[rainbow8]

This post is irrationally depressing, so don't read it if you think it may depress you. Sorry.


I know it's irrational but I worry that my T will die before I finish therapy with her. Does anyone else worry about that? It's especially worse when there is somthing really important that I want to discuss in the session, like right now.

She's not sick, and she's a lot younger than I am. It's irrational. I try not to think about it but it's there, worrying me. She knows I worry about her dying and she tries to reassure me, but no one can predict the future.

I worry about my family too, but I think I worry about my T more. For the first time I have someone to tell EVERYTHING to, and I don't want to lose her and that opportunity.

My T wants to talk about how, when I feel good, I expect something to go wrong. It's related to the fear of her dying, but not exactly.

I can't think about my upcoming session too much because if it doesn't happen, I'll be very sad. I didn't feel this way the week before last but those feelings didn't last.

I'm trying to accept these feelings and just go on with my life. It's hard, though, when I keep thinking that bad news, about anything, can come at any time in life! We live in troubled times, and I don't feel safe.

((((((rainbow))))))

Do you think this is related to your mom dying before you were ready?

I never really thought very much about people dying until my dad died. I was 34 and it was really unexpected - he was only 56. I used to worry a lot about my T getting really sick and dying, and I think it was because...it had HAPPENED. I knew it was possible! I mean, intellectually, I know it's possible anytime, but since I experienced it, it just felt so REAL.

I don't know why the fear has subsided, but it has. Just like so many other things in therapy, talking and talking about it helped. And mindfulness has helped a lot...I try to focus on what's right in front of me, instead of on any fears about the future that pop into my head, and that calms things down.

Thinking of you, (((((rainbow)))))

[rainbow8]

tree, thank you for posting. I was afraid I scared everyone away.

Maybe it's related to my Mom dying. I was also 34 but she was 68. It wasn't unexpected--she was sick for a few years, but I thought she would be around to get to know her grandchildren and to be there for me for many years. It's crummy that she had to die.

My T has said it's all right to talk about my fear of her dying, but I feel weird about doing it, like talking about it will make it happen though I know that's also irrational. Her specialty is grief and death issues plus she told me it's okay, but I don't know what she can say to make me feel better.

She can't guarantee that she won't die, and that's what I want.

I do mindfulness and I usually don't think like this. I usually worry that she will get sick and cancel the session, but not anything worse. I'm trying to be mindful, but therapy is SO important to me right now. I have something particular to discuss, and I don't want anything to get in the way of doing it.

Originally Posted by rainbow8

I don't know what she can say to make me feel better.

I don't think T ever said anything to make me feel better. He just listened and understood and let me say what I needed to say and feel what I needed to feel.

But I do think the magic of therapy sometimes is this: we bring things into the light and share them with another person, and somehow, they get smaller and a little less scary. And we do it again and again until it may be a passing fear/thought/memory/whatever, but it doesn't have the power to grab us in the same way.

In my head, it's so dark and formless - things can get so big in there and spiral around forever. Every time I bring something into the light and show it to T, I find out it's more manageable than I thought.

****triggering/depressing****


I've thought about this too, but then mortality is often on my mind, especially since my grandparents died (a few months apart) just a few short years ago. Just this week someone my mum knows(/knew?) died suddenly, for no real reason anyone could see or predict. She was a similar age to my T, and to my parents. It just reminded me how fragile life is, how not everyone is guaranteed to make it into their 80s/90s. My T always seems very healthy and vibrant... but when she sat next to me the other week and was sort of bent over a table in front of us filling in some paperwork, I was just sort of looking at the top/back of her head, and I just thought how small she looked. Fragile like a bird. My grandma always looked small. My grandad always seemed like a strong, looming figure, until he had a stroke, but when I saw him in the hospital bed he suddenly seemed small too. My parents seem quite small to me now... maybe it's just because I've grown up, maybe it's because they don't look quite as robust as they used to. When I was a little girl, the responsible adults in my life seemed so big and strong. Now, they don't.

I'm sad to know that some of my teachers from school have already passed away. I wonder how some of the others are, and I have visions of some of those once capable disciplinarians, maybe sat in nursing homes, all small and frail... maybe with dementia and other illnesses, stripping them of who they once were.

I wouldn't say I actively worry about this, but yeah, it has obviously crossed my mind. I don't know how long I will stay in therapy for, how long my T will want to treat me, or how long she'll practice (some people retire early! She has a nice house!) I can't imagine saying goodbye willingly. It's totally morbid but I do wonder how old I'll get to see her grow...

Geez. It's a good thing I'm in therapy, right?

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by rainbow8

My T wants to talk about how, when I feel good, I expect something to go wrong.

