Dear T: I need to tell you something but I don't know how (Part V)

T, I'm really done. I mean it this time. As I reflect on it, yesterday's session was just a stupid waste of my time, and yours too. In fact I'm a bit resentful that I paid you for it. I mean I enjoy talking with you and all, but there was no purpose to it yesterday. Rehashing old crap about my relationship with my mother, no new insights or anything, and I can't even say it was like opening an old wound because it wasn't, I meant it when I said I simply don't care anymore. Maybe that sounded callous to you, I don't know. But it's how I've chosen to deal with it. Because SHE isn't going to change, I have changed ME when it comes to my reactions to her.

Don't be surprised when I cancel for 1/27. Because I think I'm going to. I'm done, and you don't seem to want to LET me be done. Maybe you need to talk to your t about letting go of your clients? I say that with respect of course. Just because I'm annoyed at you right now doesn't mean that I don't still love you and hold a special place in my heart for you. You've helped me so incredibly much. But now it's time to let me go, t.

Session today was very hard but also very good. Today was the first time I've ever cried in session. Thank you for not saying anything about it because it would have made me feel so uncomfortable and embarrassed. I don't know how I'm going to get through the week knowing that we still have so much to talk about.

I am sitting here thinking about you and missing you and hoping you are doing okayl. I wish I could be friends with you but I can't. I am not even sure I am the type of person you would want as a friend. I wish I could find caring supportive friends in the real world then maybe I wouldn't think about you so much. The people I do have as friends I don't have that closeness with.

I hope when I see you Thursday that I can tell you how bad I have been feeling and the maladaptive things I have been doing to cope. I hope I can stay present and not disassociate so much. I hope I can talk more about the abuse and how it is affecting me now. I hope I can tell you how very much I hate myself.

I'll see you tomorrow. I NEED to see you tomorrow. This week has been far too trying and overwhelming for my tastes. Really struggling with the anxiety and fear over this whole situation. Help me cope. I know you will.

t, Wednesday can't come soon enough. I need you right now. I'm afraid to tell you what I've done, but at the same time I can't wait to tell you.

dear t,
I am feeling really overwhelmed with life right now, I have been si'ing nearly every day. I need your helo, but I don't want to ask for it

I know that this is unexpected but today may be my last session. I found a new job and they want me to start right away. I know that you are booked and do not see clients after hours. I still need therapy. I really do not want to leave and go somewhere else. I hope that I have the courage to tell you at the beginning of the session and that you are not mad at me. I really did not expect to find a job so soon.

Hi T,

You talked today about how maybe we should end if it keeps being this painful for me. It was the last thing I wanted to think about, despite everything. You've been so important in my life. The only person I've ever had. Today was really painful again. Quite a few things hurt me badly again. I want to send a text, but I won't risk it in the evening, so it won't be tonight. Tomorrow you're at a different workplace, so just in case, I won't risk it then. On Thursday I'm going to text you. I'm going to ask you how we have the best ending from here. How can I try to cope with something like this? How can I be okay afterwards, and what really happens at the end? I'm going to ask how we honor the relationship and the good times in one final session. I don't think we can have a good final session from here. Letting go is so much more painful than returning.

You let me know today that you didn't have time to say more than "that is fine and thanks" before our 18 day break after I texted the heartfelt goodbye that I didn't have time for at the end of that final session. It's rough knowing you don't regret how blunt it was, even though something little would have helped me cope with the break, particularly after the huge ruptures and after I was rushed out the door right at the end, when I just needed to say goodbye. It was also so not okay today when you told me if I wouldn't record our sessions you were going to record them all for me.

I think, despite everything, this is the pattern. I am not as important to those people who are so important to me. I do not matter, I fade away, like I was never there. Please, please can you hug me just once to say goodbye? It was almost exactly one year ago the last time I hugged another person, in my final session with T2. The first person who has known me and still been willing to do that. Could you lie to me and tell me that I do matter? I think because of all the difficulties it will be such a relief for you to have a break (maybe a forever break) from me, so you would never consider seeing me in the future. Could you lie to me and tell me that you would see me again if I wanted? Can you try to be really, really, really kind to me. Could you say some nice things? Just once more, and then you will never have to again. It's quite sad that I let you read my writing today which stated clearly that I loved you. I didn't particularly think I could cope with a response, so it was probably just as well you didn't say anything about it. I don't think I've ever said that to even a parent before though (and not to anyone else). It's so sad that it ends like this.

Love,

me.

Nightlight, if I may just comment to say, I truly empathize with a lot of what you wrote, particularly "I am not as important to those people who are so important to me. I do not matter, I fade away, like I was never there". I'm so sorry you feel that way as well.

I'd never wish for anyone else to feel even a tiny piece of what I feel, but it helps me to know that somebody understands that feeling. Thank you so much for sharing that with me.

