Post abandonment feelings

Hi MP, yea I feel that way too. I pretty much knew what was there, but this whole thing brought it out as nothing else had. But, and this for me is big, the experience itself created emotional pain. The relationship with my T was paradigmatic (to borrow from a book I read). It is the source of suffering and trauma, not just a recapitulation. Some other T's tried to sidestep this. One said: "It's painful to see how old wounds are affecting us in the here and now". Yeah, ok, but I am saying there are new wounds, and they were inflicted by your colleague and by the system of which you are a part. And the trap here is that the main thing I needed was to rail against the system and my T, but I was attempting to do so with agents of that system.

I'm with you on nearly everything you said. Very much so. Do you mean you pointed at the unconsciousness and dysfunction out loud to your T, and she then turned on you? Because that is exactly what I went through. She needed me in my previous role of compliant worshipper and partner in collusion. I mean she really needed it. And I really needed to break out of that role, could have been healing. She won. Rigged game.

As for the cruel joke thing -- I had intense romantic interest in her, and she was dangled in front of me, everything I ever wanted, then snatched away. Not literally, but who cares, that's how it felt.

MP and Bud Fox. I need to add just a few details which may or well may not be resonant to you. About 6 months in he was clearly trying to seduce me. I am not some silly naive kid with a daddy complex. It remained the elephant in the room for a couple of years. I had a huge financial downturn and could no longer afford him. We spoke of it a lot, finally deciding that he would fit me in when he could but could not give me a fixed time. Fine. So it was erratic, but we texted a lot and went through huge ups and downs as the intensity scared the **** out of us. He more actively sought out "consummation" (who the hell even uses that term anymore)? As much as I had fantasized about it I knew the potential for absolute ruination to my psyche. At least I averted that. I also did something, at a low point, very cruel and public that could have ruined his family and his business. He forgave me, unbelievably; but unless I knew for certain that someone was a predator I would NEVER do it again. I know that we both bear scars, but ultimately he was unable/unwilling to be honest as he slowly alternately blew me off and (ever less frequently) drew me in.
I had recently moved back from Europe when me met. My mother had just died and my marriage was in shambles, and I had 2 young kids one diagnosed on the spectrum. He was recommended by a friend who said that he was the only therapist she'd seen who did not use sexual overtones. Go figure. I have another close friend seeing him now, and has benefited tremendously. I would never throw shade on that for her. So it feels like everybody is hunky-dory except for me in my emotional isolation.

I dont hate my T either. But I do blame her. She had a bunch of chances to do the right thing. I think she was hurt herself so I do understand her behavior, but that doesn't make it right. She is supposed to be ever mindful of what is transpiring, not me. I paid for that privilege. I don't mind if a T gets tripped into their own defenses or needs, but they have to be able to recognize it and make a correction.

I felt thrown away also, expendable. Told her just that. Left in a ditch by the side of the road with a list of referrals.

My case was actually somewhat the opposite. My T had every intention of being an ethical, good T. But she was so phobic of consciously acting on feelings that she pushed in the other direction and became completely blind to the way she forced me, through selective neglect and affection, to use my therapy for her emotional gratification. So actually, variations in the treatment itself became her language of emotional seduction. The more I allowed her to solve problems I didn't feel I had, and shut up about the real problems, the more the boundaries broke down and the more we were losing control of the feelings, getting closer and more involved. She didn't seem to care what events actually took place, or how obsessive we became about each other, as long as that broad rationalization was in place. As long as we didn't say the words of what we really felt.

I got her to at least vaguely acknowledge the truth in the end. But it came at the price of her stubbornly, rapidly refusing to have anything more to do with me, no matter how much pain it caused me and how much I finally needed her to have meant all the things she had said in the past. Just buried her head in the sand and returned to this fantasy that I'm out there living a rich and wonderful life thanks to her magical therapy. A fantasy I felt immense pressure to go along pretending was real. She probably even told herself it was for my sake that she abandoned me. Again, because it's so convenient to codify everything into therapy protocol to automatically be absolved of all responsibility for the failures.

So maybe the conscious reasoning was different but yes, elephant in the room, alternatively blowing off/drawing in, emotional isolation.... those are all very very familiar to me. I'm not over my pain at all. But I at least learned from it. I don't know. I don't think I'm even seeking to express it per se. Doesn't seem like anyone can say anything to make it better, right? Nothing's going to feel good enough and if I try to get people to validate that pain I'll just end up grasping for the same thing that destroyed me last time.