This was a "core belief" of mine. I could (and did, in my mind, at least) make a list of all the times in my life something good was followed by something bad. Is that what you mean? Here is a short list that I discussed with T:
1. First Communion (2nd grade), my mother let me pick my dress, good (I chose one with an accordion pleated skirt, like a character in my favorite Betsy-Tacy and Tib books), followed by several bads: day of, mother AND father point out other girls' prettier chiffon dresses, saying I could have had one like that; a week later was the kitchen accident where I burned my arm with hot oil; Confirmation, 2 years later, my mother tells me since I "had my way" at the Communion, she would now have HER way, and made me wear nylons and she SPIT in my hair, it was so gross.
2. Just feeling confident about accomplishing something one day, I remember kind of laughing, next thing I know, she is slapping me upside the head, saying she "didn't want me to get a big head, then no one would like me."
3. Playing with other kids at a wedding one time, FINALLY feeling like part of the group, again she sWoops in on me and tells me I'm too big for that. Next thing I know I'm hanging out with girls 5+ years older than me, and dancing with creepy old men, and I remember one of my cousins' cousins asking me "if he had fiddled-faddled with me in any way" - not as a child abuse question, but as if we were peers. I had no idea what she meant, I would rather have been playing tag; I was ten years old but looked 16.

These are not "dangerous times" - having a baby in a covered wagon without airbags or hot running water, or catching pneumonia before penicillin was invented, that's dangerous times. You CAN break out of this loop, I did. You have to find the KEY, though. For me, it was realizing I was afraid of my mother. That it wasn't my best girlfriend's mother who was mean, as I had long believed; it was MY mother who was mean. I say these this without anger or malice, rainbow. I am just trying to find the truth about our r/s, and hope you can do the same. I don't have children, so the fear is less, but the regret is more.

I totally hear you on this. We worry so much about our T dying too. To a ridiculous amount. We have had so many untimely deaths, and been abandoned by people so many times, that we're just convinced something will happen to our T, too. If we don't hear from her for a few days (she's still out of the country, but it happened when she was right across town too) then we start to panic that she died in a car accident (have lost many friends and family to that.) I'm also really afraid of losing my mom,dad,sister, niece, nephew, and husband, so it may be related.

[CantExplain]

I have had irrational fears T would die.

[SoupDragon]

Sounds like part of you is imaging the worse case scenario and for me this is what I do when my anxiety starts to take a hold on me.

Of course people do die, no-one lives forever - and the ability for us to deal with bereavement must be connected to how confident we are that we can deal with that loss, beyond normal grief / sadness.

As many of us rely so much on our T's to get through life, particularly if we are working hard on difficult issues, I think it therefore makes real sense that we worry about T not being there anymore.

I worry im a different way, of T rejecting me, but I think that is still connected to a fear of loss.

I don't really have any solutions, other than to keep plodding along, taking to T and trying to build faith in our own abilities.

Take care rainbow8 - Soup

I told T once that I was scared she'd die. She didn't attempt to make me "feel better" she told me the truth, people do die. I didn't know how to take that at first, my thoughts were all over the place, thinking that she "shouldn"t" have said that, she "should" have told me something different, but as she said, what was the point in making a promise that's impossible to keep. The truth did turn out to be the best medicine eventually once I'd processed it.

[TayQuincy]

I worry about that too. I worry about anyone who is important to me dying ever since my parents died when i was a child. My T always says she's not planning on dying anytime soon. She says she plans on having a long life! Well, that's good to hear, it's just too bad she doesn't have much control over it.

[harvest moon]

I do worry all the time about my T dying and even make imaginary scenarios in my head about what will happen then! He is 71, has been a therapist for 45 years so I even worry that he must just retire one day and I will be left alone.

I had lost all my grandparents by the age of 12, and also 12 was the age that: we moved and lost all my friends in my old neighborhood, all 4 of my cousins stopped talking to me (We spent almost every day together. I am an only child and the youngest of all 5 cousins so I looked up to them and considered them to be my older siblings. Our parents were fighting about "grown-up things" so their parents told them they were never to talk to me again. I am 29 and haven't met them since. It was devastating and nobody bothered to explain to me why they never talked to me again), I changed school and went to a school I hated (losing all my friends for the previous school), and two of my grandparents died. So I guess I have a HUGE separation anxiety and fear of death issue (the fact that when I was 3 my mother left to work at another town for a whole year only adds to the problem).

I did write all these so that you know that it's totally natural to worry about stuff like that, especially when you have been through something painful in your life. I have also told my T once that I worry that he will die (I'm his first evening appointment and he is sometimes late for 3-5 minutes, so all kinds of thoughts are going inside my head when i wait for him outside his building -- no secretary) and he told me it's totally natural to worry but he's not planning to go anywhere for the next 20 years lol!

[elliemay]

I'll see your fear and raise it into making your therapist come up with a plan to notify you if she should pass away.

