Oh no, Kacey, I'm so sorry your T went back on his word to you and you are hurting so badly

Something similar happened to me and T two years ago. Like you, I was picking up for a couple of weeks that something wasn't right. I walked in to my session and she said 'happy birthday'. I knew somehow that she was about to break me, and I told her it wasn't my birthday- didn't want to give her that extra power somehow. In that hour, she told me that everything she had done with me had been a mistake. She had been 'too available' to me. She had self-disclosed too much. She had been too flexible in her use of email. On reflection, she 'realised' that these actions on her part had made me idealize the relationship with her and led to me experiencing intense feelings towards her. She was going to be Different from Now On. Indeed, I was right in what I'd picked up- she'd already started. It was terribly painful. The only time I have ever left the room before the end of the session. I sat for hours on the stairs because I was afraid of what I would do if I moved. I remember my partner and T standing over me impatiently on the stairs. It was my birthday.

The most awful part was that she downplayed what had happened, and couldn't understand why I was so devastated. I wrote her a letter addressing each of the things she felt she had done 'wrong'. I cited her own emails and texts back to her, month by month, showing how she had led me to trust her that the intense contact and feelings were 'part of the process'. I pointed out that either she had been wrong in everything she had done up till now, or she was wrong now- either way, it was natural that I would be terribly upset.

I honestly thought it was the end. I sent her the letter. At the last minute, I went to my next scheduled session, because something in me still couldn't stay away from her. At that session, I came to the decision that I wanted to change therapists. She said I would have to put the request in writing. I left so distressed that I bought razor blades, but then returned to T's building as I felt safer there. I sat in the toilets and wrote the letter. I still remember the lime green felt tip pen- it was all I had. As time went on, I realised I was unable to get home safely, and contacted T. By the time she got back to me, she realised that I was now locked in the building (I had assumed the door would always open from the inside). T was on the other side of the city with a young baby and didn't drive. Her husband- the last person in the world I'd ever wanted to have dealings with- had to come to let me out and put me in a taxi. Even thinking of it now fills me with horror.

The next day, I apologised. I understood the enormity of what T had done- as a teenager in a psychiatric hospital I made false allegations of sexual abuse against most of the adult males in my life. T had sent her husband into a dark building at night with someone who she knew had done this. T said it didn't matter at all, she knew it had been a mistake, it would never have occurred to her to think otherwise (none of this attention seeking manipulation dialogue that many therapists are more comfortable with). She said she hadn't even thought about it leaving her husband (and therefore her family) vulnerable- she trusted me.

That was the day that I knew I would go back. T had thought the best of me, so I would think the best of her. It was a deliberate decision. It didn't make it easy- I was wary for many months. We didn't talk about what had happened. I didn't really know the score. We just went forward- but it made it possible. We only really addressed what had happened on her daughter's birthday six months later, when I realised that I couldn't bear the thought of T giving her daughter a happy birthday when what she had given me was pain pain pain. I had to ask T what on earth had happened. She said that she had been following her instincts in terms of treating me, then particular events had made her anxious, and as a result she had tried to revert to more rigidly theoretically adherent practice. She had soon realised this was a mistake and had tried hard to repair it.

I'm sorry this is so very long. And all about me. It felt important to tell you that T and I have been where you and your T are, and come back from there. But if it hadn't been for a random occurrence (getting locked in her building) I don't think we would have done. It was only our continued contact that gave us a chance to really see and hear the other person. I wrote her a letter. T said about that letter- 'I did know there was a lot of validity in what you subsequently wrote to me and reading what you wrote upset me a lot because I knew it was valid and that I had hurt you without meaning to'... 'Your letter crystalised the realisation that it had been a mistake and also reminded me of previous situations when a similar thing had happened when working with one or two people in the past'. It was the same for me, in that getting locked in brought out the side of T that I needed to see and be reminded of, so that I could reframe what had happened from that perspective.

How can you and your T see and hear each other from here?