Must....not....cave. Will..NOT...CAVE!!!

I'm not sure if I read the farewell letter or not? I only read the one you posted here.

I didn't read it as a challenge. Again, I have no experiences with this therapist, including any intense feelings,etc, etc...I think his reference to the "one down" position may be something to explore with your new T. (It will look/feel differently with a female T)

It reminds me of a comment one of my former T's made to me.

Are you slightly curious about the intense responses you feel to his email? I hope you bring it up to your new T.

I decided to embark upon an experiment to insure, that I'm not losing it.

Context is going to be lost obviously, and everyone will read something different into that email, but I'll say this. I decided to show that email to bout 15 of my friends, some of whom didn't even know I went into therapy! Decided it would be good to have some fresh eyes, see it, because obviously there is so much polarity on this thread already, and I'm starting to feel like this is making me go coo coo for Cocoa Puffs. (Mmmmm.....Cocoa Puffs)....

Admittedly most of my friends are male, but of that 15, 9 men and 6 women saw it. And ironically, only 3 women saw this as...just a plain ole goodbye with no subtext, or as my good friend Dale put it, "it's got candor, and perhaps a little touch of arrogance to it."

The remaining 12 felt pretty strongly, that minimally a subtext message was being sent, and as I felt that I was being "challenged to come back." As my friend Richie (who is in therapy) put it, "if someone basically up top puts up that they feel you can't operate from the one down position, they are challenging you to come back and say, oh yeah, well just to show you, I'll come back for that ****ing closure session!!!" My friend Paul said "wow, this guy is smooth. He's got your number too, he figures he can tap that part of you that doesn't like to back down from being challenged, and moreover, were this just a plain ole farewell, that letter should have been as simple as thank you, it's been a pleasure working with you, good luck. He's making his feelings known to you in this email, that he's sorry to see you go and that had you come back, things would have been different, etc. In other words, he's challenging you and guilting you simultaneously. Moreover he's revealing to you, beyond just it was a pleasure, that he got something personal out of your visits to him."

And there were other degrees of eyebrow raises and the likes. I think ONCE AGAIN, the bottom line is, this T was NO BUENO for me, and the new T, should be BUENO.