Or at least, I don't want to have shame about expressing the pain, but I don't feel like I need anyone to get it anymore. It would be nice if someone did get it but either way what matters is just genuinely and honestly being able to say, this happened, and it hurt me, without anymore shame and self-stigmatization. There's clearly a reason I fell apart and can't cope with much right now. If people don't get that I've become pretty happy to free myself of their presence but feeling alone and in pain is really awful too. I just never knew I was capable of feeling this cut off from "normal" life and other people. Sorry if this got kind of tangential... my thoughts are pretty blurry right now.

I understand the distinction you are making here and I have felt that way as well. That's pretty maddening. I think those therapists completely misunderstand. It is the patterns that are familiar--that doesn't mean the situations they lead to are any less harmful or any less real. If someone gets stabbed traumatically, then becomes obsessed with self-defense in the aftermath, trying to conquer their PTSD, and in the process of all this exposure to weapons and fighting, ends up being stabbed again, certainly the chain of events that led from the first scar to the second does not negate the misfortune of the fact that there are two scars.

Yes to your question....

I guess I was in the opposite situation. I don't think I really had romantic interest in my T, but I was afraid to categorically exclude it being romantic out of some nagging sense that if I clearly excluded romance/sexuality as a possibility, she would no longer care about me or treat me the same.

I should have listened to my intuition very early on. But those were childlike, vulnerable, desperate feelings that she reinforced and encouraged over and over and over again as long as I didn't question why. I couldn't be reasonable about it. I so desperately wanted her love and warmth and comfort, but she gave it to me for all the wrong reasons.

Yeah, it's really sad to pay for the protection of therapy only to realize as soon as you try to rely on it that it doesn't protect you from a damn thing.

Yep, I get you.

Oh yeah, but I still have this magical thinking that she's going to find this and read it and hate me. I practically have that feeling even when it's just mulling around in my own thoughts. I don't know how to deal with this stuff. It's so incredibly unpleasant, all of it. Ughhhh. I don't even ruminate on it or anything, just mostly pretend it doesn't exist. Doesn't feel good to talk about it, doesn't feel good to think about it, doesn't feel good to shut it out, doesn't feel good to move on, can't win. I think the damage is a lot worse than I'm allowing myself to feel 99% of the time. So I'm just criminally apathetic at this point.

Well put. Fits my situation, which is no where close to what happened to you, but still hurt a lot,

I had a therapist knowingly pull the same trauma on me. She was incompetent. I feel for everybody who has gone through this.

Sorry, I didn't mean that specifically happened to me (the example of getting stabbed) but metaphorically. I just wanted to use a more concrete representation of the reasoning that therapists use when they claim it's all about "old feelings."

This is almost verbatim my experience. I got a begrudging and coerced apology, and a shaky acknowledgment that possibly significant harm was done. But she was interspersing these things with assertions that therapy had helped me, that she had put me back together sufficiently before abandoning me, that it was because she cared. She had to control the narrative and the endings. The endings were always like a gun to the head -- say what you need to say, when the conversation is over that is it, no more contact ever. Even if it was traumatic to end that way, tough s**t because she is in charge and because she wanted to make sure the narrative/fantasy was in tact. Infantilizing and humiliating.

Same here. Sorry you are in this position. It is a terrible feeling.

She basically haunts my consciousness 24/7. I even dreamed about her last nite.

I was constantly reminded of all of the kind and generous things he did for me. Every. Single. Time. Very occasionally, if I had an extraordinary amount of luck, I would get "I'm sorry you feel that I hurt you". Once or twice in over fifteen years I got a mumbled apology during the exit hug. I feel very sorry for his wife, he must be a beast to live with....he even told me once that he only married her because he knew she would be a good mother....if that is not cold then Buffalo is tropical....

Wow 15 years that is an eternity and then to not get whatever apology or repair that you needed… must be painful.

I also got some of the "I'm sorry you feel…" stuff. She did come clean a little at the end and say a few things directly without equivocating and gaslighting, but it never felt completely genuine or unselfish, and so it hurt more than it helped.

I had dreams for a while too. It seems to have mostly stopped, and at least my emotional stability is much better once I mostly took back my locus of control. It all seemed to get intensified the more I would spar with the shadow T in my head. Now I tell myself, I was only vulnerable because I was longing for more of something that isn't intended to exist in therapy. I was making up reasons and excuses why it could, because I saw that it did exist. Well, the point is not that it couldn't or didn't exist, the point is that I was wasting so much energy on proving to myself that it didn't not exist, that there was no point of being in therapy anyway. T was naive for temporarily giving in and providing that something (to the extent that she really clearly acted on it and brushed off my concerns about her acting on it) and I am in real pain, but don't get me wrong, I don't feel like a victim either. <---- I make that distinction primarily to empower myself. A while back, in the aftermath, I genuinely felt that my life was pretty much over. But, I most certainly can do something about it. I can survive this. And thinking about it differently makes me much more able to try.

