I'm still trying to process in my head the situation with my t. This morning, I sent her this:

R,

I knew you were swamped this week, so you don’t need to reply to my messages. I won’t expect one. I just need to say how I feel. I know it takes time for you to read this, but I hope it’s OK – as long as I don’t ask for a reply.

You told parts that you were not going anywhere, but this does not fit with their recent experience. How would you feel if someone you felt attached to and were used to communicating with suddenly quit speaking to you? Anything you said had to be sent through a mediator, and vice versa? When you wanted to feel close to them, they told you to bond with the mediator. When you turned to them for comfort, they told you to get it from the mediator. Wouldn’t you be confused and wonder what was going on? Would you feel like that person was still present in their relationship with you? I doubt it. That’s how child parts are feeling right now.

I always knew that you wanted me to bond with myself, but I didn’t think as you helped me start doing that, that you were going to start pulling back and slowly ditch them. I thought parts had a real relationship with you that would somehow continue, even when therapy was over and we weren’t seeing each other anymore. But now it feels like the relationship was only contrived. Once I start reaching a goal, you start pulling away. Instead of having a relationship with someone I’ve learned to trust and get close to, I have a relationship with a bridge. With every step I take over the bridge, it disappears behind me. Maybe that’s how therapy is supposed to work. But it feels artificial and abandoning.

Child parts need a real relationship – not a temporary one, not an artificial one. A relationship where somebody truly cares about them and doesn’t have plans to ditch them down the road. I thought I could have that with you in our therapy relationship. But maybe it is not possible. Everything is temporary, nobody is going to stay in my life. Nobody. And nobody is going to be able to give me all the things I didn’t get from my parents, nor will anybody ever love me as much as a parent would.

Regardless of the temporary support I get from you, the bottom line is I have to be on my own, I have to meet all of the unmet needs I have inside. You will help me help myself, and then you will leave. And I’m already seeing the beginning of it.

I don’t feel like I am ready for you to pull back. Child parts aren’t ready to start letting go. But it is what it is.

T