Not everyone would agree with how I look at this, but it's how I understand it in relation to my own feelings regarding this issue. I totally understand why you're feeling the way you are currently feeling. It's the approach/retreat behavior I have experienced many times in my therapy journey. When I am feeling connected to my therapist, I find comfort and a sense of soothing calm when reading an email or hearing her voice. If I feel as though she is becoming too important to me, I find that threatening and I need to move as far back as I can to avoid the fear that comes from possibly being rejected or abandoned. If someone pointed all of this out to me in the past (and my former therapist did ) I would adamantly deny this is how I felt. No way was I not in control of how I felt!

When my therapist goes on vacation (even one planned) or I go on vacation, I'm sure I feel a sense of abandonment or rejection. I know, I know, totally wacked! But those feelings come from deep inside and they aren't rational or sane. My way of handling those feelings is to pull or push away from my therapist, to deny her importance to me in the whole scheme of things. I have convinced my intelligent mind that I am a rational, full functioning person who has no need to lean on or to rely on another human being, that I can do everything ON MY OWN. That means not calling my therapist in crisis (Ever!!!), not rereading emails or listening to recorded messages with her voice and definitely not dwelling or thinking about her and what she might say to me in difficult situations while she is away. Essentially, I wipe her out of existence; she does not exist.

If you look at this from an Attachment point of view, it is like the traumatized child who feels anxiety when mother goes away, but soon acts as though mother never left, playing and amusing herself rather than looking for mother. When mother returns, the child rejects mother, ignoring her or turning away. . . . But of course my therapist does exist and when she returns, I have to reconstruct our relationship all over again. Makes for more than a few uncomfortable sessions after a break. Whew, that makes therapy slooooow going. But I'm beginning to recognize my pattern and I'm working to change it. Sorry to go on so long, as you can see from my post, this is an issue close to my heart.