Hi Emmy,

Today I don't feel very recovered. Oh well, ups and downs, right?

Yes, you did tell me about being a goat herder in Peru. That's really cool.

Right. It was not my choice to stop, and I thought it was too soon. But maybe we didn't really have much more to talk about. I don't know. I was worried for a long time about him deciding that I was finished before that actually happened, but it still caught me off guard. November was really bad - I had a couple of weeks that were completely lost to depression and he was trying to get me to make a deal about not ending my life (which I couldn't promise right then). And then in December I was surprised at that last session because he had his own appointment schedule and he actually scheduled me in himself for the next time he was in town (he travels and is here for 3 days at a time every other week). I never saw him do his own scheduling before - I always called the secretary to make a new appointment. A couple of days after that I took some papers in to him and that was when he told me that I "looked good enough that we could discontinue the individual therapy." I said ok, as coolly as I could and got away from there as fast as I could. The thing is, he has been very nice to me and my family, and I'll be in his debt forever. If he wanted to stop, there was no way I had any right to protest. Since he had scheduled an appointment for me for the next time, the secretary called me when that day came around to remind me that I had an appointment (I had figured it was up to him to cancel it), but when I asked to talk to him to find out if he wanted me to show up or not he was busy. So I did show up, and he acted surprised to see me there - said, "I thought we had agreed to discontinue." I told him that I already missed him, and he said that it wasn't over - that I could still e-mail him, but he just doesn't do a very good job of answering e-mail. Also, I asked him if he really thought I was doing that well or if there was another reason for termination and he admitted that he had been looking for a chance to stop seeing me for a while - his job and my husband's job were both being threatened.

I wrote him today though and got a response right back. I must have really not sounded too good. He still hasn't answered the letter I sent him 3 weeks ago, and I even re-sent it, wondering if he hadn't gotten that one.

Do I not want to be in therapy now? It just doesn't seem to be much of an option right now, but no, I wasn't ready to be cut off and I'm rather bitter about that.

I want to get into a clinical psychology doctoral program, and I do want to do therapy, but would also like to do some teaching and maybe research, and write books too. One thing that someone suggested was to just get an MSW degree and then I could be a licensed counselor - that would take less than 2 years instead of 5, and probably be easier to get accepted, but the feeling I have about that is that it would be more limited than what I want. If I just wanted to do therapy that ought to be enough. My chances of getting in anywhere are practically nonexistant at this point - one program turned me down, one had 700 applicants and isn't finished sorting us out yet, and one has me on their alternate list. Most programs of this kind seem to recommend some counseling, but I haven't seen it spelled out as a requirement, except that some reserve the option to require it if a candidate seems to be having trouble with personal issues being triggered.

I'm glad you started this thread. It was nice to have a chance to talk about this stuff, as well as to read everyone else's replies.

<font color=orange>There is an easy answer to your problem that is neat, plausible, and wrong.

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