Flight Risk
Flight Risk
Psychodynamic therapists often consider that it takes 3 months to build a healthy attachment. This applies to the first three months of any relationship—therapeutic or other. In the first three months of therapy, the therapist and client are working to build trust and safety to begin the work of going deeper.
My therapist told me at some point far into our therapy that early on she had considered me a flight risk. I was surprised by that, but if I’m being honest, looking back I can see how she might have thought that due to my string of broken relationships I’d left behind me in my 20’s that she might very well have been one of those.
It’s important early on in therapy to talk to some clients about that feeling that might come up around not wanting to continue the therapeutic process. When we make space for questioning the process, we also make the process feel safer. When we name the doubt or the desire to flee that might come up, we make it easier to stay when it does.
While my therapist may not have told not have told me early on that she considered me a flight risk, I do remember her telling me that there would come a day where I might not want to continue therapy even though it might be in my best interest to do so. If I am being honest, I tried to kill off my therapist—metaphorically speaking!—on many occasions during my therapeutic journey.
I remember feeling like I was climbing a mountain of health and wanted to summit alone. I’m not sure if that’s because I wanted all the glory and didn’t trust someone not to take it from me, or because I felt like to feel truly worth of the success, I felt I had to have done it all on my own, or because it didn’t feel safe to receive love, help or support from others—maybe a combination of all of those things.
One of the biggest wounds I healed on my therapeutic journey is my ability to stay in relationship. To stay when the going gets tough, and to feel safe within the boundaries of healthy attachment. The fact that these kinds of attachment wounding can be healed in therapy, is one of the greatest gifts of the process.