There was a very real insecurity I was covering up with my longing for T: the fundamental knowledge that even if we ~love each other, even IF we met outside of therapy, this relationship is not realistic. I think this is where "transference" becomes about something more than just what exists between two people in a room. I'm saying, "I know it's not realistic, BUT...." and the transference part is what I say after that but. That's the part that was weighing me down in therapy, this need I felt to make extra allowance for how to act in case our feelings are real. The excessiveness of the need to make therapy not just therapy. even despite the fact that the feelings definitely were real. I did a pretty good thing ultimately by really insisting to talk about it. And T reflected the truth at me--it was all just too much and too personal to survive the limits of the therapy room. It had genuinely become too real because I voluntarily treated it like it was real all that time. I had a LOT of pain, and though I wish it could have gone more smoothly, still, the extent of my pain, and my reactions to escape my pain were what created this situation.

It hurts a lot and yes it was clearly imperfect but I'm just trying to hold onto the silver lining that now I know for sure what it feels like to be losing myself and looking for the right things in the wrong places for the wrong reasons. Now I know genuine, sustainable love and affection when I see it--something that exists without me having to feel these cycles of dissonance and doubt and desperation. Not right away but, eventually that knowledge will be really valuable.... so, that's just my thinking lately, don't know if it would be useful to anyone else though.

dreams though, those are the worst... they're so cruel....

You have captured what I feel so well. Still
Lots of back and forth feelings for me as I figured out next steps with exT.

MP: Thanks for the interesting thoughts. Have to say I cannot rationalize my experience nearly to that extent. Mostly it just feels like a senseless torment. I have suffered for a year and a half specifically because of this experience. Certainly my personal history is underlying things, but who gives a s**t? The experience itself was excruciating. Took me months to realize that my subjective experience of the whole thing is the reality, not her interpretation, which is driven by her own needs.

It was psychological and emotional torture -- to fiddle with someone's deepest longings, have no plan once the longings were exposed, then just flee and blame me as she is running away. I was victimized, whether intended or not. I don't like being in the role of victim, it is ruinous, but that is truly how I feel and I refuse to lie about it.

I'm not clear on just what sort of feedback and reciprocation of feelings you received from your T? For me this is crucially important in these situations -- was it fundamentally reciprocal (validation) or unrequited (rejection). And part of the madness, in my view, is that the client seemingly rarely gets honest feedback so how do you know? My T said "no" to the answer of whether she had feelings for me, but it was an ambiguous and confusing "no". Still, I experienced it as a profound rejection. Was like dying.

Yes, it was reciprocal. Actually T initiated the emotional dialog and acted more or at least more overtly on the feelings than I did. I was always the one asking, what are the boundaries, what are our roles, what is okay, should this be happening, sorry this happened, etc. And T was the one going "no it's fine, no big deal, this is a relationship, I don't have a problem with it" etc. I saw that T had feelings and it was very frustrating because I felt unable to talk about what I was seeing and experiencing with T deflecting or trivializing my observations yet continuing to act in the same way and giving me the same blatant special treatment that pulled me in emotionally, obviously struggling with herself to stay responsible yet acting like everything is fine. I got inconsistent treatment, inconsistent expectations, T doing and saying things she didn't remember and wouldn't have repeated, T getting closer on autopilot then becoming self conscious and backing off, etc.

Pretty much the whole way, she consistently encouraged me to need her more, depend on her more, trust her more, be more vulnerable, be more intimate. And she acted like she was different and could be different than what I experienced with people in the past, all the while acknowledging why I might be afraid to do that. And when I actually did the real version of the things she encouraged me to do, she couldn't handle it.

But, what I'm saying is, there's two sides of every story. If I had been a different person behaving differently, T also wouldn't have acted that way. And I kept having this cognitive dissonance.... despite how intense my feelings had gotten, I never really seriously insisted on talking about it, for the longest time. I was paying T to be my T but not demanding it of her. T was brushing off the extent and effects of her feelings, but I was also actively hiding the extent of my need and my longing to be loved, my fear of being hurt, and my willingness to put feeling the feelings above addressing them.

