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peaches100 · 07:11 AM

Some of you know that i was recently triggered by finding out about a sui on the PC board -- especially when i read her thread about how bad her life was going, in addition to her t leaving to take a new job without giving her any way to contact her. It just broke my heart to read about her experience and left me feeling angry at her t for not helping her transition. It also sparked my abandonment fears about my own t retiring soon and not having any further contact with her.

So i talked about it on my session. I said how mad i felt that her t left her without contact when everything was going wrong for her. I told her that cutting off all contact at termination felt mean and wrong to me. Why does reaching a state of healing and independence mean it's necessary to cut off all contact? I used the example of a parent with a grown child who leaves home. Do they say "Goodbye, have a nice life. We won't ever talk or see one another again, but remember the nice memories." It's true we aren't our t's children. But for some of us who never had a close relationship with a parent, the t-client relationship is the closest thing we've ever had to it! Why spend all that time trying to build up their trust and form a relationship with the client, only to cut off all contact later, once they have become close and attached? How is that any different from past relationships where they've learned to love somebody who abandoned them?

My t listened to all i had to say. Then she said that when the time for termination comes, we would work out together how our relationship would change. She asked if I wanted to talk about how it might change, and I said Yes. She asked me what would I like to see happen with our relationship? For some reason, I was afraid to say anything. She asked me how I would feel about a once-per-month check-in phone call. To be honest, that sounded reasonable to me, but what I was thinking about was what if I never get to actually see her and be with her again, and that made me cry. I told her I didn’t think I could talk about it after all.

She then asked if she could come sit next to me. She asked if she could touch me, and put her arm around my shoulder. She told me that with long-term therapy, endings are difficult, and that there is attachment on both sides. She empathized with how sad I felt, and said that in some ways it could be as painful as a romantic breakup. She said she doesn’t have much experience when it comes to terminating with a long-term client like me. But she talked about how we have to learn to let go in life. She talked about the cycles of life on the earth, birth and death, and about how even the trees lose their leaves in the winter, and that loss is a part of life. She also asked me how my religious beliefs could help me in learning to deal with the loss of relationships. So we discussed that also.