Screwed up in fine style.

How will it work against me in a grievance??

And I won't have another therapist for at least a few months, probably not until summer. I also don't want to talk about it with another person when she is not dead or emigrated and I have the option of saying it to her.

You're also giving her too much information which could potentially be used against you in the future if you do plan to go ahead and report.

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Writing anything down is potentially hazardous. If you can't discuss it in person, don't discuss it at all. You would not believe how things like this can be turned against you. Maybe the lawyers among us could explain better?

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Your letter is very emotional and might could be used by her as evidence of your mental instability and "abuse". I can see her using this as evidence of a pattern of behaviors perhaps. Don't give her more ammunition. You need to be direct and as unemotional in any further correspondence.

Aha. I see.

In that case there will be zero point in filing a grievance then, because my emails until now have been super emotional and clearly display all my instability.

Thank you, everyone, by the way - my phone won't let me press the thank you buttons.

No, your emails up to this point have dealt with therapy. Now that she has shown that she is not relating to you in a therapeutic manner, you show your stability by being able to contain your emotions.

Of course that's a point you may have to argue, but there's your argument.

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Does this work, though, given that we have had emails with me getting distressed about our relationship lots of times before?

She will have no problem showing off how nuts I am.This sounds like aforegone conclysion, then.

ffs typos on phone, stupid fingers

I feel like you and I had the same session today. (aside from being searched). My T gets upset when I ask how she feels about me except when shes mad and feels like volunteering it (today she said when I do ___ it makes her little "helping"dry up and makes her want to go away (from me.)

Sometimes I think I've taken a perfectly competent therapist and ruined her.

For what it's worth, I think mental instability is a given in therapy! Her response to it is not.

I have to agree with the others, IG, on the email. The less information you give her at this point the better off you will be. If you do decide to file a complaint, you don't want her to know the direction you will be coming from in regard to her behavior as the professional. It isn't bad that you have earlier emails that indicate emotional dysregulation and attachment anxiety! That's why you are in therapy and it was her job to treat you in a professional and competent manner. . . . which she did NOT do as evidenced by the emails, voicemails and personal notes you will have to back up your complaint.

AND if you don't decide to file that's okay too. I like the comment from one of the posters that talks about not "leaking" out what you're thinking and feeling at this moment. Your therapist has not treated your feelings and thoughts with respect so why give her even more ammunition? Short and sweet email that says you're terminating all future sessions and please do not contact me. I like that it will be in a written email in case she does go off the edge and decide to contact you! Take care of you, not her!

This. So much this.

are you really going to report her?

Yes, if it has a shot at doing some good.

Thanks, Clementine.

I just want to reiterate - I was **** hot with the boundaries coming into therapy. I asked, and asked, and she kept saying no, all was fine, that I made her laugh withhow concerned I was at the idea of treading on a boundary.

She encouraged me. I was grand on my session every 5 days. She suggested upping it. I never demanded texts or emails back -I'm not like that with others,and I dont text back straightaway either, becauseI could be out, or cooking or in the shower etc. But she would spend time when she could writing back detailed replies, as well as wee texts saying eg Im at my friend's baby shower or out to dinner, etc. Texts late at night. All SO cadual and friendly, and affectionate.It is a huge shock for somebody to change everything. I just could not catch up.

In my opinion, if you're filing a grievance, the more concise, the least revealing and more detached your communication the better.

This sounds like she was using you for her own needs, for sure.

I think leaving her wondering what went wrong (ie what she did wrong) by not calling and ranting, or writing her a lengthy email is best. Let her imagination run wild!

You are talking to "us" about it.

Somehow i dont think we are doing you any favors, letting you engage (on pc) this way? Also, who are we to you? You have a years long relationship with your t. We are just electronic marks on an electronic screen. I feel like my t would be miffed if i said, "well the pc people told me to blah blah blah." Because who has really been there for me? And all this rigamarole is flowing from her cancelling a session? Isnt that an overreaction?

While it is a truism that you work out your relationship with your previous t when you start with your next t, it is also true that if you are having problems with a t, a prospective next t will often encourage you to try to work them out with the original t, otherwise you just bring the problem forward to the next relationship.

I hope you take from everyones posts over the past while that yes all these little electronic marks DO really care about you, and we support you in whatever you decide to do.

IG, this sounds like a familiar dysfunctional pattern re-emerging. Why not simply do as SD has suggested: if you accept it in your mind as final, it will be final. There's no need to flail about throwing flaming darts that will miss their mark anyway. It's the intensity of the emotional investment that keeps the connection alive when it needs to die. I don't see it as empowering, but rather as desperate, and if you should decide to report her, it will reflect badly on you. What you want from her, you will never get. Put your energies into taking the higher road.

The only other thing I would do differently is to cancel the session and any future continuance by e-mail, but send the data request by registered snail mail to the Clinic director, copied to the PA. If any legal follow-up ensues, it's proof of notification.