Is it T's fault? Can it be T's fault when I left out critical information that would have changed her assessment of the situation? Was it T's responsibility to read my mind? I don't know. I mean ideally she wouldn't have kept rationalizing her reactions to me and would have acknowledged the fact that something was wrong. Ideally she would have paid as much attention to her own behavior as she did to mine. But, just like she brushed it off when I drew attention to her feelings, I brushed off a lot of her attempts to reassess how therapy was helping me, I agreed to things I didn't really want and said it's fine, I held my tongue a lot, I left out many of the heavy or shameful topics, I protected myself too.

If T hadn't behaved the way she did, if she had been 100% ethical and healthy, the truth is that I most likely would have just gotten frustrated with therapy and moved on until someone else met me at this same level of psychic game-playing.

A perfect T would be able to do both--meet me at my level but lift me out of it too. My T couldn't do that, and that's my one major complaint. T ideally would not have ended the therapy once it got difficult and ideally would have recognized that it was going in the right direction. But at least I was able to do that for myself. Maybe I just outgrew my T, or the outgrew the specific combination of T and me together. It's not that T created more new harm relative to what anyone else would have created, it's just that she happened to be the person I enacted my ultimately harmful patterns with.

That's what I'm focusing on. There's always two ways of looking at it, relationships are always mutual, so there's my contribution and T's contribution. An unhealthy relationship can't exist without T's genuine contribution to it existing, but it can't exist without my contribution either, and my contribution is the one I can change. Also, more importantly, my contribution is the part that will follow me around and actively seek out the people who will reciprocate my level of functioning. I can try to get T to take responsibility just like I can try to be vindicated and fixed by any other person or thing outside of myself. It would be nice if it reliably worked that way. But in my experience, it generally does not, so I have to vindicate myself. By not being the right thing for me, at least my therapy gave me a better idea of what would be right, and now my choice is either to focus on the pain I feel, or to learn from it so I can find something better.

I used to resent the claims of therapy and therapists, that this was safe, that it could protect me, all that stuff, I thought it was a load of crap. And I still think that. I don't think therapy is much better than any old relationship. I don't think therapists are generally much better than normal people at it. But, most people are imperfect, most people don't have it fully together in life and learning to wade and sift through the crap is unfortunately par for the course..... if there was one good thing about therapy, it's that at least the framework of therapy prevented me from creating real-life, long-term obligations to my T, that I might have created to someone else I ended up in a similar situation with. I did make rash decisions due to T and jump to conclusions and force myself, I did make mistakes due to T, but at least the structure protected me from some of the fallout that my mistakes would have otherwise caused, so I'm at least grateful for that part. Truth is, my condition was bad, and it had already lead me and was going to lead me to even worse places in life if I didn't let myself confront this pain.

Again, all of this said, I'm not trying to erase the abandonment I feel either. Ideally I would have had the space to work through it all with her and safely outgrow the dependency. But, I'm just trying to make the best of the situation and see the value that I took from it in whatever places it can be found.

I don't really know if, or how my thoughts apply to your situation, but I guess the question I would be asking myself would be, "what could T have done different, knowing what she knew about the situation?" and then "how will I know when I meet a person that's able to do that for me? How will I make it easier for them to do? What can I do to get the best of both worlds?"

I like to focus on the thought that none of the positive feelings I felt have gone away even if there's nothing around to trigger them right now. They are still a part of me and nobody could take those from me, even by rejecting them. I like to give myself permission now to have my whole fantasy checklist in a possible best friend or a lover or whoever. Not because someone has to be all those things to me, just out of recognition that I am a person who's able to experience such a deep and valuable connection to someone else. T may have pushed me away but, who cares? It's not like she can pry her likeness out of my head and force me to give up on how happy it made me to feel important to her. I didn't lose anything. I like the person I am when I feel that way, but I don't like the person I am when I try to artificially protect myself from losing it, and when I need to know that other people want it from me. Because the truth is, it is inside of me, I can't lose it unless I voluntarily give it up. I don't know when I will find the right place to feel that in my life. I guess I was never really looking for it before. I was never paying enough attention to people or to myself. But you know what, it's like, why should I let myself be held back by anyone else? If they don't want to be a part of it, their loss, right?

Synchronicity!

Yep, you are correct.

Please remember next time to phrase your answer in the form of a question ("What is Synchronicity?").

Uh, you guys lost me?? lol

Sorry. I quoted ("a humiliating kick in the crotch") from the lyrics of a Police song. And Aloan correctly named the song/album -- Synchronicity.

