Quote:
Originally Posted by LonesomeTonight
I haven't had a "good ending" with a T--an abrupt ending brought about by me with ex-T and a drawn-out attempt to fix things with ex-MC that concluded with us terminating right at the end of a session. We'll see what happens with my current T (had a bad/abrupt ending due to a rupture, then I ended up going back a couple weeks later, and it's now been 18 months since that). So maybe I'm not the best to advise on this.
But what I'd suggest ties into what Una said. I know you likely feel some pressure to make it a "perfect" ending and to work through/address every conflict or misunderstanding you've had in the past 10 years. But that puts a lot of pressure on you, and, I imagine, on your T. Could you try to just move forward from right now? Not go back into the past so much. (Though I'm sure I'd be tempted to do the same.)
Think about what you might want to sort of wrap up your work together. Could you maybe try to focus on what you've achieved through working with her, like your accomplishments in therapy? To discuss where you are now v. where you started? And sort of also honoring the good parts with your T vs. focusing on the negative?
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Yes. That is largely what I want to do. I honestly had no idea that bringing up this thing that was still bothering me would be such a shytshow. I kind of thought we could deal with and move on.
Essentially she had her daughter come by during my session to pick something up. It seemed largely nonessential/non-emergent and I was upset by that beyond anything reasonable. It happened right after a session in which I’d told her that she occupied a maternal place in my heart and that this was Intense and painful for me. So it seemed to me that in having her daughter show up during my session, she was being pretty insensitive and careless toward me.
When I told her how I felt she apologized but I never really got the sense that she truly understood the degree to which this event had disrupted my sense of trust and safety with her (profoundly). So after having let it rest for a long while I brought it up again because it was still bothering me and it was hard to feel okay about her and about therapy without addressing it.
She really just didn’t get it. She just didn’t seem able to wrap her head around the idea that something like that could hurt me so much. And I felt that her inability to understand that meant that she had no idea of the power she held in my life, even though I’d really tried to tell her.
I think what I really wanted from her was some version, of “wow, I really messed up there.” I got apologies and “if I’d realized it would hurt you I’d have done it differently” but all that mixed in with a lot of stubbornness and flashes of anger and making me take apart what meaning I assigned to it. Eventually I just let it rest. As I saw it, she’d made a huge mistake and I was shocked that she couldn’t just see that and own it.
So that’s the long version. That’s why things feel so raw and difficult.