Thank you everyone! I actually sometimes feel that when a week goes by...and I'm still on the wagon, that I am making progress. It's almost feeling like I am kicking an addiction.

Which is too strong of an analogy, actually, because I got a lot out of therapy and I would never say otherwise, but I think that when my last T just left the city and I had to "go it alone" I realized how therapy had taken up a certain corner of my life where actual In Real Life relationships belonged.

I have made a better effort lately to let people "in" and I'm more intentional about arranging ways to socialize but in a sense, I kind of feel like a case of arrested development. It's even a little scary, because I have quite a few relationships (not that close) in which I don't feel safe saying, "I quit therapy and I'm having a somewhat hard time adjusting to life without a therapist who will listen to *everything" in the depth that I want and need.

I mean, you cannot expect the same kind of undivided attention in real life about problems from many people. And it has to be give and take, whereas in therapy, you can obsess about some slight, some fear, some ISSUE....to your heart's content.

Of course, these realizations are not new for me, but when I look back on substantial swaths of my life, I've been in therapy. And now, I've taken off the training wheels and ...whee!

Again, thank you all.....