Is therapy addictive?

 

One of the auxiliary benefits of therapy, no matter what you’ve come to discuss, is that it helps you develop healthy attachment. It occurs because therapy is a process that keeps and nourishes clear boundaries, respectful communication, non-judgement and acceptance, while you explore the freedom to be yourself (because everybody else is taken, remember?).

You do it together with your therapist, in a therapeutic alliance – hand-in-hand mutual work, by building a working relationship with them.

However, people who didn’t have the experience of healthy attachment in their early life may experience all of the aforementioned things as something negative, resembling an unhealthy dependency or addiction, and feel it is dangerous.

It is especially relevant for the people who grew up with narcissistic, addicted or alcoholic parents, or parents with mental disorders or with severe PTSD. In their altered state of mind these parents couldn’t distinguish right from wrong, real from imaginary, love from hate and so on.

Thus they failed to enact it with their children, not showing that they can be safely attached to and not building a warm, loving and healthy dependency.

John Bowlby, a pioneer British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst of the mid-20th century, established that everyone has different attachment styles; that is, how you maintain proximity with other people and build your cognitive, behavioral and emotional relationship patterns. (1) Your dominant attachment style will also define how you build the relationship with your therapist.

Additionally, Levy et al. showed that one’s attachment style serves as an indicator for therapy outcomes – secure attachment predicts better outcome than insecure attachment, and an increase in attachment security during treatment is associated with better outcomes. (3) And people with insecure, i.e., avoidant, anxious or disorganized attachment style fear to develop addiction in therapy more than people with secure attachment.

Avoidant Attachment Style

If you have the avoidant attachment style, you may tend to avoid problems and relationships. It’s not that you’re afraid to face difficulties, but you might unconsciously substitute one problem with another, avoiding the core issues, especially if the problems have to do with relationship, family or couple’s dynamics.

People with avoidant attachment style actively try to avoid therapy by making meetings as infrequent as possible, changing therapists often, or deciding to avoid therapy altogether.

They fear that if they form a connection and get closer, it may feel like an addiction. And this is the reason why they are reluctant to talk about emotions, often dismissing them. For avoidantly-attached people the fear of addiction in therapy reflects the fear of losing distance and thus losing themselves and becoming dependent on the therapist.

Anxious Attachment Style

Anxiously-attached people want to be close to the important people in their life, but at the same time they want to be far. Contrary to avoidantly-attached people, for them the fear of addiction in therapy reflects the fear of losing closeness and thus experiencing disappointment and feeling poignant loneliness. The loneliness is very hard to get rid of, resembling an addiction in its stickiness.

They are afraid that the therapist, like some other important figures in their early life, would eventually abandon them. So for them to rely is inevitably to lose and be hurt. That’s why if you have this attachment style, you might get closer to others, including your therapist, very slowly and carefully.

Disorganized Attachment Style

This attachment style forms when parenting is inconsistent: there are times of support and responsiveness to the child’s needs, but total disregard of the child’s needs at other times. At such times the caregiver may be cold, insensitive, or emotionally unavailable.

Like avoidant people, individuals with disorganized attachment resist regular therapy at times, making it difficult to form a wholeness and consistency in the process. However, at times, especially at times of crisis, they want to get closer, divest control and trust their therapist and the process. But after that, the distant side of the attachment steps in and they will want to get distant again.

Their fear of addiction lies in both the fear of closeness and intimacy and the fear of distance and loss of connection. Since their parents behaved in unpredictable ways, they find it very difficult to trust, and the stable trust in their therapist may seem like an addiction to them and an unhealthy dependency.

To conclude, your dominant attachment style influences your fears and how you perceive emotional bonds. With insecure attachment styles, stable relationships and emotional attachments might seem like an addiction and elicit the fear thereof.

It is always useful to address the fears underlying the thoughts of emotional addiction in therapy. It would reveal and explain to you and your therapist what you might really be afraid of, and help to address this fear.

Thus, the fear of addiction in therapy often serves as the door opening to the exploration of the real fear. The latter is usually accompanied by additional feelings, such as anger, resentment, shame, guilt and sadness.

The goal of therapy is to provide a secure base to build stable relationships, with yourself and other people in your life. The therapist temporarily functions as an attachment figure and their goals are to help you become independent and act out of your freedom, not out of fear of addiction or avoidance.

 

Bibliography

1. Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and Loss: Volume I. Attachment. London: Hogarth Press.

2. Firestone, R.W. The psychodynamics of fantasy, addiction, and addictive attachments. Am J Psychoanal 53, 335–352 (1993).

3. Levy, K. N., Kivity, Y., Johnson, B. N., & Gooch, C. V. (2018). Adult attachment as a predictor and moderator of psychotherapy outcome: A meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 74(11), 1996–2013.