It’s been a little while since I’ve posted...
Back in July, my T that I was incredibly close and attached to suddenly told me that she got promoted and then left a few weeks later. She had repeatedly said that she would not leave me in the preceding months, when I expressed worry that it would happen because every year in the summer, my T leaves me, usually suddenly, or I have to leave them. My first ever T did this, when she suddenly told me during my last appointment of the semester (I was in college) that she wouldn’t be back the next semester. Then I had a new T I adored my senior year of undergrad, and I had to leave her that summer as I was moving on to medical school. Then there was the T I saw my first year of med school, who left me after a year. At least she let me know a couple of months ahead of time. But at that point I was in and out of the hospital, so I barely got to see her at all before she left (a blessing in hindsight, she was a terrible therapist). And then there was S...she helped me come back from my suicide attempt and get back into med school a year later. She changed my life. She SAVED my life. She helped me more than all of the other Ts combined. And then she left me. She always would say I was being ridiculous and that she had been there for 13 years already and wasn’t going anywhere, when I would say “it’s that time of year when my therapist leaves me...” 4 successive years of difficult partings with Ts. This one was by far the worst.
Luckily, I can still email with S. I think I email her too much. Multiple times a week usually. I won’t talk to my new therapist about anything real, only S. I mask everything and pretend I’m fine. I don’t have any desire to be close to the new T at all. I want her to remain at a distance. I honestly don’t even want to do therapy anymore. But I am trying to take care of myself and so (I write journals to my Ts every day) I told new T in my journals that I was feeling like this and like I can’t connect with her. She thanked me for being honest over email, we talked a little over the phone, and now I’m writing this because it’s 5am, I haven’t slept a wink, and I have an appointment in 5 hours with her. I think that’s why I haven’t slept. I don’t want to face her. I want to ghost on this appointment so badly. I don’t want there to be any type of emotional discussion between us because I get way too easily attached to Ts and this would just open the door to that.
So here I sit...writing this because I just had 3 successive panic attacks due to thoughts about S leaving me. I remember her telling me she was leaving so vividly. I can’t get that session out of my head. Every time I think about it, I relive the moment she told me and have that same panic attack. The thought of getting close to a new T, especially one I know I will only be seeing for less than a year, seems awful. Like the worst idea possible. I cannot go through the pain of losing a therapist like this again. I had abandonment issues going into therapy and now they’re so much worse. I want to quit therapy but I know I shouldn’t. How can I ever get over this, though? How can I ever trust the word of another therapist again? I don’t think I can. I guess therapy now just has to be very superficial for me.
Is it possible that therapy, even though it has helped me in a lot of ways, has been a double-edged sword, and actually served to make my abandonment issues way worse? Can therapy traumatize you? That’s what I feel like happened. Which confuses my brain. S helped (and still does help) me so much, yet she hurt me so much, too...
Sorry for ranting...my brain is spinning...