I was in therapy from September 1970-July 2005 :-) but with the same therapist 1978-1987 and then 1996-2005. We terminated the second time, deciding a year-to-year-and-a-half beforehand, because my T retired. I decided to move, retire, etc. also summer of 2005, during that year-and-a-half. I would say my T and I worked hard on termination during that period.

My biggest problem in my life has probably been my stepmother's and my relationship followed closely by my mother's death when I was 3. In the 1996-2005 period my T and I worked through a majority of those problems; indeed, I was in therapy because my father died in 1992 and my stepmother started to get seriously senile around 1995 and her problems were triggering my issues. At one point around 2000, my T made the prediction that things would change/get better when my stepmother died, which she did in 2001 (I got "the" call from my stepsister Saturday morning and just happened to be on my way out the door to my T for a makeup session; how's that for timing? :-) It was very different and my life did get "better" in many ways. In May of 2003 my father-in-law died (I never knew my mother-in-law, she died in 1985ish) and my appendix burst a week later and there were serious complications until late October 2003.

I planned a lot of activity for the summer during termination. We were moving from our home of 20 years, I was quitting my job of nearly 8 years, I was furnishing and working on my new home and I'd planned the biggest vacation of our married life since our honeymoon, a trip to Europe, for September, during our anniversary. There was a lot going on and it was "scary" and I finally found an online/e-mail therapy through Metanoia http://www.metanoia.org/ whom I'd had my eye on for 6-7 years. He was not quite "local" to me but I knew where his office was, had grown up in that neighborhood, and I was familiar with his website, style, etc. I started a "bridge" therapy of a couple months, writing him 3-4 times a week I guess, sometimes more and gradually less. I got use to all the "different" activity and organization work of being in a new place, new neighbors, new routines, etc. During the whole time I didn't so much miss my T as feel "lost" because of everything being different and, for a while, much more confusing and intense. I moved from a huge rambler on an acre of land overlooking a State park to a tiny townhouse on the Chesapeake Bay, an hour away. The downsizing of my life from the last 20 years (and all my childhood, my parents were both alive when I moved in and had been to visit, etc.) was very hard/triggery as you can maybe imagine and I hired a professional organizer to help me, and we had a huge yard sale that she had to call in extra people for, etc. I remember most, having to sell 350+ books to a used book dealer and just the dividing up of which to keep/which to sell was a daunting experience. I had to throw away lots of childhood memories, books from my brothers' childhoods in the 1940s, things I had no room for and which no one bought at the yardsale (and which were pretty ratty, having only sentimental value). I had "collections" of a few, what I thought were good/rare books and the bookseller said they weren't. . . During this whole clean-out-the-old-house, I hadn't cleaned in the 20 years we lived there, I had a serious asthma attack and made my husband call 911 and got my first/only ride in an ambulance in my life. The dust, dirt, mildew, mold, etc. were a bit "much" :-) for me and we'd just gotten a new air conditioner for the house which was MUCH better than the old so the air apparently was full of all that -- we "broke" it the first week we had it, I think it was, because the filters clogged, they were picking up so much stuff, so "well."

So, here I am 2 years out of therapy. How am I? Life goes on. I have very different problems than I had 1996-2005, not better or worse or harder or less hard; just different. But I'd give myself probably a "B" as to how I'm doing. There are few distracting voices in my head, less angst about what-to-do-when, things are a bit neater/cleaner but a lot of that is having less space/fewer things; I'm still working on that. Yesterday was our community yard sale, the second I've participated in and I got rid of a bunch of stuff. I still have too many books, just bought two more temporary bookcases (which I don't have room for :-) and I'm working on rearranging my "half" of the office (the second bedroom) so my desktop I never use uses my grandmother's antique desk instead of a whole corner metal thingy (which I should have gotten rid of yesterday with the yard sale but was too "lazy" to take apart and do) so we have more space in there. My one and only storage, an understair closet (about the size Harry Potter lives in at his uncle's) is jammed to the ceiling but the "climate controlled" rental space I have down the street, same size, has one lonely bag of Christmas decorations that it's only costing me something like $80 a month to store. I didn't even go get them for last Christmas!

So, nothing "goes away" with therapy/the end of therapy; you don't become someone you aren't but just keep "evolving" but I have become a slightly better "weaver" of my life's cloth? :-) There's fewer burrs and sticks in it but still a knot or two or a dropped stitch it would appear. It's looking much better though than it did before therapy's going back and reworking a few sections.