Sarah, if you imagine that you were given those 4-5 termination sessions, how would you have used them? What would you have discussed or done? It is probably not very likely that the T would have given you more information that she'd already said. But in terms of focusing on you, what type of conversation would have helped? Would you have gone through the experience of your therapy in those sessions, what progress was made, what is it you struggle with and why? Or would you have focused it on the pain and the soon-to-be-lost relationship with the T? Is it possible that you could do something similar on your own, or perhaps on this forum?

Maybe that's actually what you have been doing already recently with these threads. I think it is good that you are doing this instead of avoiding your feelings. I admire people who take their time to really deal with sadness and process it for what it is - this tends to be very hard for me to do, I mostly avoid or minimize it and just want to move on. Of course often it only works on the surface and comes back later in forms that are much less healthy. I wish I could finally really learn from my mistakes in this area. So I totally understand that you are upset about not getting a chance to do something that, you think, might have helped to avoid this. I agree with others who suggest that most likely a few more sessions would not have prevented your pain too much, maybe just delayed it or perhaps given it a somewhat different perspective? Could you possibly find that perspective on your own?

Also, maybe I would try to stand back from this recent termination and its effects and bit and look at the larger picture. What I mean is that, reading all your threads, you very clearly tend to feel intense sadness and helplessness about many different situations in your life, including your therapy experiences. I also do not want to diminish your feelings and it is pretty much the nature of depression. What I am trying to say though is that perhaps, at least in part, it is more about your general, baseline state of mind and then you intensely infuse whatever happens in real life to you with these feelings. So there is always something to suffer about.

I'm not sure this perception is correct, just an idea, something I know well because I do it driven by my anxiety. It's like there is this ever-present underlying current of anxiety (which I think is largely physiological in my case) and my mind automatically tends to project it into many different things from my career, perspectives regarding many endeavors, health, body image, external expectations, performance etc etc. I am highly aware of this tendency but still, in the moment, it can often be very challenging to clearly recognize. I can get stuck in these anxious states, avoid dealing with what could truly help to alleviate it (dealing with practical problms actively), but typically letting this non-specific doomsday perspective get in the way and induce avoidance and distractions helps me nothing. At other times, I dive deeply into the anxious inner states as though understanding them better could make them go away eventually (this more when I was younger though). I really think many people handle chronic depression and low self-esteem similarly. I think if we are prone to these conditions (and struggling with them long-term pretty much shows that we are), the best is to accept this predisposition but try not to let it drive us all the time. In this sense, I agree with what the others said above about shifting perspective consciously.