My second therapist ever gave me a little butterfly shaped magnet thing. She slways said I was learning to fly like a butterfly (I think I was 21). That was the most agonizing ending I've ever been through, and why I don't believe a ""termination process" leads to less painful endings. I clung desperately to that stupid butterfly for over a year until the pain lessened and I started to feel angry with the whole therapy process. I didn't get how she could leave me on my own (punlic mental health), when I was still cutting bad enough for stitches
The one after that gave me some polished rocks with words on them. "Love" "peace" "joy" and something else. She said to hang onto them and know that's what she was wishing for me. But she also said we could email, and after the first email, I emailed her again 6 months later at Christmas and got a "sorry, will email you when things are less hectic," and I never got that answer, 8 years later. I threw them out during my last move.
My last unethical one gave me a stuffed animal to borrow when I had surgery. She hurt me so badly in the middle of that, that I insisted she take it back before my second surgery because looking at it was hurting me too much.
The one thing that I have and always carry with me isn't really a transitional object or from a therapist. I'm very close to my pastor and she's always been there for me (she has a daughter my age and she's very caring). I'm also a theogy student. We both love a female mystic from the middle ages (Julian of Norwich), and she has this beautiful quote about the world being like a hazelnut,
Quote:
In this vision he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, and it
was round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and
thought “What may this be?” And it was generally answered thus: “It is all that is
made.” I marvelled how it might last, for it seemed it might suddenly have
sunk into nothing because of its littleness. And I was answered in my
understanding: “It lasts and ever shall, because God loves it.”
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Anyway, so before surgery when I was scared and really sad and hopeless, she brought me a hazelnut and a copy of the above quote, and told me to keep the hazelnut in my pocket so I can reach down and touch it and know I'm loved. I still have the quote in my wallet and the hazelnut in my change purse so I can hold it when I'm really hurting or when I need to remember she cares about me and I'm a child of God. In a way, I guess that's sort of a mindfulness thing. But it does help.