Isn't adulthood and mental health about being independent? We struggle as teens to separate ourselves from our family's influence.
We struggle to formulate and hold our own opinion, to have a political, ethical and moral stance we can claim as our own and to be physically, financially and emotionally independent.
Our culture is an" individualistic" culture.
It prizes and encourages and even glorifies independence in all forms.
Still, many times we feel forced to admit that we are needy, fragile and too easily influenced by people we may admire or detest but on whom we are are dependent financially or emotionally.
Many people find this to be hard to tolerate.
It feels limiting and perhaps worse, infantilizing to admit that you do not always steer your own preferred course through the world.
And there are moments when, for many reasons, sometimes having to do with present circumstances and sometimes having to do with personal history, a person might run up against psychological or emotional strains that they cannot find their own way past and they may consider seeking professional help from a psychiatrist, therapist or counsellor.
At these moments they will almost certainly not feel at their strongest and most competent.
They need and want help, but they arrive in the therapist's office steeped in the attitudes of an individualist culture which say that it is bad, weak and a failure to seek help finding a solution.
It adds a particular kind of burden to the therapist client relationship from the beginning if the client comes in convinced that dependence is a weakness.
Afraid of becoming dependent on therapy.
Many clients arrive in therapy with very serious concerns about "becoming dependent on therapy.
" It seems like an outrageous proposition to permit themselves to speak intimately and self-revealingly with a stranger who does not reciprocate with an equal offer of vulnerability.
And yet the fact that the therapist is, and to a certain degree always remains a stranger, is exactly why the situation can work.
The client is not burdened with the private concerns of the therapist and the client does not have to fear that their vulnerability will expose them to harm in their intimate social or work circles.
At the same time, within the enclosed space of therapy there is a chance to relax their boundaries and take a look at parts of themselves that they rarely expose even to themselves.
The fear of "dependence" really stems from the recognition that that being in a place where it is safe to be oneself is something that we secretly think that we would really like or even that we really need...
need so much in fact that we fear that if we ever got it we would never want to give it up! Why should a person have to go through a difficult time alone? Human beings are social creatures.
From birth we turn to one another naturally for comfort and help.
Turning to another person when one is in crisis is built into our nature and we are made to both give and receive help.
In that sense therapy is a very natural human relationship, not at all unusual or perverse.
Clients coming to therapy for the first time worry about dependence because they do not take into account the degree to which they are in control of what is happening.
Unless they are in mandated therapy, they are there engaging in a process that they find helpful because they want to be.
Clients always choose the amount and kind of dependence that they can tolerate or that they desire.
In practical terms, they choose to come to therapy in the first place.
They choose again every session whether they will continue.
They choose which therapist they will work with.
They choose how much they feel comfortable paying and how frequently they want to come.
They choose when they will end their therapy.
If a person permits themselves to turn towards their therapist as a reliable, supportive resource, then that is not a "dependence"...
it is a choice.