I understand your black and white thinking in light of your experience with your last T! It's hard to find a middle ground! I didn't want to become dependent on my current T, not after going through it so many times before. But it happened anyway. I keep trying to find the middle ground but for me, maybe there isn't any.

If it's a pattern for you to become dependent, then it's something to work on with your T. It won't help to totally block her out so you can't get hurt again. We have to learn that relationships in RL aren't forever, either, and we can get hurt, but we need to connect with others anyway.

Since your T is former T's supervisor, so you say she must know about your situation with former T, I would suggest bringing it up with her. I know you don't want to do that, but then your reasons for pulling back now, from this T, would be out in the open and you can discuss them. I would ask her directly why she wants you to attach so much. Perhaps she wants to "do it right" this time, to undo the mess you got into with your last T? Saying she missed you sounds a bit much, but she must have her reasons. Instead of ruminating about it all, talking about it directly, as difficult as that may be, may be productive for you, in my opinion, of course.

It seems like you have a lot of internal conflict around dependency? Like there's a part of you that took over and acted very dependent with your last T, and now a part has taken over that is trying to stop that from happening again, so it's totally against any and all dependency? To me the most pertinent question is: WHY did that part of you feel the need to become so dependent the last time? What was it trying to accomplish or avoid?

Monalisasmile, I 100% get where you're coming from and I think a lot of people on this board struggle with this issue.

My t is very similar; encouraging contact and attachment. The other day she said "I think you're becoming dependent on me!" and I kind of freaked out.

Like you, I want to be able to meet my own needs. I am not comfortable relying on others. It has taken me a year to trust my t enough to get started in this process although as you well understand, it's probably been happening before, I just didn't want to admit it! My t allows contact out of sessions, and I have been FORCING myself to contact her one time a day, usually with a tiny little text. Sometimes it just says "hi" and she writes back with one or two words only.

I am forcing myself to do this but guess what, it is really, really helping. I am making great strides in trusting her, trusting myself, and understanding this concept of a "secure base" which allows us the ability to move forward on our own knowing that there's someone out there who really has our back. When I know my t is "there" I feel my anxiety decrease immediatly. I am now to the point where I can check in with a benign comment like "just saying hi!" even when I am having a rough time with all kinds of triggers, and even without telling her what's really going on, just one little response from her does wonders to help me. I am getting even better at saying "I'm having scary thoughts" or whatever, as well...so the check ins are helping in that sense, too.

That was a lot of verbiage to basically say I understand what you're going through, I've been there, I AM there, I fight against it 10 times a day, but I can also say that learning to reach out to her could really have a great impact on you. It sure is hard though!! Best of luck to you!

Many of us fear needing someone else because we haven't had good experiences with that in the past. Maybe people let us down, or left our lives in some way, leaving us to grieve the loss. That can be really painful. Being completely self-sufficient is a way to not let people hurt us. But it can hurt you just as much as being completely dependent can subsume you.

I used to say that I was fiercely independent. T says I've put emphasis on the "fierce." In order to keep people from hurting me by letting me down, I haven't given them the chance to help me.

No one can be completely independent. But there is a happy medium between being completely independent (and therefore mostly alone) and being completely dependent (and therefore losing yourself). Interdependence is a good way to think of it. There's no better relationship in which to develop those interdependency skills that with your therapist. Yes, at some point the relationship will end. But by the time it does, you will have developed the skills to get what you need from others outside of the therapy relationship. Moving on from your T is not something to fear - indeed, it's really the ultimate goal for anyone in therapy.

On a side note, my T has told me repeatedly that calling him between sessions for a crisis actually helps him. If I call him right at the start of an issue, he can help me work through it, but if I wait a long time, it can seem so big that it takes him a lot more work to help me through it. It's his sneaky way of using my desire to not be a burden to get me to do something that I consider being a burden.

I think my t finally got tired of me waiting to come to him overtly, saw that I was dropping hints, and finally pretty much just commanded me to call him a couple of years ago over the winter holidays. Well, to me it sounded like a command. I still wasn't sure absolutely needed to, but I was willing to do as he asked.

You know, you only need water to survive. After you pass the failure to thrive stage, the neglected among us are like those effin air plants.