Too attached??

I think I am too attached to my T, and I don't think it's a secure attachment at all, at least most of the time it is not. If it's possible to do emotional stalking, I'd be tried and convicted easily!

ptsd you sound really close to your t. which i think is really nice place to be.

I don't know that I think that "too" attached exists, from the therapist's point of view.
I think attachment can feel uncomfortable to the patient, and that might lead to thoughts of being "too" attached. It's something to talk about in your therapy, with the person you are feeling that way about.

Thanks Echoes, I think that might be what is going on.

Thanks Suzzie, yes my T and I are very close.

I don't think anyone can actually be "too attached." If you're insecurely attached then you're not attached enough because if you're attached enough then you don't feel insecure and clingy and worried about the relationship. I think people are at the highest level of attachment when the attachment is secure, but because it feels much more stable and less intense when they're not anxious and preoccupied, they may erroneously think they're less attached. It's a kind of paradox -- they're really less attached when they feel "too attached" because they haven't yet reached the level of secure attachment -- the insecure attachment is tenuous and fragile, like it always was for me until I finally felt securely attached to my T. I know now that I'm not any less attached to my T than I was when the attachment was insecure -- in fact, I am more attached to him now, but I no longer feel "too attached". I felt "too attached" for a very long time because I was anxious and clingy and preoccupied and sometimes very ambivalent about attachment. I wanted it but feared it and it was always on my mind, and it made me feel crazy until I finally felt secure. Now it doesn't make me feel crazy or anxious anymore and I don't feel desperately in need of his frequent attention in order to feel safely cared for within the limits of our relationship. If he and I hadn't spent so much time talking about attachment and unmet needs then I probably wouldn't have recognized these new feelings as secure attachment, and I guess I would probably see it as being "less attached" now because it feels less intense and much more calm and stable than it did previously. But when I felt "too attached" I often wanted to pull back to protect myself from the intensity of the feelings because I didn't know what secure attachment felt like, so I thought that if I was already "too attached" when I was insecurely attached then I'd be WAY too attached if I ever felt secure.
But now I know that's not how it works. Secure attachment is something that feels good but not overwhelming. It feels safe and it feels comfortable. I don't worry about being rejected for telling him something shameful and I know without a doubt that he will not get rid of me (unless he had to leave his practice for some reason) and it just feels calm and safe and good. The jealousy is gone, the need to be special is gone, and I don't feel threatened by disagreements between us anymore. When we don't see eye to eye it doesn't make me anxious; it doesn't make me think the relationship is over unless we always agree. It's hard to explain what it feels like but now that I've experienced it for the first time ever, it's awesome.

Thanks for sharing PreacherHeckler.

I have to chime in here because I found this excerpt from David J. Wallin´s book about attachment in the section "Overcoming the patient´s fear of security" which I think summarize very well what therapy for those of us who have insecure attachment styles is all about.

"That the unresolved patient has trouble tolerating a secure relationship with an empathically attuned therapist is a paradox that defines much of the treatment. Creating a relationship in wich the patient can actually feel safe is essential and difficult. It should be seen as both the ultimate goal of therapy and a precondition for beginning to resolve the patients trauma. This way of putting it will probably sound contradictory until it is grasped that creating a secure relationship and confronting trauma are intertwining processes. As I will explain, the incremental achievment of a sense of safety in relation to the therapist does reolve trauma, while the incremental resolution of trauma gradually obviates the necessity in the patient to reexperience the therapeutic relationship (and others) as a rendezvous with old threats."

