[Everyday12]

I have been seeing my T for a year twice a month.
I feel like I should finishing up. T laughs says I'm impatient.
I see so many on here that have been in therapy for years, some for over a decade. Why so long? I'm not criticizing,from where I m sitting looks like I'll be in for awhile yet.

[Amyjay]

You can be in therapy for as long as it is helpful to you.

[Echos Myron redux]

It's taken me a long time for trust to build up. Also, my defenses are so strong, from decades of trauma and hiding from my trauma, that taking those defenses down is a brick-by-brick process. The relationship is important to me, and that's taken time to grow. Some people can get what they need from therapy in a few sessions though. It all depends on the individual and what they want from therapy.

Depends on what you enter therapy for and what you wish to gain from it.

[piggy momma]

I’ve been in therapy for 25 years. I’ve had a couple short breaks but for the most part, I’ve been therapizing. Life changes, things happen, new skills lead to new problems. I absolutely love being in therapy and can’t imagine not going.

I’ve struggled with severe suicidal ideation my whole life. There are times, as recently as two weeks ago, that therapy literally kept me alive.

I think as long as therapy continues to be helpful to a person, it takes as long as it takes.

For me there was a point when addiction had taken over, and it included:

-Feeling miserably dependent and living session to session
-Getting little from my sessions but being unable to quit
-Aimlessly digging into my past to stir up painful memories without purpose
-Not having any goals or way to measure progress
-Self-absorption with a focus on analyzing every minutia of my life
-Preoccupation with my therapist and our relationship
-Constantly comparing myself to my therapist and never feeling like I measured up
-Jealously towards other clients and a strong desire to be a part of my therapists personal life
-Obsessive emailing
-Loss of reality (ie strongly feeling like my thearapist was my actual mother and loss of understanding of the professional relationship)
-Ongoing arguements with my therapist
-Traumatic responses after ongoing arguements with my therapist
-Regression and destabilization
-Having a vested interest in staying sick as not to lose my therapist

As long as this in aggregate doesn’t apply for long periods of time with no hope of change, I think very long term therapy is typically fine

(On a positive note, when I was able to help myself by quitting what was obviously hurting me (and going through a few months of severe withdrawal) 100% of these symptoms disappeared and I felt more like myself than I had in years.)

[Everyday12]

Purple mirrors. I have experienced many of things you listed. I feel I need to take a break from therapy. These feelings don't seem healthy.

[ArtleyWilkins]

My last round of therapy lasted ten years. That's just what it took. Part of the issue was that during those ten years, I was suffering from extreme, recurrent depression and was in and out of the hospital like 15 times. It made therapy a really slow process because, honestly, when a person is THAT depressed, therapy isn't really therapy, it's safety and survival. You have to a a bit of mental stability to really do productive therapy that actually moves you forward (at least that was my experience and my therapist and psychiatrist agreed). Then there were life complications in the middle of that time that just piled on top of things: family illnesses and deaths, etc (again, not why I originally entered therapy, but made for additional work).

In those times I was more stable, I made progress; it was just interrupted from time to time -- sort of three steps forward two steps back.

I finally reached a place where it was three steps forward and maybe only one step back. And eventually, I just kept moving forward, and even major life challenges didn't send me backwards. At that point, I finally was able to stop therapy because I had the growth and healing and skills to manage whatever life throws at me without going into crisis mode.

It's a process: a slow, recursive, tedious, very personal process.

Originally Posted by Everyday12

Purple mirrors. I have experienced many of things you listed. I feel I need to take a break from therapy. These feelings don't seem healthy.

I’m so sorry

Therapists will say some of this is a normal part of therapy. To what extent? I don’t know.

Ultimately it comes down to a personal feeling, and when I quit, in my heart I knew I had to as painful as the following weeks/months were. Nobody should have had to live like that as long as I did

[Echos Myron redux]

I don't consider myself "addicted" I recognise that I have attachment issues and that they are part of the work. I don't think there's anything inherently unhealthy about those feelings. If they can be worked through in therapy, great learning and growth can come from that IMO.

Originally Posted by Echos Myron redux

I don't consider myself "addicted" I recognise that I have attachment issues and that they are part of the work. I don't think there's anything inherently unhealthy about those feelings. If they can be worked through in therapy, great learning and growth can come from that IMO.

I agree. I'm scratching my head thinking. If those feelings, exist. They are the work.

Beam me up Scotty.

[Everyday12]

I know I need help but I don't want help. Which is how I ended up in therapy. Now I find my self not wanting to need help again. It's a circle

[LonesomeTonight]

My T has said that some people have the sort of issues that can be mostly resolved in a short period of time, like a few months or less. While others have the sort of issues or conditions that might require therapy, maybe off and on, for a much longer term, possibly even lifelong. He seems to put me in the latter category, as I have pretty severe generalized anxiety disorder, recurrent major depression, and OCD. This was in response to my fear that he had all short-term clients, but he said it varies, how one has been with him 12 years (though not consistently). I was with ex-T for 6 years (probably should have switched sooner than I did) and current T just over a year, but twice a week (was weekly with ex-T, plus was seeing a marriage counselor for part of that time). I also take time to build up trust, and there can be the issue of dealing with things that come up in day-to-day life that can interfere with working on larger issues. So I figure it takes as long as it takes.
I don't know if I'm addicted--I probably was to ex-marriage counselor. I also have attachment issues, but they're something I need to work through.

[Salmon77]

The issues that brought me to therapy began with things I learned and experienced in childhood, so they are things it takes a while to identify and work through. I've been in therapy about five years now and I feel like I am still growing because of it, so it's worth the time/money/effort for me.