That's what happened to me, or how far I pushed that irrational fear.

however.... it my defense, I ran across his father's obituary in the newspaper and guess what? They have the EXACT SAME NAME. Talk about a total freak out. It was only when I actually calmed down enough to read the obit that I realized that it wasn't my therapist.

I caught myself and waited a good long while before I brought this up with my therapist so he could have time to grieve without being faced with a needy, totally irrational client. AND that wait gave me time to deal with what I would want to happen should he pass away unexpectedly.

It turns out he had never even thought about how he would let his clients know and thanked me for bringing it up (although I'm pretty sure he wanted to have a "Moonstruck" moment and just say "snap out of it!").

It's all cleared up now, and, yes he could die. We all could. That's what makes the relationships we have so very very precious. Nothing is guaranteed - not even tomorrow.

[rainbow8]

Thank you all. It's a little triggering to read the replies but I appreciate all of your stories and shared feelings very, very much.

I worry too, but i tell myself to try to live in the moment with my therapist. That he is here now and to try to appreciate that and "enjoy' it, if that makes sense.

[rainbow8]

Just a quick comment; I'm leaving my house in a few minutes.

roseleigh: You said live in the moment with your T. But, my session is Tuesday. I usually don't think like this, but what if something happens BEFORE or on Tuesday? I know it's crazy and I usually put it out of my mind; it's just that I want to talk to her about something important (but that's always the case) and I worry it won't happen. I also don't feel so good, so I'm worried about ME, but if I die then it doesn't matter.

I just told my H " This growing old stuff does NOT agree with me!) My hands and feet are very cold--a new problem after I finally am over my virus after a month! Sorry, TMI.

Honestly, I just try to live in the moment, but lots of times I'm not very good at it. I can relate to what you mean. I HATE that so much of life is out of my control. I want to control everything.

You don't have OCD do you?

[inbloom]

I relate also Rainbow. I tend to be one who worries a lot and I have found that mindfulness is the only thing that has ever helped with that.

My fears about my own T had calmed down a lot, until he was recently in a bad car accident and it was like this HUGE reality that he.could.have.DIED. just slapped me in the face. I tried to calm down by reminding myself that worrying about it would not make it less likely to happen, but it WILL make me miserable. I still struggle though. He is so very important to me.

I am not religious but find that the serenity prayer often calms me down in terms of worry..... 'God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Simple, yet profound and very useful.

[ShaggyChic_1201]

I I worry about this too since so many people close to me really have died. She's not sick but her h is and she SD she wouldn't b able to do her job without him. Sometimes I think I worry about that just so I don't have to think about things that are even scarier _

[Flooded]

Originally Posted by rainbow8

tree, thank you for posting. I was afraid I scared everyone away.

Maybe it's related to my Mom dying. I was also 34 but she was 68. It wasn't unexpected--she was sick for a few years, but I thought she would be around to get to know her grandchildren and to be there for me for many years. It's crummy that she had to die.

If it helps rainbow, I often think people I might want to get close too will die just like my mother did. She was 37 and I was 15. Way too young for both of us.

Sometimes I wonder if this is why I'm so guarded with my tdoc.... It can't hurt so much if I don't get close and she dies..

I'm so morbid

[CantExplain]

My T is having an operation next year, and I've only just worked out that I am afraid she might die.

So I’ve been thinking it through. If she died, what would she want for me? The same as anyone who loved me: for me to live a long and happy life. And indeed, isn’t that what we have both worked for all these years? So after a suitable period of mourning, I would honour her legacy by carrying it on with someone else.

[KazzaX]

Reading your post reminded me of when I went thru that stage with my mum, like most people do, where I just realised one day that she is not immortal and one day she would die. I was very young at the time. I remember waking up at like 3 in the morning and rushing into her and clinging onto her because at that moment I realised she would not be there forever. And i was crying my head off, lol.

They say in therapy sometimes you develop this attachment to your T (if you didn't get the opportunity to with ur own mum) and so it would follow that you would have similar phases to the one i described. I was thinking maybe you are worrying about your T dying for a similar reason? It's a bit like you always KNEW they would die, but at that moment the thought is thrust into the front of your mind and it feels like its happening right now, or could happen at any time, but its not. Its just sort of a realisation.

I dunno if this fits with what you described, its just something I was pondering when I read your post hehe

[unaluna]

my previous major t, was also my pdoc, had a couple of surgeries during our time together. I asked him for a list of names he would recommend. he was like, i'm coming back! i'm like, you never know, I want to be prepared, i'll be devastated! he's like, yeah, right, you're not helping. he is still here (his office is in my apartment tower) bugging me almost ten years later, talk about dotage! who am I kidding, he still looks good, still makes me laugh.