quote:

He loves the article. He told me it helped him to grow. It expanded his thinking. He said that it's the way he was trained to view dependency.

Hi Liese... I am glad that you shared the article with your T as I have really noticed a change in him over the past half year. He has really stepped up and both educated himself and adjusted his approach to you to make you feel safer, more cared for and as a result you are doing much better. As you know, I was very suspicious of him in the beginning... just was seeing a lot of red flags.

Ideally, this was what I was trying to accomplish with oldT. But he had competence and self-worth issues and was not interested in learning or changing and preferred to abandon me instead. I know it was him and not me but that took a long agonizing time to acknowledge. I know I'm in much better hands now.

I did want to say that you should give yourself a lot of credit for giving him the feedback and the information that he would need to help you. You also worked hard at asking for what you need (example, the two sessions/week) and I'm glad to see that is working out as well.

Oh and... yes many T's were trained to avoid the client becoming dependent on them. It was seen as unhealthy to allow this when in reality it was the opposite, particularly with attachment injured, traumatized patients. They NEED to depend for awhile while they go through the appropriate developmental stages they missed out on in childhood. Eventually, over time they will depend less and less as they grow and get stronger. If a T denies the dependency or makes the patient feel "bad" about needing it, it just stalls the therapeutic process and may cause a breakdown in the relationship. Your T definitely got it right.

Much to my delight, my T is absolutely okay with me being dependent and it's a topic I can easily discuss with him.

Take care,
TN