Thank you all for your responses. I apologize for my delay in coming back here. Every time I start to type a response, I get overwhelmed and walk away. I wrote the original post when I was in a different mindset; this is such a complicated thing for me. I don't WANT to see my former T (I'll call him S) as bad... because to see him as bad means that I should walk away...and I don't WANT to cut off all contact. Because even though I'm getting hurt, I still freaking love him. Sigh.

My current T (I call him J) definitely knows all that is going on. My sessions with J are so so different than my sessions with S ever were. I'm starting to think...maybe what I was doing with S wasn't even really therapy. J said that at one point -- that what I was doing wasn't therapy. All I know is this...

I left nearly every session with S feeling worse than I felt going in -- the having to leave him, having to go home...it HURT. Sometimes, I couldn't leave the parking lot for hours. In contrast: I now leave every session with J feeling lighter, better, typically more positive about the outlook of my life. There is no pain from having to leave J's office and go home.

My therapy with J is not about my relationship with him (J) whereas my therapy with S became almost entirely about my relationship with him (S).

Though I look forward to my next session with J, I do not obsess over it. I don't obsess over J. There is no "fantasy J" in my mind with whom I have constant discussions. I will write letters to bring with me to therapy with him, but the tone of that exercise is not filled with pain and anxiety. I obsess over S. And, I can never really tell where the "fantasy S in my mind" ends and the "real S" begins.

This is all so ridiculously complicated for me. I'm sure that, looking in, it's very simple -- S was a bad therapist for me; I've found a good one. I should be able to cut S loose and move on with my life. Except... losing S literally feels like a threat to my identity.

I wrote this last night...I've no idea if it'll make sense to anyone:

When I first met S, I had this internal "part" who was... like... one of the oldest most wholly developed parts of my life. I literally remember the day, when I was in elementary school, when this part began forming. It's the mechanism by which I used to take care of all of my own desires for comfort and protection. Literally, I named it. Him. He was like... I guess almost like an imaginary best friend... who I had into adulthood. I wrote stories, constantly, lived in these stories...in my mind or on paper. He was "my" protector, my comfort, honestly just one of the only things that kept me going in my life. I lived in my imaginary world with him. Seriously. All of the time. Things would get murky later when I discovered online chat rooms...but that's a different story.

S suggested early on that he might be the new, real, outside of my head person...to replace this imagined one. I resisted hard at first. At the time, I was deeply involved in my spirituality, and I had actually fallen into deep belief that this imaginary 'person' was real...was actually a spiritual guide. That's another story for another day. After my grandmother died, though... and my spirituality died with her... S's suggestion became reality.

The imaginary protector in my head was replaced by a real flesh-and-blood person... only, this, of course, created all kinds of problems... Namely, that the imagined protector had been able to be with me at all times, in all places, under all circumstances. I could "speak with" this imagined protector at any time. There was no fear of abandonment. There was no questioning what "he" might think of me or might do. Looking back, the obvious thing to state here is...because "he" was just a piece of me.

When I say replaced, I mean it. I can no longer call up even a shadow of that imagined protector part. When I go to that space in my mind, it is only S. But then, I guess, the S in my mind is different than the S in real life... this is something he and I spoke about before. But this is so messy. But I was just thinking... this may be one of the primary reasons why this isn't the same as just someone I really care about moving away (or having cancer). I literally feel like I'm losing a vital piece of myself... I said before... I can't find where I end and he begins; I can't find where the S in my head ends and the real S begins. Losing S feels like a threat to my identity...