Therapy Gone Wrong (Unethical; Possibly Abusive)

I know plenty of people who see their therapists 2x per week....

Hm. My t could be wrong.

I'm still sorry you are left with such a hole to fill.

I can relate because my civil, medical board and criminal cases against AbusivePDoc were very time consuming. It took 2-3 years to resolve everything.

My T at the time acknowledged the end of the litigation and asked me what now? How would I be spending my time?

It was an adjustment.

Honestly, the hardest part of this right now is that my new therapist is also out of town.
I had hoped...had planned...to see him 2x the week S left, because I knew that I would not do well. But, instead, J (new T) is away until July 7.

I've just emailed my Group T to see if she can see me twice this week.
I feel idiotic, but I'm seriously bordering on not safe. It is taking everything in me not to SI massively right now. I'm having obnoxious urges to SI horribly and send S (ex T) pictures and be like "happy now?" but that is ridiculous -- I have never shown my SI to anyone ever... I certainly never showed S when I SI'ed in past... so I've no idea why I have that urge now.

I feel like I'm going crazy. Short circuiting. I also want to starve myself. I slipped into ED territory while seeing S...only got out of it because I got pregnant and had to... and now... just ... every self-destructive thing I've ever felt is hitting me at once. I don't want to be alive.

He's probably been busy with the move and hasn't had a chance to text you. I doubt it's about you in particular.

But...you had texted daily before, even when he was no longer your T? Wow, that's quite frequently. Were they just sort of "Hey, how are you?" texts or more of a therapy type thing? I can imagine it would be really difficult to deal with not hearing from him then...

And the tattoo...not sure what to say about that, except that it definitely sounds beyond a therapeutic relationship....

Hang in there...

Lonesome - a lot of it was just silly texts - memes, mostly. And friendly hey how are you texts, yes. We are trying to maintain a friendship.... something I don't recommend ever trying. But I don't really know how else to survive right now.

Update: He finally freaking texted.
I'm sobbing, and I can't tell if it's from pain or relief.

He said "I'm still here. Not disappearing. Just moving and breaking my phone in the process. Please breathe. I told you to trust me. I'm fine."

So, that explains things.... yes, I know that I'm crazy, it's just... his last words to me on Friday were "I miss you." Random and out of the blue -- that is not how he normally talks... and I started thinking "maybe he meant to say "I'll miss you" and it was really a goodbye... and then he got rid of me.... and that's been my fear from the beginning...

I know this is unhealthy. I know this is messed up. I'm tangled up in knots with this person... it's just not as easy as "walking away." It's just not.

but, actually, yes, a lot of our texts were emotional ones... me wanting to know if he was still there... that's what all of them were for me, actually... I just... would send memes instead to keep it light.... but all of it was a way of asking "are you still there?"...

I'm so glad he contacted you!
Wow.

So, today is day 7 in being "S-free" or, as my friend likes to call it... "sober." -.-

I told S last Monday that I needed a no-contact break. I said I was thinking it would last around a month.

This past week has felt like I am ripping off my own skin (which, literally, I have been doing...dermatilomania flare up). I keep thinking it's getting a little easier -- and it is -- but that doesn't mean I'm pain-free.

J (current T) is seeing me twice this week; however, he is also going away for 3 weeks in August. RIGHT when my one-month S-free "ends," and I have to decide if I'm going to try speaking with him/being his friend again. At first, I wasn't too upset about J leaving, but I'm more anxious about it now. Being without S AND without J seems SO hard... but trying to talk with S again and being without J here to help me process objectively seems terrifying. I will be seeing my Group T while J is gone (and I felt really "cared for" when J told me he'd already spoken with Group T and found out she would be available while he was gone. That was nice).

J has me doing visualization exercises every day -- visualizing the whole "detangling" myself from S.... "however that looks," he said. Apparently, for me, it looks like breaking strings of DNA in half (one side "alive" and one side "dead" and looking like sticks). Interesting visualization that sprang to mind, but whatever.

My heart and stomach hurt right now -- the "I want S" ache. Sigh.

Thanks for the update, TMC. Congrats on your seven days 'sober'.

We will be here for you, too. To help you process.

No idea if anyone is even following this, but I think I figured out a big part of what happened (on S (exT)'s side).

A friend of mine said this to me:

I think that's just what S did...

He feels very lost in his life, says he loves himself but I don't really think he does, HAS to have regrets or at least a ton of feelings about leaving his wife and son and not being a part of his son's life (plus other things from his past), and he took my transference and attachment and used it to build himself up and give himself purpose (he told me a few times that "there have been many days when the only thing that got me out of bed was because I knew I was seeing you." Like that my needing him was like his motivation when he didn't have any motivation himself.)

And, I think, our falling out over his taking this job...my anger and, honestly, some kind of brutal tearing him down..well that had to smack him right in the face... And my no longer being there 2x a week, plus his getting cancer and being super confronted with his mortality....well, my transference and attachment won't be there to fuel him so readily, plus he's confronted with my fury at him over the perceived abandonment, and even if I was still obsessively attached, it isn't enough to fuel you when confronted with your mortality, so I'm getting discarded (even if unintentionally) while he tries to find something else to fuel himself (or numb himself)...only he's self-destructing. I think the cancer thing has pushed him over the edge there...

I've been trying to figure out "what happened," and I think that might be a big part of it.