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Old Oct 23, 2018, 12:04 AM
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Ididitmyway Ididitmyway is offline
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Member Since: Jul 2011
Posts: 2,071
I know you struggle with the dilemma of writing/not writing to your T and telling her about how you feel about what she's done. My take on that is that if her response is really important to you, then it's better not to write it because based on your description of her it's unlikely she'll respond and you'll get hurt again. If expressing yourself is more important to you than getting a response, then it might worth it to write it, send it out and be relieved that you poured all your feelings in writing and now she'd have to deal with it at least a little bit. I've written letters to my Ts in the past, but only when I knew that I was doing it purely for the sake of letting them know how their crap impacted me. But when I felt that I needed a response, I wouldn't do that. So, this is really a question of what you'd be trying to achieve by doing it.

I have to say that, like BF, I don't buy into the idea that your T cared about you. When "caring" involves lying to the one you care about, denying them a chance to decide for themselves how they'd like to proceed, keeping them in the dark about the fact that their process WILL be interrupted suddenly, at any moment (because in your situation, the abrupt termination was really the matter of WHEN it would happen, not IF it would happen), that kind of "caring" doesn't look like caring to me at all.

She knew damn well what she was doing and she knew that the abrupt termination was inevitable because sooner or later the administration would find out because you can't keep doing this forever. But, apparently, she didn't give two shits about it. She was okay with your therapy getting terminated abruptly at some point. She knew that she would suffer no consequences, as the case is right now. As you said, nothing has changed for her. She still has the life she had before. And, probably, still works for that church. And what would happen to you in case of abrupt termination was of no consequence for her. I don't know what kind of "evidence" of not caring anyone needs in this case when the facts speak for themselves.

As far as why she did what she did, as I said, I hate to speculate on this because I really don't care and I really don't think it's important or relevant, but, since I know that you care about it and you are trying to make sense of what happened, I can throw out a couple of ideas.

She clearly (clearly to me) did what she did to gratify her own emotional needs.

She might have been

a) fascinated by your story

this is not uncommon that people (not only therapists) get fascinated by other people's stories and love to analyze them in order to understand something about themselves and their own lives

b) liked you as a person and liked socializing with you

c) was using you as a "guinea pig" for practicing

d) suffered from a "hero complex" (wanted to see herself as a rescuer)

e) all of the above or some of the above

..and God knows what else..

I really don't want to continue this analysis. As I said, I've thrown out some of the ideas for you to consider because I know that you are trying to integrate this experience, to put pieces together and to see the whole picture.

I understand that, at this stage of grief, you need to understand why the other person did what they did. I needed to understand it too when I was traumatized. It took me a long time to go through the process of thinking of different possibilities and a process of going through the "E-motions" to finally arrive to the place where I didn't care anymore.

As much as I understand your need though, I will not go beyond just making a few assumptions. I just don't believe that I'd be helping you by offering my analysis of your T's possible motivations. The most important thing is that she did what she did not for your benefit but to fulfill her emotional needs, whatever they were. The rest, to me, is irrelevant. But, again, I understand your need to go over it again and again to make sense of what happened.

To accept that someone who was important to you didn't care about you is the most difficult thing to accept. I wonder if there might be something in you that still wants to hold on to the hope that she did, in fact, care.
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