I am pretty attached to my therapist, and I don't see it as a bad thing. It's a lot like the John Bowlby/secure base concept. My trust in her helps me take risks and explore stressful feelings and ideas in therapy. It also helps me try things that are scary in real life (for me, that's trying to make new and stronger social connections) because I know I can count on her to reassure me, problem-solve when things aren't going well, pick me up and dust me off when I get rejected, etc.

I also use the feelings of closeness and the fear that closeness with her ignites to explore counterproductive ideas about relationships and about myself that I picked up in previous relationships. It's been the only thing that has made even the smallest change in the negative self-perception that has kept me depressed since I was a young teen. Self-help, trying harder, and other types of therapy haven't even made a dent before.

It's fascinating and frustrating that I make a TON of negative assumptions about how my therapist feels about me. It's the same assumptions that keep me from getting close to other people. Except with her, I feel safe enough to tell her what I assume she is thinking and feeling, and she is qualified to help me unpack those assumptions and figure out what's useful or accurate and what isn't.

Honestly, it's exhausting work, and I don't think I could ask anybody else to do this with me because it's the kind of intensive focus on one person that doesn't exist in healthy adult relationships. There is a flavor of parent/child in that asymmetry, and that's why she gets paid, to balance the scales because she is not my parent and I am not a/her child. I have a great spouse, but I could never even ask her to help me with this. A therapist is the only option for me.

It's tricky stuff because I can see where some therapists would be tempted to make promises they can't keep or to cross boundaries that undermine the therapy. Whenever I get nervous about my T moving, quitting her job, or dying, she just says "I don't have any plans to go anywhere." Not as reassuring as "I will never leave," but much more realistic. Anyway, I can see where this kind of work with somebody who is strongly attached could go horribly wrong. And intense feelings on my part mean that ruptures are usually gigantic and awful too, which I think can be uncomfortable for both of us. But so far I keep feeling generally better. I feel differently about other people and myself, which is my main barometer of success. And I hope therapy keeps going well until my attachment shifts and I don't need to see my T anymore.