My Support Forums - View Single Post - Nearly 3 years after therapist abandonment = healed

coconut64 · Feb 10, 2015, 11:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeeJay

My first ever therapist abandoned me two-and-a-half years ago.

I just wanted to share that I am healed from that.

I started therapy with a private practitioner nearly four years ago and the therapist disappeared after I confessed sui thoughts. The therapist was in over his/her head with my issues and the therapist's behavior re-traumatized me.

It's like this therapist held my hand to open a can of worms and then disappeared when it got tough. (My issues are abuse / childhood abandonment / trauma / foster care kid stuff.)

I found a new therapist two years ago and it has been a long journey, but I feel more stable than I've felt in nearly six years! I've learned so much about trauma and I've gotten so many tools for my own healing.

I don't mean to brag or boast about this. I really feel thankful and more at peace with myself and the world around me than I thought was possible.

I thought that losing my first therapist was the end of the world. When I think about my first (bad) therapist now, I'm grateful the therapy ended when it did so that I could find this new therapist who actually knew what she was doing.

I don't miss the first therapist at all. I feel no ties to that person. I feel slightly bad that the person is not that great of a practitioner and I think that I'm a healthier individual than that supposed professional. I am angry at the ex-therapist sometimes, but no longer really sad.

That's all.

I don't want anyone to read this and feel bad or judge his or her own progress. I just wanted to share some hope. ...This is the message from the future that I wish my former self had gotten when times were really dark.

So often, people share their distress in the moment on these boards but there doesn't seem to be huge follow up.

I may be a therapy lifer. I'm not sure.

I really commend you for being able to move forward and find a new T to continue your healing. I haven't been able to.

I too come from a similar background plagued by abuse, trauma, abandonment. I was in therapy for nearly five years with a psychoanalytic T going several times a week. Until he abandoned me overnight. No termination session, no nothing. I told him once that his office was the closest thing to a home I've ever had in terms of feeling heard, understood, safe. When he terminated me, I felt like I was being ripped off his arms. Like I was abandoned mortally wounded in a battlefield where he just stepped over me and walked away with no qualms.

I was broken before and now I'm shattered and I don't see it ever getting better. I can never go back. I'm not good with relationships, my boyfriends tell me I make it impossible to love me. What I get from relationships is hurt, rejection, betrayal, abandonment. I know I'm probably replaying the patterns from my past because of the trauma. It's painful enough to deal with this in personal relationships but to have it happen in a professional relationship (the term he used to tell me he was terminating me because it was a professional relationalship and he didn't owe me anything). It's just too painful.

This happened three years ago and I'm still devastated and deeply hurt. I refuse to go back to therapy, to start anymore intimate relationships. I'm done. I have put all my feelings back in the box and I'm trying to survive as best I can.

For a about a year and a half after termination, I was so depressed I was home bound mostly sleeping my pain away and watching as much tv as I could. After that, I od. That forced me out of my funk but I refused any kind of treatment or meds or anything.

What I want the most is to have a relationship, have a family but it is also what terrifies me the most. I made so much progress in therapy that I came to believe it was possible. Not anymore.

One of the worst parts about the sudden termination was how humiliating it was to want to talk about it with him, to be so attached to someone to whom I mattered so little. Feelings, intimacy are extremely hard for me. I don't have many to share like other people do. But I opened up to this person, shared my feelings, talked to him about things I never shared with anyone before. And for what? For nothing. It was a waste. I'm ashamed that even after he terminated me, hurt me, rejected me, abandoned me, he was still the only person I wanted to talk to about it.

I can't go through this again. I'm never going to let another human being hurt me again physically, sexually, or psychologically. My father did that and my mother did nothing to help me. I now know that these wounds will never heal and that their weight is something I must carry for the rest of my life. I can only depend on myself and I must protect me since no one else will.

I admire you because I just cannot go back. My ex-t came highly recommended, he is a psychoanalyst and especializes in trauma. He couldn't have a better resume. I'm more broken now than when I started. All therapy has done for me is breaking the last of me and leaving me shattered. There are no more pieces to put back together, there is no more hope, no more wishing. Just surviving and fighting to stay alive.