I have been out of therapy for 5.5 years. I had been in therapy off and on for over 50 years before that.

I didn't have a problem with other addictions, but at the time therapy stopped -- the therapist terminated it, saying she didn't "have the emotional resources" to continue -- I had already begun to see and wonder if therapy were not like an addiction for me.

Although I don't think the therapist terminated because she saw it as an addiction for me -- she did provide the name of a referral -- it may well be that terminating the addiction was not such a bad thing, overall. Although -- the withdrawal effects have been horrible. If I had not had a good support group, plus the opportunity to vent on this forum, I'm not sure that I could have "made it". Not really sure that I have made it, yet.

It may be that therapy helped me uncover, or learn about, some well-hidden emotional aspects of myself. Some of them remained hidden though -- until the termination itself triggered them. Leaving me alone with intolerable stuff -- and feeling like an intolerable person -- which is all bound up with feelings of abandonment and rejection from my childhood that I didn't know I had. That is, my defense mechanisms, including over time the addiction to therapy, kept them out of full awareness. How to deal with them, integrate them, etc., all on my own has been a bear! Still working on it. And without the support systems I mentioned it would have been impossible.

How to make a life for oneself, with other people, without the help of other people? That's a dilemma I am still working on. Therapy promised, or seemed to promise, that help. But maybe that's the allure of anything addictive -- the promise, and the short-term relief, but then. . .causes problems of its own.