As some of you know, quite a few months ago I struggled with crippling transference with the first therapist I saw, left therapy because of it, took up with another therapist, and now I’m back into a similar pattern with my current therapist (though not nearly as bad). The therapeutic caring and empathy triggered deep longings for the kind, nurturing caregiver I never had growing up. Unfortunately the longing turned into dependency, and I currently live session to session, obsess over my therapist, and allow the relationship to take on unhealthy proportions in my mind. Worst is the post-therapy swings when a bad or disconnected session destroys my week. Just the thought or a picture of my therapist comforts me when I’m struggling, but the harshness of feeling like a “job”, or “just a client”, or “one of many” to my therapist when I’m actually in or leaving therapy causes me a lot of emotional distress.

Last week, my session felt really awkward and distant. Also, my therapist doesn’t normally schedule back to back clients, but this time I saw someone leaving, and someone coming, and also overheard a few kind sentiments she said to each of them. It triggered really strong feelings that what my therapist and I have isn’t special, that she says kind things to everyone that she may or may not mean… basically insecurity, or reality depending on how you look at it. I sat outside in an empty park after my session and cried alone.

I drove home after, with the resolve that I wasn’t going to keep doing this to myself. I’m going on two years of therapy, and feel worse than when I started much of time… despite being on antidepressants that I wasn’t taking before. I have a lot to be grateful for, work hard in therapy, but I’m tired of allowing my relationship with my therapist to cause me even more pain. I decided that I either needed to quit therapy for good, or take control of my thoughts and feelings. What I ended up doing was cut back on a lot of my dependent behaviors this week, like looking at my therapists website all the time, re-reading kind emails she’s sent me, keeping the hope that she’ll send me a random email which she has only done a few times, re-reading books she’s loaned me, and going out of my way to drive by her office. Also… the biggie… curbing the conversations I have with her in my head. Finally, FINALLY by allowing myself to have some mental space from her, I’ve been able to function better. I’m not sure if I just got lucky this week, or if making a real effort to stop obsessing made me feel that much better. The hard part is that thinking about my therapist feels so good most of the time, but also leads to disappointment when reality hits. I think curbing what normally feels good, made me feel overall better. I’m not sure if this makes sense. My session this week was productive and connected, but it didn’t feel so engrossing.

Not sure if anyone else has experienced this, or if I’m suppressing instead of allowing things to flow naturally… but it definitely made for an easier week.

[baseline]

Clementine, Thanks so much for sharing your experience! I have been in therapy one year now and over the last several months have begun to notice an increasing attachment to my T. It was something I feared from the beginning. I admire him but lately I miss him and worry about how I will cope when we finally terminate. I can't look him in the eyes for fear he will know. I feel so vulnerable because I have never relyed on someone this way before. I don't want to go back to the me from last year. I will never go to another T. I can't bring up transference I would die of mortification and am not ready to terminate. What if he thinks it's time to terminate before I do. I would feel hurt rejected. I'm so disappointed that I have allowed myself these fears and neediness. I will be interested in what others have to say. Thank You!

Thanks! I have a lot of difficulty talking about my feelings about my therapist too. I hate feeling dependent. I'm fairly certain she knows how I feel anyway, and it's only a matter of time before I know I'll need to talk about it. I managed to choke out how I missed her over Christmas break, and gave her a really thoughtful Christmas gift before break. Attachment is soooooo hard sometimes.

[ScarletPimpernel]

I used to be more obsessed(?) over my T. I talked to her in my mind constantly, looked at her webistes and picture, re-read all her emails. I still do those things, but only when I'm struggling.

What reduced the intensity for me was talking to her about my attachment. That was a painful and embarrassing session, but it needed to happen. I felt like my attachment was getting in the way. I was constantly pushing her away so that I didn't give into the neediness. She recognized this and was getting frustrated. So it had to be discussed. I'll be honest, I don't remember much of the conversation. Sadly, I remember the last question I asked her which she dodged.

The interesting thing is that I feared she would push me away, "punish" me, or have stricter boundaries because I opened up about the attachment. Instead, it seems like she is even more supportive when I'm struggling. She has offered her favorite book to borrow when I go to group so I have a part of her with me. She has allowed me to email more. She has also offered more check-ins and to talk to other people to help solve some of my issues. I think me being open allowed her to trust me more. She understood that I didn't like the attachment, and in my mind I was trying to control it by pushing her away.

I also discovered that I wasn't allowing her to do her job. I was setting boundaries for her. I felt like if I "cried wolf" too many times, she would think I'm attention seeking or taking advantage of her. But really all I was doing was building a huge wall btwn her and I...the exact opposite of what I wanted. She explained to me that neither pushing her away or being clingy to her was healthy. Finding a balance btwn the two is what's healthy. I have needs and feelings, and have a right to express them...especially to her. She is supposed to be the safe person in my life who I can say anything to.

I'm still very attached to her. I still feel needy at times and other times I want to push her away. I do my best to fight both. I try to ask her for things that she can do to meet my needs (i.e. check-ins). It's definitely difficult. But, at least for me, I have to learn to work through this / cope with this. This is a core issue for me. If I run away or push her away, I will never learn how to have healthy relationships. But the emotions that come with the attachment...those suck!

[ThingWithFeathers]

Yes, I can relate to what you're saying. In some ways, my situation is similar. The weeks I obsessed about t and our sessions, the harder and more draining the weeks become. When I'm just living for that one hour each week, the rest of the week is painful. I try to remind myself of that when I start obsessing. I sometimes make a plan for the week that involves interactions with others, with friends. Using mindfulness can also help to live more in the moment and less in the past or future, which helps you to simply enjoy the present and not focus so much on that one hour.

[angelicgoldfish05]

I just wrote something really long about all this but the internet or kindle or whatever, God, prevented it from being posted. Which is extremely frustrating because there is no way to remember what all I wrote and I spent alot of time writing it and trying to make it perfect. I'd just delete the post in general cause no one will probably even read it or appreciate it anyways but I can't.

[Myrto]

Thank you for sharing this. The whole time I was reading your post I was thinking "are you me?".
Sometimes I feel like therapy is making me worse and then I read stuff here about how the attachment and transference will lessen at some point. Well it's been 6 months and it's as painful as ever.

So it gives me hope to read a post like yours.
Like you I hate being dependent (I have issues about control), so I've decided that I need to stop doing this to myself: I've blocked her account and her kids accounts on Facebook, I've stopped looking at her website. It's hard, like you say but maybe there's a way out of this mess?
I need to keep busy instead of reliving each session every week. It's hard to do that when you're depressed though.