End of session separation???

I agree. It seems like such a bizarre concept to me now that i am "out" of it. I could never go back to therapy. It is not healthy for most people who struggle with severe issues (my opinion).

I've read several excellent articles that speak of the value that therapy supposedly brings by exposing one's "inner child" so it can finally be healed. I would never have believed that such a thing could even be possible had it not just happened to me in therapy (and it takes A LOT for me to open up and trust/attach to another person). That being said, I really think that if bringing the client to such a vulnerable/dependent state is indeed such a critical goal, the design of therapy needs to also be prepared to deal with any increased needs that may come with it. Otherwise, it seems to me that the process can easily exploit this and prolongue the dependence indefinitely.

I have no doubt about therapy's ability to expose aspects of one's inner child. Seems one of the things it does best. But the healing part, I believe the profession is very deluded about this. Despite all the talk and theories, I think few of them have any clue what to do when a client goes mental and starts obsessing and demanding to be seen and heard 24/7. None of them have a process. How can you have a process for such a thing? There is no way to predict what an individual will do when their emotional brain gets pricked in this way, and I don't think you can just apply some theoretical template. Many of them seem to impose punitive and shaming boundaries that only serve to infantilize and enfeeble the client further. It's a bizarre experiment, with potential for massive collateral damage. And in the background is the corrupting influence of the money. Egads.

This has also happened for me. It's like my younger self -- which was still in there somewhere -- finally found an adult who saw what was happening and could help them. It's kind of incredible, a little bit like going back in time and fixing something.

My biggest concern is that most therapists don't have proper respect for this strong state of dependence when considering things like maternity leave, retirement, moving, or flat termination of clients. In their code of ethics, under "Ethical Responsibilities to Clients," they talk about "continuation of services" as if referring a client to someone else constitutes a continuation. For clients in the midst of inner child attachment to the T, this is like a mother sending her own child off to live with some distant aunt in another state with no remaining contact (or almost none), and calling that "continuation of services" because the child is technically still being cared for. The very phrase "continuation of services" feels dehumanizing to both therapist and client, as if we are all cogs in a machine, replaceable parts.

So, while I have experienced the benefits of this attachment / healing process myself, it entails a period of grave danger. I've noticed that many of the people here who have been terminated by T's (an apt term) say that they feel like they might literally die from it. I imagine a child abandoned by a caretaking adult would have similar existential fears. T's don't seem to know what they're playing with.

Out of curiosity, do you mean you've gone through this and actually healed from it with your T? I'm just curious how your T navigated you to the point of healing?

I absolutely agree with this. Well said.

Yes, I mean that during the course of therapy, some young / childlike parts of me emerged, and found some healing via my relationship with my T. He was a caring adult who could hear all the pain these younger parts had experienced, argue that these things were not my fault, and say that I should have been better taken care of by the adults in my life. An issue for me was that I hid what was going on from my parents, so although they were good parents they could not help me. I pulled the wool over most all adults' eyes during that time and/or they turned a blind eye. So just having an adult who knew everything I'd been through and felt empathy and didn't blame me... that felt huge.

My T is not directive and it's not like he ever gave me homework or anything. But he did introduce the idea that I still had a younger self in there and I was going to have to try to find compassion for her. (In the beginning I hated to think of being young, hated my younger self, etc.) I think he showed me the way by consistently expressing empathy for my young self, and by kind of advocating for her (because again, in the beginning I felt everything was entirely my fault and my young self was loathsome). I remember he asked me once how I felt toward myself at age 11 (I had just been describing stuff that had happened then), and I thought "Disgust is not a big enough word."

Once I stopped attacking my younger self and started accepting it, and I started talking to him from that younger place, I got obsessive about therapy. I thought about it all the time, counted down days and hours till my next session, and found comfort in imagining lying on my T's couch. For me I was somewhere around 11 to 15 years old mentally (because that was when the worst of it happened) but I know for some they would be only 3 or 5 years old or some such, and I imagine that the need for the T is that much stronger because young children have more intense needs for adult care. I agree with BudFox that the therapy structure fails to take this into account and I agree that boundaries can be used in punitive / shaming ways.

Definitely agree most therapists do not seem to get the dependency thing, and the impact of extended absences and termination. Even the end of a session can cause a lot of dysregulation and many therapists seem oblivious. This begets the whole emailing/texting/googling syndrome, which usually prompts the boundary imposition, like erecting a fence to keep the now squirrely client from intruding, which misses the point entirely and just heaps blame on the client.

Oh the "continuation of services" and "referring out" thing. Yes dehumanizing. And also it is a pretense to something like medical treatment. Please. Therapists are emotional prostitutes and quasi-gurus and quasi-surrogate parents. Mine carried this out in a way that attempted to legitimize what was clearly a disaster, using formal language and pretending that she had initiated some controlled process and the next therapist would pick it up and continue "services". No, referring out is a euphemism for abandonment, as someone on this forum once so aptly put it.

It sounds like your T handled this exceptionally well. Did you eventually get over the need to "count down the hours and days till your next session"? How often were you seeing your T during this high needs time? I'm just wondering if it's possible to go through the process that you did if you're only seeing your T once every two weeks (like I am, because it's all I can afford). Apologies for all of the questions.

I was seeing him once a week, but sometimes twice a week. Call it 5-6 sessions per month.

I did get over the obsessiveness / dependency, but it's come and gone several times, it ebbs and flows. I eventually came to look at those feelings as a positive sign (even if it isn't pleasant to experience) because it means that something important is coming to the surface and being addressed.

I do think it would be tough to do, only seeing the T once every other week. It sounds like a rough situation. When January comes, could you put every other week on your insurance and pay for the in between weeks out of pocket, so you would be seeing her once a week at the same cost? Best of luck, and I never mind questions.

I agree with this. I think once you get out of the whole dysfunctional relationship you can see more clearly how true this is. Still very painful though. Very painful.