[Trigger] Therapy as addiction

As I see it, either the biz operates with a basic level of honesty and transparency about risks, methods, and outcomes, or it does not and so defines itself as unethical. And one of the risks is possibly getting hooked on the whole thing in such a way that basic functioning is affected.

The details of what a T might say don't interest me much. What interests me is that clearly people do get into these scenarios, they suffer, and the biz doesn't talk about it.

The tough love thing is just another ruse to make it look like clients are bungling children who need a nanny or mommy/daddy to teach them a lesson. Based on my reading, many astute and self aware adults client have been blindsided by the bizarre machinations of inscrutable and half-crazy therapists.

Ack. It's too nice a day.

I think the way many of them work is they try to get a client attached to them. I don't know if it has to then become an addiction - but certainly some schools or types of therapy teach that the client needs to do it. It has nothing at all to do with victim mentality.

The first one I see, for the first few years, kept saying I needed to attach to her and that all her other clients loved her and that I did not help her with her self esteem.

As about tough love we had people say they demanded their therapists become their lovers or friends etc and wouldn't take no for an answer. I don't know why they thought it's even possible but who else should warn them that it's not going to happen if not the therapist?

Maybe some people do need such warning as bizarre as it sounds to me.

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The idea that therapists need to warn their clients that they may get hooked on therapy and that therapy may become addictive sounds very American to me. Or rather very Anglo-saxon. It's typically American to consider everything a potential liability where you can sue everyone and everything. Honeslty I'm glad I don't live in such a society where you need a warning on cereal box about how to eat them because some moron may use cereals in a different way and end up suing the cereal company (just an example). You end up with crazy case such as the one where a woman sued Mc Donalds (or perhaps Starbucks? can't remember) because she got burnt since her coffee was too hot. Should therapists issue a warning in the first session? Yeah maybe. But let's say they did, what form would it take? Would the client even listen or would they find it completely weird and presomptuous? Probably. So I honestly don't see what a therapist should do. I dislike the asumption that clients are too stupid to know what they're getting into.

This! .

I agree myrto that it sounds more like a move to protect t from lawsuit. But it sounds to me that op meant clients need to be warned for clients sake not to protect the therapist. That's why I find it hard to imagine how would that look? I am 50 year old woman with lots of life experience. Does my t need to really say this to me. I'd be laughing.

Perhaps op referred to people who truly cannot assess situation themselves and do need such disclaimer ( not stupid just very unwell perhaps?). Not sure. But it sound more like protecting therapist from obsessive clients or lawsuits rather than protecting clients

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I know (true for me anyway) - but the gym is more interested in whether you collapse on the treadmill than whether exercise is benefiting you emotionally. Gyms generally promote improved fitness, not improved mental health.

As an American, I agree about our liability-obsessed culture. In many ways American society is almost incomprehensibly stupid. However, comparing the risks of hot coffee with the risks of therapy is rather silly.

A better comparison would be with psych drugs that carry addiction risk. Like therapy, these are given in measured doses over a long period, they impact the brain, and in many cases are administered to address so-called mental disorders. And since the therapy biz likes to pretend it is a provider of "treatment" and likes to model itself on medical practice, seems it would be logical to give warnings about risk of addiction, risk of iatrogenic harm, etc. just as doctors do with drugs (even if their warnings are meagre).

Anyway, my point is not that therapists need to give formal warnings. My point is that risk of dependency (in my experience) is not talked about at all. Nor are most of the other risks. And further, when addictive/dependent behavior does manifest, therapists, having failed to talk about it up front, then also fail to take much or any responsibility for it.

I think more education to consumers is a good thing. And that is what the field is terrible about. How therapy works, what to expect, etc. They want to hide the information from people.

But where should this risk of dependency be discussed? In what venues? It's kind of common sense that people might get attached or addicted or obsessed with other people or activities etc . It's kind of sends a message as someone else points out that people can't even comprehend basic things without them being spelled out. Where exactly potential obsession with therapy or therapy needs to be discussed?

