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Holy succotash...you mean you're all here for therapy?
My Therapy Sucks and Other Beefs
March 26, 2006
By Dr. Suzanne LaCombe
Reviewed by: Dr. Carole Gaato
“Therapy makes you dependent on your therapist”.
I’m always a little curious about this comment. What immediately comes to mind are images from film and TV of someone saying, “Oh, my therapist thinks I should…” or “I'm not sure, I will have to ask my therapist” responding as if they felt incapable of making decisions on their own. Any onlooker might get the impression that therapy creates dependency that wasn't there before.
Of course, if your therapist is telling you what to do, s/he is not doing you a favour. A good therapist will help you explore your feelings on the subject encouraging you to take responsibility for your own decisions.
But let's say your therapist isn't telling you what to do, nonetheless, you end up feeling dependent on your therapist. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this.
Let me explain.
At some level you are
likely aware that this dependence was showing up in your life in any
case and, no doubt, causing problems.
Here's how counseling can work in your favour...
One of the best ways of changing a pattern of dependency (any pattern actually) is to experience it. That is, you generate the conditions for change by feeling the pattern in the moment and bringing awareness to it.
You see, as you experience it, you are lighting up the neuropathways associated with the dependency. In effect, you are triggering those same neuropathways in the brain. In doing so, you provide an opportunity for those pathways to find new connections.
A skilled therapist knows how to work with your feelings of dependency so you can learn to move beyond them. In the safety of the therapeutic relationship you develop the capacity to manage the feelings on your own. Another way of saying this is that as you learn to manage these feelings new pathways develop to enable you to have different feelings and responses.
Depending on how much unresolved emotional material is in your nervous system it may take a greater or lesser amount of time.
This is how therapy creates embodied change.
This also explains why you cannot just tell yourself to be ‘independent’. For one thing your emotional brain rarely takes direct orders from your intentional self.
Counseling Tip
Be wary of too much independence. Our strength as human beings resides in our connection to each other. Extreme independence could just be another cover for unmet dependency needs.
What therapy aims for is a sense of balanced interdependence.
When counseling isn't working in your favor...
If your therapist has not sufficiently resolved an issue for herself and one that you're wrestling with (e.g. grief over the loss of a child; adoption issues), she may inadvertently create a dependency in you.
You see, if the hurt she feels is bigger than yours, how will she be able to help you surmount those feelings? Can she provide the type of containment you need to work through your feelings?
This dynamic speaks volume about the need for a therapist to have done their own work or, at least on the issue you're working on. It also suggests the need to be very picky about the therapist you're choosing to work with.
Speaking as a Therapist
I have been caught on more than one occasion with providing a quick solution to clients' remarks, "what do you think I should do?" The desire to help is a pretty human trait and I'm not immune to wanting to a supply a handy solution.
It's these types of situations that could easily lend themselves to creating dependency in my clients. Upon reflection however, I often regret it when I do deliver a quick solution.
The more powerful response is for me to say, "what do you think you could do?" or "what feels right for you?" while I encourage my client to trust his or her own instincts on the matter.
In this way, I'm helping them to learn to tolerate their own level of frustration and to build self-esteem because in the end, it's often the implicit imprinting that requires change, not one's thoughts on the matter.
Pages in this Article
- “Therapy makes you dependent on your therapist”.
- "If I work on all my issues, I'll lose my passion. I'll lose my creativity."
- "My therapist never says anything!"
- "My therapist never gives me advice"
- "My therapist looks sleepy. I sometimes think she's going to fall asleep."
- "Why go to therapy? I want to change the world to make it a better place."
Dhalia
Hi Suzanne, Regards my earlier message - thank you for pointing out the excellent article on Dependency in the Treatment of Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder & Dissociative Disorders by Kathy Steele, M.N., C.S. Onno van der Hart, Ph.D. Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis, Ph.D.
As you said, I certainly found that not being a therapist there was a need for a good deal of concentration and dedication - or perhaps even desperation :-) to read it, but it was fascinating and I went back to it a couple of times.
My goodness, you therapists have to know and understand an enormous amount of very complicated 'stuff', and so thank you to all of you out there...wherever you might be!
Lara
Dhalia
I feel as though my life is in tatters. I am in therapy and to my horror not only do I find myself feeling VERY dependent on my therapist, but there is a frightening...well to me anyway...transference (Ha! Did I know anything about transference?!), so this transference thing is going on, which literally sneaked up on me, and then suddenly I am hooked! Every thing in me yells “No” at these two things.
