Hmm, yeah I don't know if I fully feel comfortable saying it here. It used to be that I wouldn't talk about this at all with almost anyone. This is kind of a new thing for me and I'm still trying to process that it's okay, I don't have to suffer in silence.

Well, I think it would be a process of accurately identifying the ways the client either believes they are, or actually is dependent, and slowly encouraging them to face the relevant anxieties and become less dependent. Yes, in such a case, a T would need to be in control of their own feelings, but also able to consciously feel them for the client in the first place. I've seen literature talking about T engaging in a "temporary/partial regression" or something like that. I wish more T's were able to do that. This is really all an issue of balance, self-awareness, self-presence and self-control.

Yes, I do understand. I don't mean to minimize it, either. I'm in mostly the same position, and mostly had been for months, but, I suppose I'm recognizing lately that the more I think about how T's choices affected me, the more it actually continues to affect me and I extend the narrative further and further from its source material. I am powerless to change the outcome at this point. The more I wish it would change, or tell myself it should have been different, the more I unconsciously treat myself like a victim and allow myself to identify as a victim, leaving the wounds open.

I guess I get waves of trying to be optimistic and then the waves of hurt, grief, despair, longing. But, also it's true that I did come to therapy in a very bad situation. I was still nearly suicidal back then. So it's hard to say for sure how much worse off I am. I did become more emotionally isolated than I used to be, and that's not good. OTOH, to some extent, I at least feel better off in that I was able to feel the love I felt, temporarily, regardless of how it ended, and that feeling itself is something to hold onto. After that, it's just about giving myself the space to try to feel that and to need that with none of the strings that used to be attached.

I think a large portion of getting by in life is about deliberately choosing to selectively focus on the positive side of it. I don't mean optimism for optimism's sake, I just mean choosing to think about the things that have happened that genuinely felt good rather than the bad, and seeking out wherever you can find more of the good things with less of the bad things. I can think about the way I ended with T, yes, and that hurts. But I can think about the good feelings that I felt with T as well, and know that it was there, even if imperfectly or misguidedly. I can see that it didn't have to go the way it did and take steps to make sure it does not go that way if it happens again. I don't need to let the ending destroy everything entirely. There's a specific way this ends up looking in my situation, not sure what it would look like for you if you were able to get in touch with that.

Yes... what do you think are some safeguards that could be set in place?

I think my biggest overarching complaint with therapy as an institution does come from the notion that there's really no way to know what you're getting until you pay for it and have invested in it. I especially don't like that therapists generally charge for the consultation itself. I agree that some things should change and there just are not enough motivating factors in place to hold T's to a higher standard of treatment, beyond the client's awareness and the honor system I guess. We have inspectors for restaurants, hotels, things like that. Maybe there should be trained therapy inspectors. Dunno. After all, who could train them to be any more objective and competent than the therapists are in the first place? It's all subjective stuff...

And I am getting something from this dialog. I'm figuring it out as I go, too.

I bolded the items that resonated with my experience.

I personally find it hard/stressful to think of ways that T herself could have acted different, because she was who she was and had the weaknesses she had. I don't think that means she shouldn't be a T but I do really hope she will grow from seeing the mistakes she made with me and use that to do a better job in the future.

I guess the one thing specifically about T that really upset me was how she would transform her anger into judgments about whether or not my behavior was acceptable/appropriate, as if these standards were universal. She simultaneously would call something inappropriate and acknowledge that with another T, it may well not be a problem at all. That was how she forced me to read her mind and pretend this stuff was objective to be spared the blunt force of her disapproval. When I fully stopped doing that, just to make the point to myself that it was happening and it was wrong, then the covert aggression and devaluation started coming in, and I thought I could handle it, but it hurt really, really bad, and even worse because it was the tone of our final communications. And the main reason I can't forgive T for that is because I made every attempt to draw attention to the fact that she was doing it, long before it got out of hand.

But if it were a different person, and I were able to feel the same positive feelings, I know that what I would mostly want is just for words to to mean what they are actually supposed to mean. I doubted the functional honesty of T's words and invitations and promises all along, and I waited too long to truly voice my doubts, and in the end it came back to haunt me. In that sense, I feel like I failed myself, and I don't want to make that mistake again.