After reading (twice) "Attachment in Psychotherapy" by David J. Wallin, I have become much less worried about my attachment to my therapist. I understand its value now and I believe that once I've resolved my issues, attachment won't be a problem anymore.

A few quotes: " unless a therapist can enable his patient to feel some measure of security, therapy cannot even begin. Thus we start with the role of the therapist in providing a secure base."

"Attachment is a biological imperative rooted in evolutionary necessity." He goes on to explain that insecure attachment may happen with infants with their caregivers and the role of the therapist is to 're-design' attachment for the adult in order to overcome poor relational behaviors.

"Attachment theory focuses on intimate bonds, the nonverbal realm, and the relation of self to experience. The same three themes organize the model of therapy as transformative through relationship.

"In this model, the patient's attachment relationship to the therapist is foundational and primary. It provides the secure base that is the sine qua non for exploration, development, and change.

"This sense of a secure base arises from the attuned therapist's effectiveness in helping the patient to tolerate, modulate, and communicate difficult feelings.

"By virtue of the felt security generated through such affect-regulating interactions, the therapeutic relationship can provide a context for accessing disavowed or dissociated experiences within the patient that have not - and perhaps cannot- be put into words.

"The relationship is also a context within which the therapist and patient, having made room for these experiences, can attempt to make sense of them.

"Accessing, articulating, and reflecting upon dissociated and unverbalized feelings, thoughts and, and impulses strengthen the patient's 'narrative competence' and help to shift in a more reflective direction the patient's stance toward experience.

"Overall, the relational/emotional/reflective process at the heart of an attachment-focused therapy facilitates the integration of disowned experience thus fostering in the patient a more coherent and secure sense of self."

Before I read this amazing book, I was embarrassed and ashamed of the 'dependency' I felt towards my therapist. I am a professional woman who has a lot of responsibility to other people. I lead and manage others and it was highly uncomfortable for me to be in such a vulnerable role. I am a take-charge kind of person and I resisted mightily the emotional dependency I was feeling towards my T.

But now, I embrace it as much as I'm able. I understand that to overcome my issues, I must allow myself to be as open and honest as possible. And to deny my current need for my therapist, I believe, would delay and inhibit my progress.