This emotional seduction and enmeshment sounds a LOT like mine. I don't think my T was following any plan or conscious process. She was mostly just reacting. And then, yea, she couldn't handle it either. Like someone said -- it's like two children playing with a live bomb.

Sorry if you already mentioned this and maybe you'd rather not say, but were there openly expressed romantic/sexual feelings going in one or both directions? For me there was a mutual emotional/spiritual/intellectual connection. But in the area of physical or sexual attraction, it appeared to be unrequited. That was a core wound.

How would a T lift you out? I cannot visualize how that would happen for me, or for anyone really. The thing about she was the one you enacted the harmful patterns with -- I can see that. Though for me it was very much about the individual. I don't see the pain I went through with her as inevitable. It was very much about the situation and the individual.

I do see where you are coming from. For me circumstances make it such applying what I learned in therapy is difficult or impossible right now, and so the experience just burns in me like poison. And it was so painful and destructive on so many levels that it just overloaded the circuits. People sometimes come to therapy as a last resort or in a state of desperation, backed into a corner. And if therapy itself turns into yet another source of pain and anguish and rejection, it really could destroy someone. And by someone, I mean me, but also others.

For me it is about accountability rather than blame. I know what I brought into the process, that is mine to own. But I came out in a much worse place. Much of my wrath is directed at the system that trained, licensed, and supervised my T. And then failed to setup safeguards or interventions for when things go bad, when the T is spiraling out of control and is wounding the client over and over. Even some of the other T's that I saw threw salt in my wounds. They were quick to invalidate to protect themselves and the institution.

I am carrying on like this thread is about me. Hope you are getting something from this dialog.

What could she have done different?
- Perhaps not be a T in the first place.
- Better informed consent.
- More discussion up front about her training vs my issues (I found out after termination that she had little experience with attachment issues).
- Recognize that she was being triggered into her own vulnerabilities and needs, say it out loud, get supervision.
- Exercise some self awareness instead of acting out along with me. That's what I paid for.
- Be honest about level of competence, confidence, fear, uncertainty.
- Dont seduce me into vulnerability, trust, attachment, dependence… then cite the resulting feelings as the reason for termination.
- Make it safe for me to express my grief and rage.
- When it became clear that termination had dangerously destabilized me, respond in a way that served my needs rather than her own.
- Take full responsibility. Admit mistakes, face to face (not on the phone), and willingly. Basically repair repair repair!
- Don't tell me the door is always open as a condition of termination, then betray that promise later.
- If termination becomes inevitable, treat it as the most critical part of the process. Have a plan that is more than just a list of referrals and adios.
- Instead of gaslighting, acknowledge the damage honestly.
- instead of giving up, just say "I have no idea what the h**l to do, perhaps it is entirely hopeless, but I am willing to try if you are" or something like that.

Would all of this had made a big difference? Not sure. Some theorists say what is traumatic for infants and therapy clients is not painful experiences, but the lack of repair, and being left alone with the feelings.

What about you-- what could T have done different?

Re: your other questions, I can't translate this experience into a real world scenario. Too bizarre, too isolated, too unnatural, too much maternal stuff underneath, and I am too exhausted right now. But I will think about that.

MP and Budfox especially...
You've both probably seen my postings off and on over the past 9 months or so. I've read this entire thread now, and honestly, instead of a sad, triggering feeling, I felt SO validated and not alone. My situation sounds very similar. T, in order to help me trust her more, offered me something I didn't know I was longing for. I didn't know if It was right or wrong.... it felt so healing to me though. Then abruptly, with no discussion, took it away, and changed other things as well. Left me feeling SO rejected. I knew at that time I had no power in the relationship (except to walk away,) and I felt like my feelings and opinions didn't matter. Her choices affected my entire life outside of therapy, depression got worse, habits got bad, pushing people away, I felt horribly retraumatized. I still do I'm still with her too, although I recently started seeing a new T, to help me through this. Or perhaps, I could eventually start seeing new T instead of the old one. Despite the hurt, my attachment level is very high. Thank you so much for posting this MP, and for all of you sharing your thoughts/feelings on it. It's helpful to know people have been through this same kind of rejection. It's far from over for me, and maybe it won't be unless I quit seeing T, where the pain will gradually get better. But this woke something up in me I have not been able to get control of. It hurts a great deal still. Having the memories ought to be good enough (her holding me while I cried, telling me she loved me, giving me prolonged, healing hugs). But the memories hurt more. She has apologized, but I just don't know how she could have, after being a psychologist for 25 years, thought that this wouldn't have a major effect on me. I miss how she used to be And of course wonder what I did to change it all. I've felt dead inside since. Again, thank you for posting this.

