Maternity Leave

My T recently let me know that she will be taking leave for a few months. Initially this brought up a lot of strong feelings for me but we've worked through a lot and I'm feeling okay(ish) about it. We've been talking a little about what plans to put in place for the leave but I'm not sure what my needs will be because it is for so long and it is still several months away. Has anyone ever been through health/maternity/long term leave with T? What did you do? What type of resources did you and T set up for you? Also, what did the leave feel like, and how did it change your relationship with T? I think there is a lot of potential for growth with this situation but right now I just feel overwhelmed and would really appreciate hearing about other people's experiences.

I just wrote you a long reply and then managed to delete it somehow! Darn. My therapist recently returned from maternity leave. I had a very difficult time with it, and while she was gone I saw another therapist. I overlapped immediately before she was on leave and after she came back for a couple weeks - I needed the extra transition time with both. It's good that you're talking about it and planning it out -
Good luck, and feel free to message me.

k.

Hi, mightaswell. My T was a non-native USian so would go visit her family in Asia for a month or two at a time, several times a year sometimes. Once she went for three or four months (she was semi-elderly and had had a childhood condition that threatened her life if she stayed in the cold weather and got sick during the winters here).

I usually thought of projects I wanted to do while she was away, most of which had to do with some sort of journaling.

My favorite was where I made a file with all the days/dates she would be gone listed down the page and the object was to, each day, list the one major mental health, therapeutic, self thing I'd learned that day in a single phrase or sentence. I think we all have "a-ha" moments each day, sometimes they're just tiny realizations though and get incorporated or forgotten without our even remembering (like dream thoughts). I focused on those.

I was taking a couple good college courses when T was away once, one in Communications that was "Listening" and had a wonderful textbook. We had to do various projects and papers for the course, which was online, and my creativity helped me there. Naturally we had to "listen" to what was going on in our day-to-day lives and one project had to do with recording different types of situations, etc. and I still remember the day I thought of a song (this is at WORK, LOL) and sang some of it! I was in the front office with another woman, a good friend still, and she'd join in. But the rest of the day, when someone would say something that would remind us of a song, we'd start singing that song or jingle, etc. You'd be surprised at how often we use phrases that come from or become songs! It was so much fun and very surprising. But I wrote them down for my project too. But I love doing things like that; taking something we take for granted and turning it on its head so we see something else. I don't know if you read the Harry Potter books but I still remember the first book and how they had a homework assignment that was supposed to be 4 feet long and Ron could only write 3-1/2 feet. What is the difference between "500 words" and "4 feet"? They're equally arbitrary, especially to a child just learning how things are done! I like to try to see that way again and often try to think up experiments and projects to get myself to do that.

When my T was away for the really long period, it was near the end of our time together, we were going to terminate 5-6 months after she returned. I decided to write a book for her about me and how I'd been when I first started seeing her and how I'd changed. A novel. I sort of started it, didn't finish but have since (only 5-6 years late :-) done something like that: http://mysharingspaceonline.com/story.pdf

I have a couple other novels I'm in the "middle" of, including the one I started back then.

I love workbooks and school so sometimes make up my own course? I'll think of a subject and research it and study it for awhile; you might do something like that, pretend the absence is a practicum or sabbatical for you and do some work with yourself on your own that you write up to report back to your T with?

(((((((MAWL))))))))))

I've never had a T go on maternity leave, but I know the pain of losing T. I don't know what to say right now since I'm not doing so great but here are hugs, hope the overwhelmed feeling is soothed soon.

I've never had a T go on an extended leave, but I wanted to say I was really impressed that even through the scariness of the situation you can 'see the potential for growth'. That is a really great way of looking at it.

As for some ideas -Would it be possible to join any support groups or group therapy while she is gone? Or even a social group in your church or community? Those might be things that could provide a lot of support but wouldn't interfere with you going back to individual therapy when her maternity leave is over.....

I also like Perna's idea of a project or course.

And hopefully PC can be a good source of support for you, too.

My therapist/Case manager recently moved away to the east coast And i miss her.