[ChickenNoodleSoup]

I've been seeing my T for two years now and still have enough issues to needing to continue to go. I think it will be at least a couple more years until I leave. I've been by different kinds of things for almost 15 years, it takes a while to resolve that.

[coolibrarian]

The problems didn't happen overnight, or even over a year or two. So, they won't be resolved overnight.

[mcl6136]

Originally Posted by Everyday12

I have been seeing my T for a year twice a month.
I feel like I should finishing up. T laughs says I'm impatient.
I see so many on here that have been in therapy for years, some for over a decade. Why so long? I'm not criticizing,from where I m sitting looks like I'll be in for awhile yet.

My last T had a vacation home to pay off, and children to put through college! Bills to pay!

I'm only half serious here.

My current preoccupation is NOT BEING IN THERAPY. For years, I was in therapy and now I am not. It feels weird and I am experiencing quite a few of the symptoms on the list.

However, I am getting much closer to the people in my real life, now that I do not have 50 minutes to create FAKE INTIMACY with a therapist. Honestly, therapists are worse than the Fake News Media! Sad!

I was a bit hesitant to put the idea of ‘addiction’ out there with respect to long term therapy - but just wanted to clarify my thoughts and experiences.

There are absolutely ‘normal’ attachment issues that come up in therapy that can be worked through, and also issues that may not be as common that can also be worked through.

For me, there was no question that I was in an unhealthy situation, which got progressively worse over time. In my closure sessions with another therapist, the therapist agreed that I was correct to terminate. Reading other stories here makes me realize how badly my therapist responded to issues that other therapists seem to navigate beautifully and respectfully.

I think second opinions can be helpful to differentiate between re-traumatizing therapy and tough work that leads to breakthroughs.

This board is great for sharing experiences but sometimes a professional opinion when contemplating something like termination can be key.

[SlumberKitty]

With my former T I was in therapy for 10 years. I have major depressive disorder that is re-occurring and I have psychotic features. I also have generalized anxiety disorder. My former T said I probably have PTSD also but I don't know about that. The things that brought me to therapy were severe and sometimes therapy was all about support just to keep me alive. When I was feeling better and able to do the work we did. But sometimes it just had to be support. I don't regret any of those 10 years in therapy. It literally saved my life. Kit.

[Salmon77]

I am getting much closer to the people in my real life, now that I do not have 50 minutes to create FAKE INTIMACY with a therapist.

I've learned to get closer to people in "real life" through therapy. It's not an either/or.

[Anne2.0]

I'm at 9 years, and I have no plans to stop. Mostly because therapy is a form of self care for me, sort of like getting a massage or doing body work or regular exercise, something that helps me reduce my stress and take better care of myself. Some of this is that I work in a very high stakes, high stress legal arena where my clients have suffered a great deal of trauma, usually exacerbated by the system's response. So I also have some vicarious trauma that I need to deal with on a regular basis. In those 9 years, there were a couple of years focusing more deeply on trauma work I thought I was done with in my last round of therapy that had ended 15 years earlier. It turns out that it was prompted by my child turning the same age where I began to be abused. Then I had a health crisis, it wasn't life threatening but it involved chronic pain that took almost a year to resolve to manageable levels; that was also a trigger for more trauma. Then my spouse was diagnosed with a terminal cancer, and then he died, and I struggled for awhile with what I was going to do with my life, then I retired from a regular part time job I'd had for decades and focused on the other part time work I'd also done for years. So lots of life events taxed my coping skills and I needed to learn better ones.

[Calilady]

I was in therapy for about a year and a half. After that ended, I tried for a bit, but couldn't find anyone else and quit. I do, occasionally, ponder returning.

I spoke to a friend who's a psychotherapist and asked her for some details. She said she doesn't ever want to keep a client longer than 5 years because it borders on being unethical. Even if she feels like they still need therapy, she'd rather begin a steady termination process and refer them elsewhere (than keep them).

I did notice she seemed very detached in the way she was speaking about it. Not sure if that's just her MO or what. She also said she doesn't promote a client become emotionally attached to her, that she's just a vessel for transference issues and she redirects the focus back to the client and not on their relationship.

[Everyday12]

I understand see a therapist a few times a year or even once a month to decompress or tune up. I also see how life gets in the way of therapy.Making therapy a living evolving process.

[rainbow8]

I've been in therapy for more than 20 years with 5 different Ts. I attach quickly and have a hard time detaching. I like therapy because of the undivided attention and the opportunity to tell someone everything that bothers me. I guess I'm sort of addicted to therapy. There have always been issues to explore, past and present. Of course there's also the "high" I get, or used to get, from my sessions, with some of my Ts. I never wanted that to end even though my Ts told me I needed to get that from people in my real life. Now that I have some challenging medical conditions, I want my T to be available. I've seen her for 8 years, longer than any of the others. We've been through a lot together.

Originally Posted by PurpleMirrors

For me there was a point when addiction had taken over, and it included:
-Feeling miserably dependent and living session to session
-Getting little from my sessions but being unable to quit
-Aimlessly digging into my past to stir up painful memories without purpose
-Not having any goals or way to measure progress
-Self-absorption with a focus on analyzing every minutia of my life
-Preoccupation with my therapist and our relationship
-Constantly comparing myself to my therapist and never feeling like I measured up
-Jealously towards other clients and a strong desire to be a part of my therapists personal life
-Obsessive emailing
-Loss of reality (ie strongly feeling like my thearapist was my actual mother and loss of understanding of the professional relationship)
-Ongoing arguements with my therapist
-Traumatic responses after ongoing arguements with my therapist
-Regression and destabilization
-Having a vested interest in staying sick as not to lose my therapist

This is a really good list! thank you