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Reply to "what does dependency on your T mean?"

CD,
Hope I'm not too late to chime into this thread. Dependency was a huge issue for me. Just knowing my T was becoming important to me freaked me out. I have lost track of how much we have discussed it. The truth is that the last time I was dependent did not work out well. My father used my dependence and abused his power over me. So when feelings of needing my T and wanting to depend on him emerged, it felt really threatening. That as soon as he knew he held any power over me, he would start using it to hurt me (I am happy to report that fear was unfounded.)

What made the dynamic even worse was that I hate my own needs, wasn't able to identify them and thought I had no right to them, so feeling a need for my T, let alone expressing it, was just terrifying and felt like I was doing some really reprehensible. Cannot begin to tell you how often and how creatively I tried to run.

One of the reasons that I am such a go-to gal with attachment is because learning about it helped me to understand my legitimate need to depend on the stronger, wiser other to finish developing. That there were things I had never learned as a child that I needed to learn and it could only be done by allowing myself to move closer to my T and depend on him. General Theory of Love (a book I mention quite frequently) had a passage that was a real turning point for me:

quote:
Some therapists recoil from the pivotal power of relatedness. They have been told to deliver insight--a job description evocative of estate planning or financial consulting, the calm dispensation of tidy data packets from the other side of an imposing desk. A therapist who fears dependence will tell his patient, sometimes openly, that the urge to rely is pathologic. In doing so he denigrates a cardinal tool. A parent who rejects a child's desire to depend raises a fragile person. Those children, grown to adulthood, are frequently among those who come for help. Shall we tell them again that no one can find an arm to lean on, that each alone must work to ease a private sorrow? Then we shall repeat an experiment already conducted; many know its result only too well. If patient and therapist are to proceed together down a curative path, they must allow limbic regulation and its companion moon, dependence, to make their revolutionary magic.


So I depended on my T to teach me things I hadn't learned about identifying my feelings, about expressing my feelings, about expressing my needs, regulating my feelings, learning that relationships could be safe even if the other person sometimes failed me and that when I was overwhelmed I could reach out for help. I went through a stage in therapy where I was seeing him weekly but would email and/or call 1-3 times between sessions. Most of the time the calls were two minutes or less and were about reassuring myself of the connection. Occasionally we would do longer calls up to around 10 minutes (which were reserved for major crises as we tend to avoid too much processing during calls). But there were times when I was totally bugging out when I would call (as in all her would get for the first minute or so was me sobbing). He was my home and my sense of safety and my sense of worth while I learned what those things are. I am very blessed in that he recognized my need for dependence in healing and held clear boundaries so it did not become pathological. But he has never shied away from how vital a role he plays in my life (while never promising to be anything other than my therapist) which has been a gift beyond measure.

But Lord I fought it tooth and nail. Still do sometimes.

BTW, I, like Muff, find Joseph Burgo to be a good source about these topics. He had to do this in his own work in therapy so he really gets it from both sides. I also appreciate his candor in admitting his therapeutic blunders. I have taken his writings to therapy and it has proven highly effective.

AG
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