Quitting Might not be Failure

Some relationships are not meant to be.

If a patient eventually comes to realise that his T is not a good fit and makes a mature decision to leave, is that not a sign of growth?

Perhaps he and his therapist should both celebrate a good job well done!

Very sound thinking, CE

I agree, Quitting could be a positive thing, you have done that relationship, it could be time to do a different one, I'm sure there were positives from your old T, can you value these? You may be being a different you with your new T because of the good things you achieved with your old? You said that you feel good after seeing him, that sounds fantastic.

With these letters to your old T it sounds almost like you are trying to do therapy by letter, I can't see that anything can be achieved by that. My view is you either go and see her and have one or more sessions with her to thrash it out some more, or you stop. When I quit my T I sent her a long text saying why. My T's response was: I hope you will come in and talk about this - I guess she was saying she was not going to do therapy by text and I realised that I was not ready to quit as I did still want to talk to her about it all - I wanted her response to my thoughts.

You're right - quitting or moving on is not a sign of failure.

Not failure at all.

As a side note, I think that therapy can be done through writing letters just as adequately as in person.

The thing is - I think the true meaning behind what someone says is hard to read in writing, that if you are face to face you read the persons body language too. Face to face you can immediately ask for clarification of something. Also the speaker can gauge from the other person's response whether the person has understood what they meant or whether they need to expand. If there is a misunderstanding the person can be left for sometime with this from a letter.

I think a lot of things are going to be a mixed bag, some success, some failure. Especially therapy, I think for me some has been painful, some therapeutic, and some neutral.

I think the fact you made a decision regarding your therapist and were ok enough to follow through and step away is a success, yes. It would have sucked if you wanted to quit but couldn't.

Took me a long time to learn this lesson, but yeah, it's not...
Kind of like do it well or not at all... Or more accurately, do your best (or put yourself in the best situation) or not at all
I'll stop rambling now...

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I learned far more by leaving a bad therapy relationship than anything else that took place in therapy. A relationship that sours seems highly difficult to redeem, the power balance being so unequal and the fact that each side is playing a prescribed role.

As much as it felt like it to me, there's no big authority grading my success in therapy. So I don't think failure is a concept that applied. It was only for me, only a tool, and if it created drama and harm, solely my choice to move on.

I don't see therapy in this fashion. For me, the act of thinking and writing and sending is a therapeutic endeavor. Receiving and wrestling with the writing of the other is also. The time component need not be so immediate for me.

What you say is thought provoking, I'll think about it - just expressing yourself is therapeutic? I've been feeling that being understood, and the connection I make with the other person when I feel I am understood is important. Also I tend to stew on things when I feel what my T says is hurtful, only to find later that she did not intend the meaning I had interpreted from her words.

We didn't actually communicate that well face-to-face. From my side, her mask got in the way, and from her side, she wasn't able to compensate for my Aspergers. I think she was trying to "cure" my Aspergers, and she did achieve some success in that. But it always felt like she was trying to erase my personality.

I wasn't so much trying to do therapy by mail. I was trying to work out if there was any point in going back. And I did get some clues. You'll notice that she did not apologise or accept any responsibility for the failure of the relationship. She expressed "hope" that if I went back we might make further progress, but certainly no confidence that we would succeed.

I won't write to her any more.

I think this is probably the best plan.

FWIW, I've noticed that some Ts are not necessarily that accepting of an Asperger's dx. Don't know if that's the case here, but just throwing it out there...

What happened between me and Madame T since I quit has not been "pretty", nor has it been orthodox. You can, indeed, say that I was trying to "do therapy by mail".

But she was the second most important person in my life for nearly ten years, and you can't turn that off like a tap.

Also, it is noticeable that she made not the slightest complaint about my writing. She could have asked me not to write, she could have asked for payment, she could have refused to write back. So if I have been doing therapy by mail, it was with her full cooperation.

CantExplain, I've been following the saga of you and Madame T ever since I joined Psych Central. I'm glad you finally opened her letter and that you wrote about it here, working out what you'd like to say and then re-thinking and re-drafting as you listened to feedback from other posters. That was important work. I often write letters to get my ideas out and onto paper and then I delete them because I'm writing them for my own benefit, not for the other person. After thinking about it for a while, I know I don't need to send them. I don't need to get the last word in. One could call that self-therapy by letter and there's not anything wrong with it.

And there's nothing wrong that you sent her the original letter or that she wrote you back. IMO, and you might disagree, her letter did not sound bad at all. It sounds like she really cared about you and would welcome you back if you wanted to go back.

I hope you don't. I hope you don't call or write or make an appointment. I've always thought that knowing when to quit is an important life skill and, IMO, it will not represent failure if you quit now.

Mr. T and you seem to click. It seems like a good fit. You leave his office feeling better, feeling settled. That sounds very good.

From what you've written about Madame T, I have no reason to think she's a bad person or bad therapist or that you did anything wrong either. Just that it was time for you to move on to a therapeutic relationship with less hurtful baggage.

It's a good idea to quit while you're ahead and right now it definitely looks like you're ahead. Congratulations on that. I wish you the best.