The part about leaving your pain there can work without the fear of dependency. I had a similar offer come up--not about pain, but other things. I have a container of sorts that I took to my therapist's office, and it stays there. I can mentally get rid of stuff by sending it to that container to either deal with during the next session or just get rid of it so I can live my life during the week. No dependency, but there is some benefit from it for me.