Hi everyone. I haven’t been around much in the last little while, HCW in the effin’ pandemic and whatnot, but I think about you a lot. 💜

My T will be retiring shortly and I’d love advice and insight from people about ending well or how your T’s retirement went for you.

I have been with this T for nearly 10 yrs and it probably is a good time for me to move on anyway. Which does not mean I feel ready for it or cheerful about it. I‘m grieving the loss hard and feel trepidatious AF. I have been with her through some major changes in that time—like my whole life blowing up kind of major—and she has been my kind, constant, reassuring safe person throughout.

The last few months have been very turbulent because I’ve been trying to tie up all these loose ends and I think I’ve overwhelmed her. (Let me put “tie up loose ends” thru the euphemism-to-English translator for you: I brought up something that happened between us about 2 yrs ago. It has not sat well with me since, though we discussed it at the time and she apologized. I apparently have been unable to really let go and get over it. I wanted to talk about it more because it still held so much intensity for me. In my mind, it stood in the way of me feeling okay about things when we part ways.)

For me, therapy by phone has not been well-suited to working through intense issues about the therapeutic relationship. I think we misread each other a lot. I suspect if she could see me, she’d immediately know I’m in an awful space, but somehow I don’t think she gets that by phone and instead reads me as being difficult. Or else I can’t feel her compassion without seeing it on her face? We have not come through this as well as I’d hoped. Which is to say, we’ve lost some of our ease, trust and closeness with each other. I’m kind of devastated about this. She also seems incredibly distant to me and the more I want her to just be human (which she always has been thus far), the more stiff and clinical she gets.

For nearly an entire decade she has titrated no-expectations-holding-quiet-space, gentle acceptance, clever insight, kick-in-butt, and remember-to-exhale in almost perfect measure. Lately, it’s been kind of ill-timed and out of whack.

Like last week she responded to a moment of exceptional vulnerability (and the result of a lot of work) with an admonishment to do better. I cannot even begin to say how out of character this is for her. It’s hard not to make these moments of misattunement all about me and how I’ve effed up or how she simply can’t stand me now. But I do realize that the world doesn’t happen AT me and You Obviously Hate Me is not the best thing to do with hurt feelings. (See? 10 yrs of therapy in action right there!)

I would really like to end at a nice place with a sense of friendliness and gratitude & an acknowledgment of what we’ve come through together and have meant to each other. (Or at least what she’s meant to me. I’m feeling extremely insecure at the moment about what I might have meant to her.) I’m not sure how to get from here to there. I find that I’ve been bringing up a lot of “this didn’t go well for me” and where previously she’d take that well, even congratulate me for saying it, it now just goes badly every time.

I’d love to hear your thoughts & experiences.