emotional dependency in psychotherapy
by jen kiley

a symbol for support and caring

this subject/issue has always puzzled me and i was hoping that someday i would understand emotional dependency in psychotherapy. through the years i have felt great pain connected with feelings of dependency with several therapists. i was seeing a fantastic therapist for over two years and abruptly she terminated our therapy b/c she changed job positions. i had one and a half sessions to say goodbye. i allowed myself to be so dependent on her. her abandonment made me emotionally go over the edge. i immediately started seeing another therapist that she had set up for me. we have been doing two sessions a week for over 15 months and i think only this last session i started to feel the hint of a door opening to sensing i was starting to feel dependency for her. i have been fighting it. not wanting those feelings to develop. but something happened in our last session that cracked a barrier and i can feel the connection of therapeutic intimacy closing in on me. how do i give myself permission to let go and let her in closer? it terrifies me. i feel fear. on the day of our sessions i get sick to my stomach. i think it is the fear in hiding and not knowing if something major is going to break through on that day. plus i am among many things also an agoraphobic. i am not going to run from my new therapist. we are actually rather friendly and get along famously. it’s the therapy i am afraid to get into deeply. she promises she will not go away unless certain things happen beyond her control. there is just so much fear connected to dependency that i just do not know how to let it go. I cannot stop thinking about her and what we talked about in our thursday session. it was a subject i do not talk about easily. maybe someday i will talk about it on this blog. let’s just say i exposed secret feelings. it took 15 months to get to this point. will i be able to let myself get close to her like i felt for my last therapist? can i take the chance? can i bear the pain that closeness brings? i was so confused about my last therapist. the thoughts went through my mind that i loved her and after she abandoned me those feelings developed into a fantasy or a reality that it was possible that i was in love with her. who knows if it was transference or she really was someone that brought out the passion of intimate feelings of love. i know that she became my muse and i wrote in 2011 over 160 pages of poetry inspired by her (that does not include the prior years of poetry) and the rough draft of a book that exceeded 600 pages single spaced. i feel inside like the words and music of adele and the slower soulful songs of whitney houston. they both make me feel the intensity of the pain. and whitney’s death activated all the feelings of death and loss i have felt in my life. one of the many reasons that i am in therapy to begin with but there are a whole lot of reasons that i will work on expressing on these pages in cyberspace.