Fair warning: This may or may not be an insanely long post.

My therapist who I've been seeing for the past 8 months (who was also an intern) just had her last session with me last week. I started seeing her in December of 2020 and she told me probably around March that she would be leaving after her internship was finished there. The location where I receive therapy just matches up clients to therapists so it's not like I could choose who I wanted. She had told me during the first session that she was the intern but at that point, I was so depressed, I didn't really care and wasn't thinking about the possibility of her leaving. I wasn't sure how long I would be in therapy either.

It wasn't until the week after she told me she'd be returning to where she was the year prior that we realized I have some pretty bad abandonment issues. This became the subject of many MANY sessions together. Even if I tried to evade the issue, it somehow snuck back into the conversation, and she knew I hated talking about it. We even referred to talking about it as beating a dead horse. My unhealthy coping skills were definitely coming up as a result of this throughout the months leading up to her departure and it's been a week since she left and they are now even worse. It also seems that my depressive symptoms have returned to what they felt like before I started therapy. I am really struggling with her leaving because there are so many things that I'm feeling--sadness, hopeless, abandoned, anger (which unfortunately could never come out while she was around), feelings ALL over the place. Of course I want to talk to her about all I've been going through, but that's not an option.

I've been crying pretty much every day and sometimes it's totally uncontrollable. I have a friend group that I've found in the last few months who have been a great support for me and my mental health but even hanging out with them this last week, I've felt so disconnected, which makes me go back to isolating, which leads me to the unhealthy coping skills. I've experienced a lot of death and loss in my life but this feels like the biggest loss I've ever experienced. I think I'm having some physical symptoms of grief because of it, like headaches and heaviness in my chest. It literally feels like she died and experiencing all the feelings I have about this situation is making it hard to feel like I'll be able to cope with it.

Therapy in the meantime is a little complicated (and could be a whole 'nother story in itself because there are too many details to mention in this post) but I'm currently seeing an interim therapist bi-weekly just to keep me going with some support until my planned long-term therapist has an opening, hopefully by October. I had my first session with the interim therapist today and I missed how it felt with my previous T, SOOOO much. Everything about it felt so wrong, only because it wasn't exactly the way I'm used to, so I even cried when I got to my car and on the way home.

I am slow to open up and I ended up sharing SO much with my first T, things I've never shared with anyone, so it's difficult to have no one to talk about them currently. I was also in the middle of some really intense transference with her--mainly maternal but also some erotic qualities. She understood me so well and knew so much about me and of course experienced so much with me in what I shared with her and it's extremely hard to accept that this is what it is. I'm posting here because I feel like no one from my family or friends will truly understand what I'm going through and feeling but maybe some people here will. I'm even having a difficult time accepting that this is such emotional agony for me. It doesn't feel like I should be slipping back into depression and suicidal ideation due to my therapist leaving, but I am feeling so desperate and hurt. Can anyone else relate or have some suggestions?