Unhealthy emotional attachments to an idol figure? Help please :(

[nunchaku]

I have this weird habit or something when it comes to forming emotional relationships. I'm a junior girl in high school who has never had a boyfriend. And what I am about to explain has happened twice. I don't know why, but even though I have a ton of friends and a decent family, I have become strongly emotionally attached to my favorite female teacher. I feel all the time at school that Id rather be in her classroom than anywhere else. I have even started ditching my friends at lunch to go hang out with her even if I don't talk to her much. I have also strived to gain her notice toward me by writing her letters that she would write back to and emailing her about different innocent topics that she responds to. I don't really know why I do this, but it makes me feel safe and loved. It makes me feel like I'm special and important. I would like to know why I have become so emotionally attached to her. It's like I want to be her, I want to get close enough to her so I can be exactly like her. She's a huge influence on my life and I don't know what I would do if she was gone. She's like the best friend I don't have yet. Why do I get like this?

And to a more extreme, I hate admitting to this, but sometimes my imagination likes to take me to a world where I'm a boy who has a completely different life than me. I think I do this because I like to try to understand what different people's lives are like. Well anyway, when my imagination is in the male life, I sometimes think about this teacher and make it seem like I'm sexually attracted to her. Then I forget about that attraction but I recently caught myself "checking her out" during class one day. I freaked myself out but I didn't really stop myself. I still do it sometimes.

I am in no way attracted to the same sex, but for some reason it doesn't bother me to think of my teacher this way. It sounds gross and very very unhealthy, I know... I think I need help but I have no way of getting it.

[nunchaku]

I have a small lawn mowing job but times are slow and I had to quit volunteering due to my lack of time because of the amount of homework I have nowadays

[AnnieBrooke]

If this is all as we are talking about, the remedy is for you to do things that make you feel stronger and more competent and more powerful.  Do you have a job?  Do you have a strong volunteer life where you can see your competence develop and see others feeling like you are good at what you do?

[nunchaku]

If all this is true, then it sounds just like me! I've noticed that I'm pretty much in love with her, and I feel quite often that I'm weak in a lot of areas, despite my strong mind. When I have other things to focus on I don't worry about het so much but once I start feeling dependent and weak again I go right back to being in love with this teacher.

It's weird how attached and dependent on her I am. The other day she wouldn't let me borrow a book that I wanted to read and I thought I had began to annoy her by asking, so I started making myself feel distant from her like I was mad at her. And I have even felt possessive over her because I get jealous of all the things other kids get to do with her that I don't (such as staying after school with her). I seriously think I have some emotional stability and relattional problem, too, because none of my other friends feel like this about teachers, especially of the same sex.

[AnnieBrooke]

I remember reading, in high school in one of those books written for high-schoolers about the emotional stuff that happens at that age (in other words, an educationally oriented book, not a porno book or psych book) the comment that "Girls sometimes get 'crushes' on a favorite female teacher."  It was pretty offhand and did not treat the phenomenon as an issue, it merely noted it in passing.  So I guess what you're experiencing is pretty normal, if it made it into a textbook way back in the day.  (Won't tell you what day, but it was long enough ago that such topics were less regularly discussed.)

Just to take a stab at it, you probably like her because she is a safe, nonthreatening, idealized person who also has some power, who is nice to you, so therefore affirms you.  I can tell you from experience that when feeling relatively powerless at a given moment in life, someone else safe, nice and with power can be a great person to get a crush on.  I've done it often enough with men I know in business, much to my embarrassment.  The main rule I make for myself is not to let it get so out of hand that I do something or say something about how I'm feeling.  I do allow myself to fantasize all I want, it's comforting.  I notice that when my powerless feeling passes (work shifts or a tough project gets done and I feel on top of the world again), the crush often passes too.  Sometimes I even wonder what the hell I was thinking.   I just sort of take the fact that it happens as one of those natural parts of being human.

Don't know about the boy thing, except that in our society boys are more powerful than girls, and men of course have more power than women.  Maybe it's all about not feeling very powerful right now and wanting some!  Nothing wrong with that, either.  

If the wires cross every now and then and one fantasy tries to make it with the other fantasy, just try to keep it sorted, and to work out some real-life things that will get you real-life wins and satisfactions, so you can feel on top of the world without having to use your fantasies to get you there.  They aren't bad, they are sort of a way to emotionally self-soothe.  But it's better to work out life plans that give you as many active strokes and satisfactions as possible, if you can.  Real-life positives make you feel more powerful, and you then don't need the fantasy life as much.