Thanks for reflecting upon this. Yes, Iīm not so much into the idea of writing to her anymore as she probably wonīt answer to a letter anyway as you mention. Also, she doesnīt practise therapy on a regular basis which means that she wonīt care about improving or learning anything.
Writing a heartfelt letter to her could also mean she gets reasons to brush me off even more, thinking there was something with me as a person who made her do what she did.
Iīm more into ghosting her on that date which is set for our phone call. I donīt know if that will affect her but I canīt call her like thereīs a chance to redemption as there isnīt.
I think my therapist did care in the beginning and thought she could give me proper therapy, that is help me to a better state in my life. But as time passed she understood she didnīt have the skills and then turned to different kind actions like complimenting me about my shoes and many more such things.
As you say she knew very well about the session limit and she kept going, even after her summer vacation. The summer break had been a good opportunity for her to also end therapy and telling me I couldnīt see her after her vacation. But instead she started on new therapeutic interventions just before she went on her vacation.
As you also say, she still works in that church and my hope is that she at least feels a bit of a bad conscience about what she did to me.
Itīs valuable to me to read about what you think about her reasons for doing all this.
I think all of them matches up to what happened besides using me as a guinea pig as she doesnīt work as a therapist on a regular basis. To me itīs important to understand as if I can point to different flaws about her and her way of acting itīs easier to process what happened.
When you mention her emotional needs I just come to think about my previous theory about a possible reason for her doing this. I think she deep down wants someone of her own to care about as she said to me that she early in her life wanted to have children and when she later in life met her husband she couldnīt have children. She didnīt tell my why but I see her wanting to care for someone is channelled through her being a therapist, even if she doesnīt manage that well obviously. But as I saw her exclusively, we also had several sessions where we looked at pictures of me as a child I think something awoken in her. Even if there are just a little more than a ten years age difference between us. I can of course not prove this theory but still.
Itīs for sure a misguided caring and I would also see it as a kind of denial as she kept going week after week. She told me there was a tussle inside her between wanting to continue therapy with me and knowing she wasnīt allowed to due to the session limit.
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Originally Posted by Ididitmyway
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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