I think what happens when you move from an insecure to a secure attachment is that you are no longer afraid of and for the relationship. The dependency stabilizes and levels off so that you don't feel extremely needy and dependent one day and highly ambivalent or frightened of it the next. You begin to accept the level of dependency that is healthy for a therapeutic relationship, and you can separate fact from fantasy because you can accept and understand that you didn't get what you needed as a child and you don't need to push those feelings away anymore because they are understood and accepted by your T. You can talk freely about what you wanted and needed without feeling ashamed of those needs. You can talk about your fantasies and wishes that your T could be the parent you never had, and as you talk about it you become better able to regulate all the feelings associated with unmet needs because your T understands and doesn't make you feel ashamed or embarrassed about having those fantasies and wishes.
You slowly move past the wishes and fantasies to an acceptance of the boundaries and limits of the therapeutic relationship. You are no longer afraid to tell him certain things about yourself because you are confident in his ability to be there to listen. You trust him when he says he can hear anything you want to tell him and you feel safe enough to show him who you really are. You stop worrying about what he thinks of you every time you tell him something shameful because you believe him when he says that it takes great courage and strength to face your own demons.
And slowly, over time, you become comfortable with your place and position within the relationship, so you aren't threatened by your T's relationship with other people because your own place and position are secure. No one else will "take it away" from you. You understand and accept that each relationship your T has with other people, whether they are his patients, colleagues, friends, or family, is special in its own way because it is unique, and you realize that your own relationship with your T is just as special because it is unique, so you begin to let go of the jealousy and rivalry and desperation that previously characterized the relationship when your own place in your T's life wasn't secure. You don't need to try to make yourself become more important to him than you actually are because you can accept yourself for who you are in his life, and you can accept his role as your T. You don't need to look for ways to become "special" or more important to him than his other patients/clients are because you are comfortable with who YOU are and what YOU bring to the relationship. The need for extra contact in order to be "remembered" between sessions diminishes because you realize the relationship still exists and he doesn't forget about you even though he doesn't think about you as much as you think about him. Your extreme sensitivity to everything he says and does is greatly diminished because his every word and action no longer characterize the totality of your relationship -- he isn't wonderful one day and heartless the next based on what he does or doesn't do. He can make mistakes or refuse to give you something you want and it doesn't feel threatening because you know it doesn't reflect the overall quality of your relationship. You don't need more from him than he can give you because the security of your relationship allows you to feel less needy within the relationship -- you can look beyond it to other relationships because you have a safe base to return to.
It really is a fascinating process that you can only fully appreciate AFTER you've reached a place of secure attachment, because until then you have nothing to compare it to.

PreacherHeckler, what you wrote is wonderful!!!! I'm happy for you that you feel all that in your T-relationship. I'm also happy that I feel a lot of what you wrote in my T-relationship, which means it's getting more secure! Thanks!

I don't think I am too attached anymore, but I was for a while......I thought about her way too much. I came home from session and had to take a long nap and went over all her words/gestures/hugs (when I got them, that is!) in my mind. That was obsession........since we don't hug anymore, the attachment has changed. It feels more reasonable, in that I don't think of her all the time or attach undue importance to words/gestures, etc.
She left a message on my phone while I was in hospital that I have saved and keep listening to though, because it means a lot to me.....so I am still quite attached and not ready to leave her by any means!

With my first T, I became attached. I guess I had attachment issues stemming from an abusive mom and family. I think that I needed to attach to heal. Now with my second T 20 years later, I am just a little afraid of her, but I do not see that intense attachment forming. I am secure, just a little shaken and mixed up. I think of my first T lovingly and I know she is not family, but my therapy mommy. T's should have a special definition created for them to represent our relationship with them. This is a special relationship. Anyone who has a special T understands, but outsiders do not understand. My new T and I talked about this because I was ashamed of my feelings for first T. She was very supportive. T's must be trained to do this or something so we can share and heal and be emotionally healthy. Maybe you can ask your T what is to much?

I really like this idea! Thank you for this lovely thought.

I like it as well.

