Dependant and can't step out of it

Every fortnight when I see my T, all the walls come shooting up and for an hour, sitting in that room with her, I am numb to anything and everything. Occasionally she managed to get a little bit of emotion or anxiety out of me, but ultimately, not much at all..
I really like T, she seems to get where i'm coming from, and she appears to be able to decipher my sarcasm relatively well. As I said, the walls shoot up whenever i'm in a session. T knows more about me and the depression that I am stuck in than anyone else, being 1 of maybe 5 people who even know about it, thats not all that hard..
I emailed her one time, a while back, because I needed to say something that I just couldn't say in the session. Ever since then, she encourages the emailing.
This is a good thing for me. I keep telling myself that anyway.. And for a little while there, I began to depend on those emails between session to get me through. But something happened - I dont know what, but I lost the need to email and I lost all sense of understanding and putting words to what I'd been feeling.. So I kind of had a break from the emails - kept them short and sweet..
Until 2 days ago.. There a lot happening in my world, and I tend to block it all out.. Every now and then, it all hits me and I long for someone to talk to about it.. So, she emailed me a few days before, and I replied with a novel. T replied with comfort and reassurance I guess. It takes me days to be able to read what T replies with..
I really did not need to go into this much detail.. But as it goes, the fingers type words and then they cant stop..

Every time I get into this email habit, I feel terrible.. I dont like hassling her and I dont like the feeling of becoming dependant on this system. T constantly reminds me that it is ok, and that she wants me to be emailing... But I cant get past the not ok dependant feeling.. And then I sit on it, and it slowly eats away at me, I lose my motivation to do things that really need to be done, because I just cant step out of the clouds of just needing to have that contact...

How do you get past the guilty feeling? I want to be able to depend a little on this form of communication, but I also really dont.. I want to go back to the empty nothingness that doesnt even have the words to talk...

I struggle with this.

My T also tells me she wants me to email and I'm not contacting her too much. One thing that helped me not feel as guilty- I asked her to give me examples of what she considered "too much." She obliged and I don't come near to her examples.

She reassured me that even if I did something that bothered her, she would bring it up and we would talk about it. Also, she said if she did something that bothered me, she wants me to tell her about it so we can talk about it.

Hoping this helps.

It has taken me a very long time to realize and understand that dependency is not a bad thing. In fact, we function on a higher level if we are dependent on another/others...it gives us our sense of security. Our society emphasizes independence and autonomy as the best way to live our lives, but had our very early ancestors lived independently, they (or we) would have been eaten by a saber-tooth tiger.

I don't know how to get over the guilt. It might help some if you told your T that you feel guilty about contacting her via email and why you think you feel that way. It's part of therapy...maybe she can help you step out of it. If you find out how to get past the guilt, I'm sure many of us would like to know how you did it. I wish you much luck...guilt is a difficult emotion to tackle, regardless of what it's about.

I felt guilty when in this situation, but I think the guilt is misplaced. If you read therapy forums long enough, it becomes clear that this email compulsion is, if not universal, then quite common. It is an artifact of an hour per week of intimacy (quasi) and support followed by no contact. This is a recipe for inducing dependency.

I had a therapist who sent mixed messages about emails. Not too many, and not too long, she said, but her responses suggested something else -- that she lived for those emails because SHE needed them. She is a therapist because she needs to feel needed, and she gets a big hit of that in session, but needs smaller hits in between. So it was co-dependency and totally dysfunctional.

I have thought of asking for her to set boundaries like this. I always get it into my head that this is something that I would like to talk about with her face to face - I really dont want to ask over email. But then time comes to ask and I back out. Every time. -__-

Im sort of starting to see that it is an okay thing. But that feeling is just so, deep and unsettling, its hard to not resist. I think it's really good for me to be able to email, some days more than others. I was one time, asked to read a passage from what I wrote "Que minor panic attack". Im glad, in one aspect, that T could see the first real piece of emotion from me, but gosh it was not ok.
I am constantly saying sorry for emailing and T is constantly reassuring me that it is ok..I should just listen and accept that its ok...