[herethennow]

hello! haven't been on PC for a long time, but i guess i needed to find someone who might have gone through a similar situation. have been miserable for the past week...

i have trust issues with people, due to trauma with bad mental health professionals who were abusive. so hence i am very wary, and trust takes a very long time to build. transference is an issue for me, and even though im not diagnosed with PTSD, if something seems wrong, it sends me in a spiral of anxiety and fear and it would take a VERY long time to recover from it. it wasn't easy for me to seek help, and thus i spent a long time trying to build rapport/therapeutic alliance with T. T is very gentle, very cautious of that, and i really liked T. we were a good match, and i really got comfortable and was very open with T. i even looked forward to T sometimes because i needed something off my chest.

T works for the hospital, and i see the docs from the same hospital too. they work together. anyway, end last year, i was really really down, and spent a long time in the psych ward, and eventually diagnosed with treatment resistant depression. i was recommended ECT, which i wasn't fully agreeable to, but due to certain issues (i.e. threats from the doctors, where they will do something even more undesirable), i consented and went through 7 rounds of bilateral ECT. i still have memory issues now (esp short term memory retainment, in a sense where if you talk to me about something, 3 days later i will not remember it) which i hate, but i am putting up with.

because i was in the hospital for so long, when i went out it was a total shock to my system. i was disoriented, didn't know how to cope, and thus started being down again. i was thinking of suicide again, and thus thinking about how brief the effect was, i spiralled down somemore. the week after i met pdoc, and even though i didn't want to, i told her of what i was feeling. that sparked a whole series of incidents which i wish to not disclose, but basically the hospital kinda abandoned me, and did a forced termination with T.

i was very devastated because i didn't know about it. i was told i had a choice, and i could continue with T. and i could tell T was lost too, because T asked the pdoc that made the decision "where do i go from here?" and the question wasn't really answered. T was also only told about it very haphazardly. we were working out so many things in therapy, and the sudden termination was a shock for us, but more for me. we were only able to have the SINGLE termination session because of certain things i did; if not, that opportunity would not arise. i was crying so bad, because i did not want this, and i did not want to start all over with someone new, especially with my issues. i don't know whether i'm correct, but i think T also did not want this... but T felt helpless.

because of what they did, transference came back, and i am currently reliving through all that trauma i had. self-loathe has been at its peak because i am unconsciously linking things to the trauma i faced in the past, and i am just so angry, sad and traumatised right now. and it has been a miserable one week. i have been crying almost everyday, and i can't seem to move on, and i've been trying to fight to get T back. i don't know whether i am doing the right thing, but that's just all i want... to be able to continue my treatment with T. i don't know whether i will get T back, and i don't know whether if i am able to, whether the sessions will be very awkward for the both of us.

i am still crying today, the waterworks have not stopped, and it's been very painful. wondering whether anyone else have been through this kind of forced termination (where it is not with a masters student, but with a fully qualified T) and you didn't anticipate this at all, and both of you weren't allowed to have a chance to resolve all your feelings? i feel so alone, and i want to talk it out to someone professional, but the only person i could is taken away from me, and i need to move on possibly...

i am not suicidal at the moment, but with all this pain, i wish i could die...

on another note, since i am curious, those who have gone through termination, was termination one session or was it a series of sessions that preps you towards the end?

thanks for reading this far, and pardon me for a very long post...

[feileacan]

Oh herethennow, I'm so sorry about what happened to you and what you're going through.

Sometimes I think that many people in mental health care system have absolutely no clue what they are working with and what they are doing. The only way I could make sense of what you describe is that someone decided that as you were not getting healthy in a certain amount of time then it is too costly to treat you and thus it would be better to get rid of you altogether. I honestly think that those people who made this decision did not actually include you and your needs into the decision formula at all.

Have you been able to talk to you T about what happened at all? What does the pdoc suggest how you proceed?

[herethennow]

Originally Posted by feileacan

Oh herethennow, I'm so sorry about what happened to you and what you're going through.

Sometimes I think that many people in mental health care system have absolutely no clue what they are working with and what they are doing. The only way I could make sense of what you describe is that someone decided that as you were not getting healthy in a certain amount of time then it is too costly to treat you and thus it would be better to get rid of you altogether. I honestly think that those people who made this decision did not actually include you and your needs into the decision formula at all.

Have you been able to talk to you T about what happened at all? What does the pdoc suggest how you proceed?

thanks for the reply. i can't disclose much here, but the the pdocs don't know the full history of my past, and thats what makes me angry. only T understood, and T tried to relay this to them.

the only time i was able to talk to T was in our short termination session where everything was revealed. and i basically have no other means to contact the clinic at all. i'm just in a limbo, of possibly going back to T, or moving on.

[atisketatasket]

Technically I've terminated with two therapists and a psychiatrist. One therapist was because I moved; the other two were forced. I didn't have a single termination session with any of them.

[BudFox]

Sounds rather brutal. Sorry to hear. I think that when termination is forced on a client, it is always going to be damaging, even if you get 10 sessions to wrap things up. It's just inherently toxic. I had a termination that began as semi-mutual, but became unilateral. Was totally degrading.

[unaluna]

Its not clear, but it sounds like there was an attempt somewhere in there? In that situation, the thinking is usually, whatever we were doing obviously wasnt working, so lets not go back to it. So even if they want to try again, they know its like their addiction talking and they just cant listen to it. So forced termination really is forced transfer, for both sides. Not that it makes it any easier, but...

[runlola72]

I've never had a forced termination but one therapist for whom I had disclosed homo-erotic transference, began to systematically raise her rates for months until I could no longer afford her (she did not take insurance). So terminating was my decision, but she essentially forced my hand. I was simultaneously angry and devastated.
I'm so sorry this has happened to you (((HUGS)))

I am so sorry you're struggling!

I think the best course of action would be to find a new therapist who is willing to help you move past these feelings.

Never in my experience has a therapist who terminated taken me back in the future. Once termination comes along, things are so bad for one reason or another that the therapist knows that the fit is not right and he/she is not longer the best for you. If you're dealing with a burocratic system, the chances of getting your therapist back are even worse as you could be seen as a liability for the entire organization.