Exploring Transference with Amy Avalon

Exploring Transference with Amy Avalon

Trigger Warning: discusses therapy abuse

Have you ever felt an inexplicable pull toward your therapist? Or found yourself reacting to them with emotions that seemed too big, too personal, too charged to make sense? That's transference. It's one of the most powerful, and least talked about, dynamics in the therapeutic relationship. And in the wrong hands, it becomes the mechanism through which therapists cause some of the most devastating harm.

Bernadine sits down with Amy Avalon, a retired psychotherapist and passionate advocate for survivors of sexual and emotional abuse by their therapists, to pull this largely hidden dynamic into the light. Together they unpack what transference actually is, how it shapes our behaviour inside and outside the therapy room, and how a client can begin to recognize and work with it rather than be silently controlled by it. They also go where most conversations don't: What should you do when you feel transference toward your therapist? How do you name it out loud? And critically, how should a therapist respond to that disclosure, and what should they absolutely never do?

Music by Shari Ulrich

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