myself again and then, there it was, a snake in the grass. Feelings that threatened to derail every hope I had for getting better.
Instead of running away I decided to stand and deal with it. I talked about it. I'm not sure my therapist won't end up dumping me but I'm glad I did it.

Usually a therapist realizes that a patient is struggling with transference when they suddenly start acting whacky in sessions like avoiding talking about anything that might make them look bad, constantly canceling or rescheduling sessions, or just plain disappearing. If the person has pulled a Houdini it is, unfortunately, too late to address the problem. There are a lot of people on the net advocating not telling your therapist for fear that you’ll be dumped. Better dumped than wasting your time and money. You have to decide how much you want to get better. Most of us, I believe, come to therapy with abandonment issues, but in session is the time and place to deal with it. For me, I don't feel like its much of a choice. The alternative is too frightening to think about.