If I was in your shoes I would write out all of my thoughts about the boundary transgressions, and being terminated via text, but leave my anger (and passive aggressive jabs) largely out of it, and I would take it to my therapy session and read it to force me to confront the issues head on. Of course, I also trust my therapist so we might be in a fundamentally different starting point. If in that session I didn't have a good gut feeling about his response, if I felt like we were at an impasse that couldn't be fixed, I would thank him and say goodbye. I would probably then have a total mental breakdown, and go crying back to my old therapist, the cold quiet blank slate and have a couple twice weekly sessions crying and rambling on about the whole ordeal. I would get a massage and cry through it. Eventually I would come out the other end, hopefully with a new and better therapist. I wouldn't file a complaint. I would try to weigh the good and the bad, because there is good and bad in everyone and everything. There has been a lot good in my therapy, and some bad, certainly if my therapist snapped at me in text I would be devastated, but I wouldn't want it take away all of the nice things he's said. Actually I would worry about him... it would be out of character, I'd wonder is he ok? What was going on with him to get that reaction, is his kid sick, is he grieving some kind of loss, did something I say really hurt him that much? I would assume it had more to do with him than with me, either that or I really said something to step on his toes. I would need to know, I would be compelled to at least tell him how I experienced it.

It's hard to judge your complex relationship with your therapist, which has evolved over hours and hours based on a couple paragraphs I've hastily read. None of us can possibly understand the complexity of your full relationship, and your therapist is just a human, obviously not perfect and has screwed some stuff up, but who knows what's up with her. But if I squeezed your current details into my therapy, above is how I would hope to respond.

But a skilled therapist knows the 'abuse' isn't really about them, and explores it with you.
She's an amateur.

I suppose what pisses me off about this is I never got the chance to say or write the facts of my emotional abuse to the person responsible for doing so much damage to me, before he died. He got away with me never being able to say to him, that was totally unacceptable. He turned into a vulnerable man-child when he was dying, who I helped to care for. Held his hand when he was scared, and swallowed all my own hurt and questions.

I have to accept I won't ever have that conversation with him.

In general, when it comes to last chances to say what's on your mind, I tend to think we regret the things we don't say. I don't really care about 'leaking' out the truth, because it's the truth of the situation.

Hankster - I have never, ever, for a moment suggested that people who contribute on my threads do not care. I keenly appreciate the support, the advice, the wisdom of people who have experienced similar...and the kindness. The sheer, utter kindness of others who bother reaching out and connecting with me when things are mad and chaotic.

The bit in bold-

Exactly in what way do you think I am engaging? And who 'lets' me?

I certainly don't see it that way. I see the engagement on my threads as a space where ideas get bounced around, where I fire down all the jumble that is wrecking my head and other posters gently point out things I have missed and counter some of the things I have assumed to be set in stone.

I also do not follow instructions like a passive little sheep and 'do what the people on PC tell me'. Like I said - when my head is in turmoil, I really value the other perspectives that then present me with other options.

I guess I see my 'engagement with PC' as helping me make, to the best of my ability (which still has a long, long way to go in terms of becoming skilfull) informed and balanced choices.

And the 'rigmarole' is not merely to do with her cancelling a session. It is a lot more than that - which I think you know.

I actually find it a bit disingenuous on your part to suggest that it is just to do with cancelling the session.

I'm not sure it is an old pattern re-emerging. My definite pattern is what happened in the room yesterday, where I was trying to smooth it down. not stir it up. I never burn bridges - I have argued viciously with people, but always try to leave to door open a chink. This was a wild idea about making sure the door was locked and welded shut.

Yes. I am desperate at times. I have not quite reached the point of acceptance. Not sure how to force myself to it.

I am not allowed to do this, I don't think. I say 'think' because yesterday she said she was prepared to help me work through what I do to elicit these responses in others, if I start to write a thesis on my behaviours and what I could change. A couple of weeks ago she suggested she'd write down what she meant by all the boundary **** but that idea seems to have disappeared.

I actually think basic communication skills are lacking between us too. Yesterday she had a go at me for not bringing a written piece to the session for the last three weeks, and said I had just kept emailing her - whereas, I had though it was still ok to email, just that she would not reply very much if at all, and that I could choose one of the emails I sent to discuss in the session. But I didn't feel able to explain that's what I had though the arrangement was, because she would have accused me of x or y.

Short and sweet. When you give excuses, you're cracking a door. Slam that thing shut.

"I'm canceling all upcoming appointments. Please do not contact me." - IG

Then send a separate email with, "Please provide my records. Thank you" to whomever is in charge of dealing with that.

The end. It's professional, polite, and if she does contact you, ignore, ignore, ignore. Pulling from DBT - be a broken record and in this case it means no matter what, do not respond to her.

Hi IG, I used the term leaking, but I was not referring to leaking the truth. I meant leaking your personal power, giving it away for her to do what she wants with it. You don't see it that way, but I just wanted to clear up what I meant. Less, in this case, is more.