Caution...parts of this are rants, but ultimately, it's helping me to post this, and may actually hit a chord with someone else out there.....

I am three weeks out from the last appointment with terrible T. My real life is going so smoothly that I realize that the therapy itself had created drama that completely sapped my very life force. I realize that i could not deal with the problems in my life due to the problems in the therapy itself.

I sleep soundly at night. I ran a 10K race. I see friends. My bank account is slowly recovering. My day job has its ups and downs, but when I leave for the day, I leave it behind.

Things aren't perfect in my life, by any means, but they're do-able, and I'm not obsessing constantly about whether I'm a decent and worthy person. I am no longer worrying what will the next session be like, how many days until the next session, dreading the outcome, no longer wondering whether I can haul myself into that office, by hook or by crook. I'm no longer putting in an enormous effort to convince myself that the "analytic endeavor" would eventually play out in some positive way...some day. It was all so effortful and false, the whole therapeutic "relationship." And in the end, there was so much psychobabble leading nowhere, interspersed with really damaging pronouncements from a condescending a##. It really sux to think back on what I tolerated -and went back to, time in and time out, week in and week out.

The sticking point for me was my T made it seem like a challenge to remain in therapy. Now, in hindsight, I think that was the absolute height of manipulation. T had set up a little straw man: All your relationships mirror the one that you have with me. And because ours is troubled, therefore you need to stay with me and work ours out, and therefore solve the problems in your other relationships.

What a crock.

And how convenient for T. And how easy for T to refer to former clients, dismissively, as people who "don't want to look at themselves." What if they just didn't want to deal with T and the manipulations any more? Wouldn't that be one sane way to resolve all the pain, misunderstandings, and expensive heartache?

that's what I chose to do, and I am finding: I'm HAPPIER, DAY BY DAY in every way...without Therapist!

Is it possible that bad therapy made me feel much more depressed than no therapy at all?

My current fear is that I will cave in....once again, and try to repair this therapeutic relationship. NO, i did not call to cancel and T may still expect me to come in next week.

I don't want to, and I hope I won't. I could use some pocket NON RIDERS.

Interested in not going along?