Day 103

I was so unimpressed by the whole getting up idea this morning. Well, that's not strictly true - I got up and got some cereal at about 9:45 but hadn't had enough sleep (due to stupidly staying up too late last night). I tried to get some more sleep but then really, really didn't want to get up like I really needed to in order to go into town for lunch with Pei again. The thought of having to go out for dinner this evening as well filled me with fear. I just wanted to stay in bed and avoid it all. I tried to persuade myself that I could go back to bed between the two meals.

I felt pretty dire cycling there (impressed with myself for not getting the bus though!) and thought I would just have to be honest with Pei and say I felt awful. But I wasn't. I pushed myself to make conversation even though I was struggling to do so: I just wanted to curl up in a corner. I went to the toilet and wished I could just hide in there.

After quite a bit, we hit on a topic of conversation that seemed to fuel itself and things got somewhat better. We wandered round town and had some yummy crepes. Then we went to meet a friend of Pei's who was going to show us round her department. This was all rather spontaneous and all rather too much for me. I knew that it was only for half an hour but I really struggled, seriously wanting to go home.

Cycling home (eventually), I felt pretty terrible again. I got in and chatted to Rhoda for quite a while. That was fine (slightly to my confusion and guilt).

In the hour or so I had of getting ready for dinner, I spent a fair amount of time lying on bed, messing around on the iPad. I felt pretty low and didn't want to have the pressure of keeping up a happy face for dinner.

I managed though and rather enjoyed the meal. I do hate the person I am in such settings though. Really not good.

Anyway, after all that waffle about the woes of being me, I shall write some useful stuff that I was reading about last night.

I was vaguely away of this term 'transference' in psychological counselling relationships, but I didn't really know what it meant. After coming across it again whilst reading in the early hours of today, I looked it up. Turns out it pretty much perfectly summarises my feelings towards Lucy (who I still miss :-( ).

It seems to be this idea of patients transferring their feelings towards some person from their life onto the psychologist/counsellor. So it could be anger towards an abuser and so the patient gets angry with the psychologist. Or, as it evidently is in my case, having sort of emotionally cut off from my mum, I treated Lucy a bit like a mum. It's not like the patient realises that is what they are doing and it presents itself in many ways, but apparently it is extremely common.

I always felt like it made me weird and pathetic the way I looked to Lucy like a mother (and seem to have done to various other women before). I know it is a pattern in my life and that it always ends up in pain because these poor people can't actually give me the love and care I feel I need. Then I feel depressed and like no one cares. I am, in effect, feeling like I don't have a mum.

This is all very silly given I have a perfectly good mum. But I think I know what went wrong (a tale for another day!). Lucy had said she thought it would help me if I tried to mend the relationship with my mum (I'm not convinced my mum would know there is a problem!).

Having now read about this transference and seen how common it is, I feel a lot less ashamed and everything seems to make a bit more sense.

The article I was reading was explaining that I see Lucy not as Lucy but as this person I want her to be. But that isn't who she is. She isn't my mum. I will have to read some more, but I think trying to note the differences between the real Lucy and the Lucy in my head might help me not miss her so much. It probably would help as well if I did invest some more effort into things with my actual mum. It's hard though. I have blocked her off emotionally. But it's ok, one step at a time...