I have been seeing her for 2 1/2 years, and she advertises herself as an SE professional and trauma expert. Well, I am Queen of the Resistant Clients. I was a selective mute as a child (wouldn't talk), and when I go to therapy, talking about feelings is very difficult for me. I dissociate and detach from emotions, and want to use logic to think my way through everything. I'm sure I challenged her and made her work harder than a lot of clients.

I cannot say that the last few years were a waste of time. I learned a lot. As for change, I'm not so sure. We recently had a chat about the chasm between awareness and change.

Anyway, I fired her because of the following reasons:

1. I felt we had no real path. We had a loose definition of a goal. We never discussed any sort of treatment plan, and one week we would talk about one thing, the next week we would talk about another thing, then maybe throw in some Somatic exercises, then maybe talk about the inner child another week. No focus. I felt like she was throwing pennies in a pool seeing which would make the biggest ripple.

2. She takes a week off about every month, and I travel a great deal as well. I find it difficult to build any momentum when there are constant breaks in our work. She travels a lot for pleasure so I wonder if she would consider herself semi-retired. A sign of lack of commitment to me.

3. When I mentioned quitting to her 6 months ago, she told me that her methods were hypnosis (and said that I am good at doing that to myself), relational therapy, SE, and tonal work, eluding to the fact that that's her menu, that's what she's got. She weakly agreed that she could help me. I was away on a month long vacation in November and thought about quitting. A lot. Upon returning in December, I mentioned twice out of the last three sessions that I was thinking about quitting and giving up. One time she kind of ignored the fact that I said that and the other time she told me that it would be normal to cry in this situation (when I said I wanted to give up) and pointed me to the tissue box. Well, I never cry in therapy. Ever. To me, I saw this as a big red flag, big enough to cover my face! Wouldn't you think a therapist who wanted to work with you would pick up these blatant cues and start a discussion around why I should stay and what will it take to continue our work together? What do I need?

So, I sent her an email yesterday morning. Yes, the coward's way out, but given my quiet self in therapy, it was the best solution for me. I could collect my thoughts and present them in an articulate manner. While I understand that it is the holidays, I am a bit surprised that I haven't received a response. My partner thinks it may take her a while to chew on everything that I said to her - which is pretty much everything that I wrote above.

I felt a bit despondent last night. I did have in my mind that this was my last effort to work with someone. This was my 9th therapist, I'm 55, and while I've worked on ACoA issues years ago, I never put so much time, effort and money into dealing with PTSD or any of the abuse. And I think she was genuine in her want to help me and I like her as a person.

Now I am wondering if I really should try working with someone else. These are slow, time-eating healing processes we are looking at: dissociation, attachment issues are probably my biggest. Did I quit too soon? Maybe she was going slow as to not flood me or overwhelm me. Or maybe she liked $600/month from me. Who knows. It has been so hard for me to open up. I am not sure if I can blame that on her or on myself. I suspect I would have that problem with anyone and don't cherish the idea of starting all over else where, but the fact that she didn't jump on my want to quit kind of makes me think that she didn't want to work with me anymore, anyway.

Any thoughts?