For so long now I have fought being dependent on anyone, and I can't help but feel the transference thing has something to do with it. Dependency/Transference is a bit like "Egg, chicken? Or chicken and then egg"? Which one first? I could astound Science and say I now have the answer – A consideration could be "At exactly the same time!" I was the only child in the family.
My father abused me physically and sexually and when that stopped he moved onto verbal abuse. My mother was a lovely woman who I adored, idolised, and I protected her (from him) as best I could, but it was as though she was not interested in what was happening to me, and was a very inconsistent person. She was moody, changing from moment to moment. I just did my best to try and make sure she stayed loving me which I believe she did, and so I didn't upset or anger her if I could help it. I therefore had no one to depend on, and so I just I kept myself as safe as I possibly could, and ‘floated up onto the ceiling’ during the times of physical and sexual abuse.
Or, in my mind 'drifted off' to a place which was much better, calmer, and less frightening. And I often still go there to this day. So OK, I know why I have such a horror of Dependency on anyone. Transference? If Transference hooks you in (and I could swear it sure does EXACTLY that) it then somehow hooks in and keeps in place the Dependency too. If my therapist is the mother I have always wanted, and I find myself relating to her at times as though she was and is and who I wish could have been, almost, then I understand why I think how wonderful it would be to be able to depend on her like other children did with their real mothers back then. I don’t know if I am making much sense here!!
Anyway, it is then, I guess, I understand what has happened to me, and I certainly don’t like how vulnerable it now has me feeling. Not one bit do I like it! Now I know I should just let go, go with the flow, be in the present, do all of what you have written, trust my therapist (I would say I do absolutely), experience in the present, in the safety of being with her things that happened in my past – however, I am so frightened of doing this because of panic attacks and flash backs and etc. But, and here is the huge but, I can't. What makes great sense to my thinking brain(?) just won’t and can’t seem to happen in actuality. I am like a horse facing an impossibly high wall which I know I have to jump, I know I want to jump (well, OK, I want to have jumped), and so be in a “Good, done that" position, but…… I can't. Yet I know it's possible - within its impossibility for me.
So what do I do please please help me. I can't undo the Dependency. I can't undo the Transference, because I have tried and also because I can't do what I know is required of me to do. Oh, and I can't run away from my therapist either. I have tried that one too, but the problems not only stay glued onto me, but somehow became worse. I miss my 'mother' so much, and, I am so dependent on her that I constantly think that even if I could just sit with her (I know she wont, and shouldn't advise me) but even if I could sit with her I would feel less tormented. Safer. Less frantic.
And then I hate myself for being so dependent. Or anyone. When I just had myself to rely on it felt as though my life was somehow so much safer. Maybe I value "safe" too highly?
So, what can I do, if I can’t do what I need to do? Why can’t I do it…I believe the “why can’t I do it” is more important to me than the “what can I do” bit of the question. Help help help!
Thank you for a really marvellous website. I am thrilled to have been told about it and I’m learning so much, but with so much I have yet to find, read, enjoy and learn. Lara
Anne (Grandview, US)
Thank you for this writing (and your wonderful website!) This is exactly the issue I'm facing (along with transference). I have always been very independent - very scared of any dependence. I have become emotionally dependent on my therapist, add to that transference issues, due to severe emotional abuse, and I can barely stand it.
I've been seriously thinking about ending the therapy or taking a break to stop the dependence and the associated pain. Everything seems like such a huge muddle, but I think I have to talk about this, even though it scares me tremendously. This wasn't supposed to happen. I was supposed to deal with my issues and get on with things.
Thank you for giving me a little insight and clarity about all this.
Anne
Your welcome, Anne. Yeah, it is defintely scary...but that also means you're onto something. And, with a therapist that you feel safe with the potential for real change is there.
All the best in your journey, Shrinklady
Attachment Girl (Syracuse, NY, USA)
Not sure how I missed this before, but this is dead on! I really struggled against the dependency forming because basically I HATE feeling dependent, but once I understood it and stopped fighting it, I began to move through it. Slow going, painfully slow sometimes, but it is getting better.
I really do trust now that I'll come out the other side better able to care for myself AND get what I need from my relationships from others in a healthy way. You really need to write a book!
Thanks Attachment Girl.
Shrinklady
Dude
It also helps to bring her chocolate! DudeDude
you are very funny (rolls eyes)
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