I feel such a huge amount of pain and anger coming from your posts when you talk about the difficult process of finding the right therapist and your hurtful feelings following your former therapist terminating you. I truly do feel for you; I can tell that you're confused and totally disillusioned by the entire process. I did want to ask about the water issue. Did you ask for a glass of water and she refused to get you one? That would be really rude and you were smart to leave that one in the dust. If you didn't ask for water though, I'd say that it's important to realize that therapists aren't "hostesses or hosts" that are obligated to offer us food or drink upon entering their "house/office". Sure, some do, but it isn't a given. It's fine to ask and if she refused then she was pretty rude. I do know that some therapists don't encourage eating or drinking during session time (pretty controlling if you ask me ), but they believe that the client and therapist needs to focus on the task at hand and not be distracted. But if you're a therapist sitting and talking all day long, you might need a little water to wet a dry throat so you're not croaking at the client. If you didn't ask and she didn't offer, don't chalk that up to her being rude or stingy. Perhaps there were other things about her interaction with you that turned you off to her style.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that it is a very very rare therapist who will follow up with a phone call or email if a "new" client calls or leaves a message saying they aren't returning. Therapists are trained not to "chase down" clients to see why they aren't returning. It's kind of crass and almost like a lawyer "ambulance chasing" or if they're drumming up business from someone who has indicated they weren't interested. If you request that they call back and they don't, that's not kosher, but it's pretty standard stuff for you not to get a call from a therapist to ask what happened. It is sometimes a little different once you're an established client. If you suddenly call and say you're not returning, many therapists will call to inquire what happened; But that doesn't happen all the time either. Some therapists really put the client in the driver's seat and allow them to lead on the issue of whether or not they want to be in therapy and if there's been a rupture, they give the client space to decide if they want to return and work through it. It can be a painful process if a person takes the therapist's non response as direct feedback as them not giving a hoot for you. It might just be their style and them letting you lead the way. And then of course, there are clients that are so busy and have a waiting list that if we don't return it's no problem for them because they have someone else to fill the spot. The trick is to really try not to take those initial meetings too personally.