Valid or not???

What would your thoughts and feelings be if your T (whom you a very attached too) failed to prepare you for a separation? When a large amount of your work together has been to do with learning to trust again and working through your massive fear of abandonment?
Is it reasonable to feel very hurt and let down?

How long will the separation be? I would expect my T to discuss it ahead of time and she does, even if it's only a week. I would feel hurt, I think. Is it possible your T was waiting for you to bring it up, or thought you were okay with the separation? I'm sorry she didn't prepare you.

Yes, sorry that is hard to even think about... I remember when my support group ended abruptly and I talked to my T about this and he said , if it was a therapeutic relationship they are supposed to give at least a few weeks typically a month or even more to process the transition. He is super ethical .

this happened to me years ago. my first therapist dumped me one night out of nowhere- no warning, no signs, and after hundreds of promises to never abandon me. i went one night, she told me that she was just done. i dont even know what i did. she never explained. and it broke my heart and took me years and years to recover from.
it took me years to trust even slightly. i still rarely trust anyone even a tiny bit. i still feel abandoned, hurt, angry, scared, and sad.

Do you mean a permanent separation or temporary? I thought you meant like a vacation.

That depends on the context and circumstances surrounding this 'separation'. Was it planned or unexpected?

Sometimes life happens which means Ts don't have time to prepare for a separation, in particular if it was unplanned or sudden. In which case, sadness might be on the cards but I would not blame the T for something that was not anticipated and just happened.

I would be extremely hurt, feel abandoned, used and dumped again.

Sorry I should of said its not a forever separation, just a vacation. It was a planned vacation that i was not told about until just before T left. Its 14 days which doesn't seem long but the longest I have been without contact is 4days so it kind of hurts that it was dumped on me like this, with very little warning

Thank you for clarifying Teddy. In this case, i believe T ought to have prepared you rather than dumping it on you last minute. Esp as he knew it was important for you. Seems he took a (major) step back in the establishment of trust between the two of you.

Do you think you will bring it up with him upon his return? He ought to be more consistent, imo.

Thanks for you reply! Part of me wants to discuss it but I don't know, I just feel wrong for feeling this way!

I don't see anything wrong with how you are feeling Teddy. I think he could have handled it better: talked it out, maybe given you a little piece of 'him' to hold on to (voicemail, something from his office...whatever really).

Imo he did you a disservice by his lack of sensitivity(?) or at least lack of foresight.

Might be worth exploring with him: as in, hey T if you leave again could we ensure I get some advance notice... Doesn't have to be a hot and heavy conversation, but i think he needs to know. Trust and consistency are very important and he could learn something here i.e. what *not* to do.

Hang in there Teddy (((Teddy)))

Unless it was some sort of emergency, my T would never just leave for 2 weeks w/o a lot of notice. She tells me everything as in advance as she can. She knows I need time to process the absence.

That's the thing that hurts the most- the part where T knew my needs surrounding separations and just did nothing about it. I have a transitional item that I always take home with me when T goes away and one that i give to T to take- it keeps me remembering T's presence but this was also forgotten. So as well as no contact I have nothing to hold onto.
It just sucks

I would've been hurt if my T didn't mention his absence in advance. Especially when he knows how it affects me.

I have found that most of them err on the side of excessive notification. Like a month or so in advance. Granted, my own reaction is more of the "good lord I can live without you altogether, so a vacation does not need this sort of thing" but I think therapists themselves believe clients often have difficulty with their absence so that the OPs response seems to me to be what therapists themselves expect from all clients.

I guess my reaction is that it is only two weeks. Yes, maybe a week's notice would be nice, but it was not unusual to go a couple of weeks between sessions for me, so it would not be a big deal. I just consider it a vacation from therapy for me which is not a bad thing.

I would be very upset at this. We are moving to a new room of my Ts house soon and when we went to have a look at it before we move in it was hard. I was OK until we got back inside but then I felt all weird. Just saying that things aren't always as easy as they seem. I thought it would be fine, but it wasn't. Now my T is saying no rush about the move and I trust her to let me take a look, come back and just generally 'transition' at a speed that is right for me. You should be able to trust your T to do right by you.

An appointment schedule shouldn't be the therapist's closely guarded secret. Maybe the client might want to make his own plans during the hiatus.

Your feelings are valid. Therapist usually know weeks if not months in advance when their vacations are. Especially if you haven't been more than a few days without help and he knows about your needings surrounding seperations.

There have been a few times I've gone a week without therapy, so that's a total of two weeks not seeing T. That was still aright for me. My other T usually told me about two weeks in advanced. Last summer she was away for 2,5 weeks, but I couldn't see her for 4 whole weeks because there was no time available. She said things like ''time will fly by'' and ''you can do this''. After two weeks it got harder for me. And I was a little bit angry about her acting so easily about it.

I don't post here much but I read a lot.

My T gives months and months of notice about planned missed sessions. Like I got her entire summer schedule in March, including dates into August. Even though the separations are really hard for me, I know they are coming, and can sometimes dial down the intensity in anticipation of a longer break.

Last week, she got sick - cancelled my session morning of, and then canceled the next week (I go 3x/week). It was really disorienting for me - probably partially because we have so much time to process breaks beforehand. In over 2 years, she's never cancelled like this. She missed a few sessions when her mother died, but that's it. She starts on time, ends on time, and is super consistent. I would have a hard time trusting someone who wasn't.

My therapist usually gives me a few months notice as well. Sometimes I choose to be away as well during that time. I regard our sessions as a really important part of the way I take care of myself every week, and I need to plan how I'm going to compensate for that if he's not available. I think it's very important for some clients not to be surprised by things like that.

I'm sorry your therapist screwed this one up! I hope she will learn from it and plan better for you in the future.

Feelings are just what they are. They don't live by the same rules as intellect.
I do think advance notice of breaks is helpful. My T normally gives me a few weeks notice. But after being with her for so long I can predict roughly when breaks will occur.
I also think, early in my therapy, no amount of preparing would have stopped the feelings I experienced.
Nor do I think it should have. I needed to reexperience those young feelings of loss and early let down to firstly learn new ways of coping ( a certain amount of stress is useful for this) and secondly to have a corrective experience with a skilled T.

My tdoc typically gives about 2 or 3 weeks notice before he's going to be on vacation, plus I know that he goes to back-to-back conferences this time every year. It still sucks - the conferences mean I don't see or contact him for three weeks, and this year, because I'm in a bad depressive episode, I'm still kind of angry at him even though he gave adequate notice. Part of my anger is that my pdoc is exceptionally busy as both a clinician and teacher/researcher and is VERY hard to reach under normal circumstances, plus she was on vacation for one of the weeks tdoc was gone and I don't think he checked to see if she would actually be there to cover for him. He told me she would be there to cover for him and she wasn't.

But some of that is on me, really, boundaries being what they are and all regarding how often I should (or more accurately should not) be contacting him outside of sessions, plus he gave me homework to get out of the house at least 3 times a week to help alleviate the depression and for the first week he was gone I stayed in my house all week long, with a predictable worsening of the depression. Once I started following his advice, the depression started to get a little better and I felt less needy and abandoned.

I do think it is still valid to be mad at him and feel abandoned - feelings are what they are - and if I choose to, he will have no problem discussing it in my next session.

Springing a break on a patient with little notice is crappy, IMO, so if yours does that, by all means say something to your tdoc if you felt unprepared for the break.

Was a reason given by your T for the last minute notice? It's only 2 weeks, so that is good, but it's still quite a stupid mistake and inconsiderate. Plus, these sorts of things are not always just about the literal meaning. There are symbolic meanings too. I would feel let down, yes.