Dear T,
I was in so much pain when I went in to my appointment today, I wasn't sure how I'd manage.
But now, after, I'm in even more pain and I will have to manage. So I guess the way I felt before was utterly manageable.
Yours sincerely, Apteryx.
PS. Pointing out that I can't know that my H actually does love me was a particularly neat trick of yours. Of course it's true that I can't know anything at all about other people's thoughts, and I know that was your point. I guess I should be grateful that you think so highly of my ability to reason rationally.

thank you for saying you will see me tomorrow. I hope I can ACTUALLY tell you all the crap that is going on in my head about EVERYTHING. I hope I don't clam up. I just want to get it all out there cause it is killing me inside. I wish you would hug me after it's all over...

Couldn't have said it better.

Nomad

I hope you are OK with what I would like us to spend time on today in therapy. I'd like to write this letter with you that I've been delaying for so long. It is not getting done. Maybe if I do it with you here I will actually get it done, plus I can get your input. It would be worth the fee of therapy to sit here with you and have you keep me accountable for finishing this letter.

My session with T went really well. He helped me with 2 different letters I have been stuck on. So helpful! I'm going to revise them based on our discussion and then send them off to where they need to go. Phew! I feel a lot lighter.

Dear T,

What can I say but "thank-you" for being you. You let me set up my art show and we both liked it! You let me hug you in the beginning of the session. You made it okay for me to write, draw, and say what I needed to. At first I was too scared and embarrassed, but you helped me. Then you let me hug you again when I left. I've never felt as safe with any other T. No wonder I never want to quit therapy!

I'm sorry I criticized your postcard on the wall. I shouldn't have said what I did.

I love you.

rainbow

P.S. I wish you'd get a flu shot!

Dear T,

WHY?

Chopin

Been so down last two weeks and still another before I see you. Sometimes I do the work I'm supposed to and other times I don't. I dread going in to show you how I am feeling now. Things were on a bit of an upswing - seeming better. And now I'm back down. You must hate to see this back and forth. I'm failing at your foolproof techniques.
I'm so lonely. It all started after I came to see you last - you had to talk about your wife and happy family. That's nice but it heightened my loneliness and reminded me that I am just a number, just another task in your hard day's work. Then you go home to something I have never had and forget about your clients.
A tough few weeks have followed in a number of ways. I wish I could see you this week. I need it now. I feel I bugged you too much last rough time with all the extra appts - some last minute. At some point you'll refer me. I'm not getting the work done am i... I hate disappointing you. and you are my only true support though. i love you.

T - do you even care? You're so cold!

T

Don't you realise how unfair this is? I can't believe how clearly you keep demonstrating how little I matter to you. It has really hurt me. It's so unfair that I'm losing this relationship because you took up this second job. Now that you're so much busier and see many more people, you've stop giving me what I need, you stopped being patient or kind to me. You started being quite mean.

You've lectured me about how I'm not trying (and for goodness sake I've turned my entire life around with your help, so even if it looks like not trying to you while I'm there in your office, that's clearly not the case). You've changed boundaries and then told me last Tuesday "we have to be careful of boundaries because of your personality issues. I have to be vigilant". Excuse me? I never asked for a single, single, one off, tiny thing from you outside of my sessions for the first three and a half years or so. So what exactly did you mean? Clearly I'm just some horrible boundary stomper. You've told me I wouldn't be a good mother and that I'd be like my mother. I don't care if you cleared that up by saying you were trying to provoke me into action. It wasn't okay to say that, because I'm nothing like her. It wasn't okay to say it because your belief that I'm a better person than I am has always made me better. Now you seem to think I'm worse than I am. It was not okay because I was clearly devastated by the huge list of things like that that you managed to say in that bad hour, and you just didn't stop. I told you how dreadful it was making me feel and you just repeated all the negative things back to me again. I told you that you were making me feel like a number when you kept comparing me to other clients and telling me how much better they do, and that you forget my details because they all say the same thing as me. You answered "it's just the reality". Now you've taken to treating me like I am below you. What were you thinking? I HAD to record my session or else you were going to? So not okay!

Now you're not letting me talk about that stuff or the huge, huge list of other important stuff that has gone wrong since then. No, you're clearly causing me pain so like you said, it would perhaps be best if I don't see you. Just like that, you are gone. During the worst time, you leave me. I don't mean right at the end either. You've left me already. You have not been there for me. Considering how important you are to me, that you're my one and only person, the only one I've really had any support or caring from, considering you mean everything to me and that most of all I'm not even heartbroken about losing your help, I'm heartbroken about losing touch with a way to know how you are in the world, this whole situation is totally unfair.

Me.

T,

Today's session was great. I couldn't have done it without you. Thank you.

Nomad

nightlight:

I could hardly read the bold part. I can't believe any reputable T would say something like that to you. I hope that you find a T who treats you much kinder; there are many out there who will! I'm sorry you're going through this.

thank you so much The worst thing of all is that this is just the tip of the iceberg. So much else has been said. She doesn't seem to understand how much of this bad stuff is coming from her. Worst of all...she'd been so, so kind and caring and wonderful and supportive for almost four years. She's been amazing. There were some difficulties since she started the new job, I'd say, but I survived them. This really bad stuff started at the beginning of last October, and it's kept getting worse. Before then, she was amazing. I've lost so much.

I don't understand how someone who was amazing could change so much.