Hi all,

I have a kind of complicated issue that I would love to get some insight from you all about. For those of you who do know my history, I'll try to make my summary brief. I was seeing a therapist for about a year, whom I became very close to. I saw her 3-4x a week with lots of out of session contact (via phone, text, email, even snail mail.) I was seeing her for OCD primarily. Last January, my OCD got so bad that I was admitted to a residential program. I was there for about 8 weeks and went through intensive CBT work. The professionals there squeezed every bit of information out of me about my relationship with my therapist as they could (I still don't know why). They deemed her unfit to treat me because of boundary issues. Our relationship was terminated without my consent and upon discharge, I was sent to a new therapist. It was heartbreaking for me to be cut off from my previous therapist because we were so close. That brings us up to the present.

So here's the issue I'm facing. This new therapist and I got off to a very rocky start. I was discharged and came home spitting mad. I was angry and frustrated and not at all willing to see this new therapist. I didn't have a choice though, so I tried to make it work. It's been about 6 months with this new person now and we still aren't great together. I've always felt like she was judging me, judging my old t, and very invalidating of my grief over losing old t. She tends to be very blunt and very vocal about her personal opinions. I always have felt like I have to edit my thoughts around her and what I say in session, and I always feel like I have to stay one step ahead of her ulterior motives (whatever they might be).

A couple days ago, she brought up the idea of termination. Her job was to ensure that I had a successful re-integration into the real world from residential and that job has been done. I was over the moon when I heard that I might finally get to be done with her. She asked me to think about termination (what evidence I have to justify the termination, what I would like to do next, what goals I have for the future, etc.) I was going to just be honest and tell her that she herself said that her job is done, and that I don't feel like we ever really connected, and I would like to terminate. However, I really want to go back to my old t. I have other issues that I want to work on that are un-OCD related and I think that my old t would be the perfect person to help me work through those (since the issues have to do with trust, and abandonment, and other personal issues). I feel comfortable with her. The problem is, new t is very biased against my old t, because she was informed by the hospital that old t had bad boundaries and was "unethical".

My dilemma is this: I need this new therapist to be on my side. I can't go in and say that I should be able to terminate because I don't like her, and expect her to help me by recommending that I go back to my old t. Neither can I go in and tell her that we should terminate because I'm doing so well and don't need her help anymore. She'll say, "If you don't need help anymore, then why do you need me to recommend you see your old therapist?" I need to play my cards just right. Because I'm a minor, her recommendation is going to have a huge effect on what happens to me after we terminate. Any ideas for how I could convince her to let me go back to old t?

I see my t on Tuesday to make my case. I really need it to go well.