I read
question [Termination #1] on the page with interest
and wondered if you could help me with a slight variation. I also have been
in therapy for about seven years, but do (unlike the writer of the original
question) feel it has helped me a lot to cope more effectively with emotions
(even just to realize I HAD emotions!). I did not actually get particularly
attached to the therapist for the first few years but have in the last few
years become extremely attached. I also feel like it would be unbearable
not to have this in my life and specifically not to have the therapist in
my life. Like the other person, I have never looked to her for making decisions
or even suggestions about decisions, but the emotional neediness remains
very high at this point. Should I be doing something differently to stop
the feelings? Sometimes I think that if I just quit out right (rather than
talking about it with her, tapering down the frequency etc. etc.), it would
be a lot easier. Do you have any suggestions? She and I do talk about the
situation but she remains unworried and I remain worried. She says it is
a natural course that differs for everyone.
Apparently you have done quite a bit of good work in the
last seven years, so congratulations. As you say, learning that you have
emotions is a
big task. And so is learning that you have the capacity to experience a genuine
attachment to another person. But, as I say on the
Termination of
Psychotherapy page, death is a part of life, and so the ending of
psychotherapy is as important as its beginning and growth. Having learned
how to get emotionally close to your psychotherapist, it is now necessary
to make emotional
honesty a part
of every human relationship you have, and that means dissolving your
identification with your psychotherapist. Otherwise, your relationship with
your psychotherapist will be nothing more than a vain
illusion that
will lead you nowhere into the world around you.
Your mistake
here is in wanting to “stop the feelings” of emotional neediness.
As I say throughout this website, psychotherapy is not about
getting rid
of symptoms, it’s about making peace with them by listening to them
and learning from them. So you have to face these feelings directly. I can
assure you that it will be even more of a challenge to do this than
it was to open up enough to get attached to your psychotherapist in the first
place. But facing these feelings is crucial to the entire psychotherapeutic
process. If you, with the collusion of your psychotherapist, avoid
encountering
this issue deeply and directly, the “therapy” will be left hanging,
like a sentence without a period and
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If
this website has helped you, then