That is absolutely true. It took several years for me to become securely attached but much of my trauma revolved around attachment so I needed to become securely attached in order to resolve it. But the process of becoming securely attached was so incredibly difficult that I almost left therapy many times along the way because it often felt so retraumatizing I didn't think there was any way I could ever get through it without going completely crazy. The insecurity and intense neediness and desperation for connection often led to an equally intense need to pull back in fear and anger when my T didn't meet my need for connection. Those opposing feelings would occur simultaneously, so I experienced a debilitating state of both reaching out and fighting the attachment. This happened repeatedly throughout the first several years of our relationship, and it was my T's ability to tolerate my distress without increasing my neediness by reinforcing my belief that I could not tolerate the feelings without his help, and without reacting angrily himself when I was raging about him ignoring and abandoning me, that eventually helped me move past it. Basically, he "sat with" my feelings until I could do it myself.
I think it's crucial for the T to balance responsiveness with non-responsiveness so that we have the opportunity to learn that nothing bad happens and the relationship still exists when he can't be available every time we ask for reassurance. Being "too available" and responding every time we ask for a response doesn't afford us that opportunity because we come to expect that reassurance, but that expectation isn't realistic. But I don't mean that a T should intentionally withhold contact after promising it at a certain time or on certain days because that would be unnecessarily cruel and manipulative. If you have an agreement that there will be between session contact to "check in" twice a week and the agreement includes a response from your T on those two days, then it's important for him to follow through with that unless something unusual and unexpected prevents him from doing so. But at some point we still have to learn to sit with the feelings we experienced as young children when our parents didn't meet our needs, because there will be times when we want responses from our T or from other people in our lives but we don't get those responses, and we need to learn to tolerate the feelings that get stirred up when people don't meet our needs. We need to be able to work through those feelings in therapy so that we don't resort to our default position of believing we are being abandoned or rejected when someone doesn't meet our need for connection.
My T provided some reassurance early in our relationship, but certainly not every time I called him or emailed him asking for reassurance that he was still there and not giving up on me. Naturally I was hurt and angry when he didn't respond, but that didn't lead him to respond more often because he didn't want to reinforce an unrealistic expectation that he "should" respond more often in order to prove that he was not like my parents. And gradually he began responding even less frequently, making me wait while he monitored my reactions from a distance. Of course I didn't realize he was still there in the background, riding out the storm with me and keeping an eye on my level of distress, because while I was riding it out I thought he had completely abandoned me. But those were old feelings that I had to work through in this relationship, and one day, after I finally calmed down, it occurred to me that maybe he hadn't really abandoned me after all. Maybe he had been riding it out with me, but in the background, waiting for me to come back out of the intense desperation and craziness again, and he would still be there. I remember emailing him with this new revelation, asking him if that's what was happening when I thought he had abandoned me. He replied saying yes, that was exactly what was happening, but it was important for me to reach that realization myself because it meant that I was beginning to see the bigger picture. It meant that I was beginning to understand that our relationship still existed and he still cared deeply about me even when he didn't meet my need for connection and reassurance. That was an important insight because it meant that I could hold onto our relationship in the abstract, without something concrete and tangible reminding me that it existed even when I felt detached and disconnected from him.
So there were many steps and milestones along the way, and it wasn't a linear process at all. External stresses and problems sometimes undermined progress temporarily, and trauma related triggers often sent me into the approach/withdraw tailspin, but those meltdowns became much less numerous and less intense over time, and now I think it's pretty safe to say they're extinct.
And now I can look back and see how the process unfolded with much more clarity. Now I can understand why my T never told me to stop calling or emailing him if it was causing me so much distress. I wanted him to tell me to stop because I couldn't get myself to stop, which makes sense now because the unresolved attachment issues led to the simultaneous approach/withdraw conflict that characterized our relationship for the first several years. One part of me desperately wanted to pull back in fear and anger, and another part of me wanted nothing more than to hold onto his leg and never let go, so I would often find myself calling or emailing him in a state of bewilderment because I did not want to call or email him but I could not stop myself. The part of me that wanted connection and attachment was very strong, which makes sense because we are hard-wired for attachment and connection, so reaching out was normal and healthy even if I couldn't get the response I wanted at the time. If he had told me to stop calling and emailing him in order to minimize my distress, I wouldn't have been able to work it through. It would have suppressed the entire process, which would have provided an illusion of having resolved it, but it would have reemerged in another relationship eventually when those same attachment needs were triggered. I had to go through the whole process in order to resolve it. I had to experience the fear, anger, and desperation of unresolved and insecure attachment in a relationship with someone who understood what was happening and could tolerate my distress, and then I had to emerge on the other side with a secure, serene kind of attachment that encourages closeness without helplessness or enmeshment.