I am not surprised that happens. Why and who is surprised

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I'm older than you, but I had an undiagnosed personality disorder which meant that a lot of my life experience didn't get processed very well. I just sort of didn't"do" relationships -- I tried to perform according to role expectations, to the extent that I could figure out what they were. So I could definitely have used a primer on relationships and social life in general rather than just leaving me to continue to stumble and bumble my way through failed therapies. In a way, maybe my disorder was like a social learning disorder (also due to fragmentation and dissociation). My nonsocial cognition worked OK though so talking about a lot of stuff which may seem obvious to others would definitely have helped me, I think.

But how knowing that one can get obsessed with therapist would help you? I just don't know how.

My husband has severe OCD. He doesn't need warnings that he might get obsessed with things

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i know this is besides the point but the woman who sued McDonalds was an elderly woman who sustained 3rd degree burns from her coffee and had to have multiple surgeries

The case in America was very serious - they really did keep the water at dangerous temperatures and the lady was very badly burned as Junk said.

However, there was a copycat case in the UK where a woman tried to sue McDonalds for scalding her with apple pie filling. That was a total scam. I know. I made that apple pie thats probably my biggest claim to fame

I likely had OCPD, which is different from OCD. Trying to do the "right" thing was my way of life, my identity in a way. OCD is ego-dystonic. OCPD is ego-syntonic. Very different.

I understand it's different.

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Really? Didn't know that. I was only commenting on the litigious culture in the US but of course if it was very serious, it makes sense that she'd sue.

I almost posted something similar. I also believe there was a problem with the lid, but the point is the same - it was not just some sue-crazy women.

yea, it was actually really sad

I view therapy as very *reinforcing,* but not an addiction. An addiction is by nature something that is bad for your health. I do not think the therapy I am in is anything but helpful.

Going back to the exercise addiction example, that is also good for your health. There are such things as positive addictions in psycholoogy - there's even a book called that.

As long as that doesn't become detrimental to ones health ( like exercising too much could be bad for you), and unhealthy obsession with wrong therapist could be detrimental for mental health. I think we establish that there is a potential of obsession and addiction in pretty much everything out there. I spend too much time on PC lol it's certainly not PC's fault. I don't think this forum needs to issue disclaimers.

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I was thinking, there is really nothing in the above that distinguishes this "addiction" from attachment. Attention, empathy, acceptance, validation, physical affection, soothing of wounds, and expressions of love? Sounds like a very good, close relationship. (The therapy version, of course, is unnaturally one-sided.)

For those who have unmet needs for bonding that may go back literally to infancy, having a concentrated taste of that bond from a therapy relationship might be both healing and yet incredibly frustrating and painful because of the artificial "boundaries" which don't exist in organic human relationships. Sort of like being found dying of thirst in a desert, and being given a mere teaspoon of water every five minutes.

What is the solution though? No therapy at all? It's too helpful to too many. I would even suggest that, given time and a kind and consistent therapist, many of the worst attachment / abandonment wounds may be healed to some extent. But I certainly do think the therapy world needs a swift education in how attachment trauma and "transference" (for lack of a better term) can combine to make the therapy relationship central to a client's well being, such that termination or even temporary separation can mean a massive re-traumatization. But I would not call that withdrawal... it's much worse than withdrawal.

I have been stalking this post for a while, and I just wanted to add that for me, therapy is for what it's intended to be - working through various issues - but it's also the one place where I tend to focus on me. I like that, a lot, because a large portion of my life has been about doing for and pleasing others. Now, circumstances have changed, and I am needing to figure out how to live my life for myself more. I strongly wish I could have more than one 50 minute session a week to "indulge" myself, partly for the reason that I like the feelings (most of the time) that I get talking about and planning things for myself. That feeling is addictive. However, I don't see a way that therapists could reasonably slap a warning label about the potential risk of addiction. It seems like there are too many ways in which various people experience the therapy addiction. And then, there are those who don't get addicted at all. Just my 2 cents...