Hmm, yeah I don't know if I fully feel comfortable saying it here. It used to be that I wouldn't talk about this at all with almost anyone. This is kind of a new thing for me and I'm still trying to process that it's okay, I don't have to suffer in silence.

Well, I think it would be a process of accurately identifying the ways the client either believes they are, or actually is dependent, and slowly encouraging them to face the relevant anxieties and become less dependent. Yes, in such a case, a T would need to be in control of their own feelings, but also able to consciously feel them for the client in the first place. I've seen literature talking about T engaging in a "temporary/partial regression" or something like that. I wish more T's were able to do that. This is really all an issue of balance, self-awareness, self-presence and self-control.

Yes, I do understand. I don't mean to minimize it, either. I'm in mostly the same position, and mostly had been for months, but, I suppose I'm recognizing lately that the more I think about how T's choices affected me, the more it actually continues to affect me and I extend the narrative further and further from its source material. I am powerless to change the outcome at this point. The more I wish it would change, or tell myself it should have been different, the more I unconsciously treat myself like a victim and allow myself to identify as a victim, leaving the wounds open.

I guess I get waves of trying to be optimistic and then the waves of hurt, grief, despair, longing. But, also it's true that I did come to therapy in a very bad situation. I was still nearly suicidal back then. So it's hard to say for sure how much worse off I am. I did become more emotionally isolated than I used to be, and that's not good. OTOH, to some extent, I at least feel better off in that I was able to feel the love I felt, temporarily, regardless of how it ended, and that feeling itself is something to hold onto. After that, it's just about giving myself the space to try to feel that and to need that with none of the strings that used to be attached.

I think a large portion of getting by in life is about deliberately choosing to selectively focus on the positive side of it. I don't mean optimism for optimism's sake, I just mean choosing to think about the things that have happened that genuinely felt good rather than the bad, and seeking out wherever you can find more of the good things with less of the bad things. I can think about the way I ended with T, yes, and that hurts. But I can think about the good feelings that I felt with T as well, and know that it was there, even if imperfectly or misguidedly. I can see that it didn't have to go the way it did and take steps to make sure it does not go that way if it happens again. I don't need to let the ending destroy everything entirely. There's a specific way this ends up looking in my situation, not sure what it would look like for you if you were able to get in touch with that.

Yes... what do you think are some safeguards that could be set in place?

I think my biggest overarching complaint with therapy as an institution does come from the notion that there's really no way to know what you're getting until you pay for it and have invested in it. I especially don't like that therapists generally charge for the consultation itself. I agree that some things should change and there just are not enough motivating factors in place to hold T's to a higher standard of treatment, beyond the client's awareness and the honor system I guess. We have inspectors for restaurants, hotels, things like that. Maybe there should be trained therapy inspectors. Dunno. After all, who could train them to be any more objective and competent than the therapists are in the first place? It's all subjective stuff...

And I am getting something from this dialog. I'm figuring it out as I go, too.

I bolded the items that resonated with my experience.

I personally find it hard/stressful to think of ways that T herself could have acted different, because she was who she was and had the weaknesses she had. I don't think that means she shouldn't be a T but I do really hope she will grow from seeing the mistakes she made with me and use that to do a better job in the future.

I guess the one thing specifically about T that really upset me was how she would transform her anger into judgments about whether or not my behavior was acceptable/appropriate, as if these standards were universal. She simultaneously would call something inappropriate and acknowledge that with another T, it may well not be a problem at all. That was how she forced me to read her mind and pretend this stuff was objective to be spared the blunt force of her disapproval. When I fully stopped doing that, just to make the point to myself that it was happening and it was wrong, then the covert aggression and devaluation started coming in, and I thought I could handle it, but it hurt really, really bad, and even worse because it was the tone of our final communications. And the main reason I can't forgive T for that is because I made every attempt to draw attention to the fact that she was doing it, long before it got out of hand.

But if it were a different person, and I were able to feel the same positive feelings, I know that what I would mostly want is just for words to to mean what they are actually supposed to mean. I doubted the functional honesty of T's words and invitations and promises all along, and I waited too long to truly voice my doubts, and in the end it came back to haunt me. In that sense, I feel like I failed myself, and I don't want to make that mistake again.