[BudFox]

Hi,

First post here…

I worked with a T last year for several months. Came in seeking help coping with chronic illness, major depression, relationship problems, death of family and more. And with likely developmental/attachment trauma as underlying issue.

After couple months we shared an intense emotional moment, and everything changed. I already was attracted to her, but now i was consumed by her. I think it was partly real attraction that I felt, but also idealization and projection of very old unmet needs. She began to feel like a goddess, the perfect woman I had always wanted. SHe had some boundary issues which she acknowledged, and I think this is part of why my feelings exploded like a mushroom cloud.

Then she let me know she did not share these feelings -- though did feel a strong connection with me. This was like dying. This plus my illness meant therapy was now unbearably intense at times. We agreed mutually, after much back and forth, to stop. But I saw it not as a final termination but a test to see if i felt better.

I felt worse. The termination itself became the biggest problem. I experienced it as a traumatic rupture -- the relative abruptness of it, nothing resolved, no real plan for transition or further support other than a list of referrals, and then resisting of all contact when I reached out, plus subtle blaming and shaming.

Her reasoning was that it wasn't working and ethically we must stop, for my own well being. My subjective experience is that the opposite is true -- stopping has made me worse, any positive contact makes me feel better. I know that she is btwn a rock a hard place, feeling pressure and guilt and is probably scared that she set off a bomb. So she pushed me off a cliff and walked away. She did try and I do think she is a wonderful person, but mostly i feel badly injured.

I don't see how this ethical. Most of the 5 Ts i have talked to since give her the benefit of the doubt, I should let it go. Few seem to get the attachment trauma dynamic, and how it feels like life and death. I see my inability to let go as a direct consequence of the mishandled therapy and termination, and the powerfully damaging messages sent by the overwhelmed T trying to escape the guilt and the mess.

Sorry for the long post. Anyone have similar experience? Not really looking for advice, just similar stories for perspective. And to vent...

Thanks a lot for reading!

[AmazingGrace7]

Hi BudFox,

First, welcome to PC. I'm sorry you are having this experience. I was terminated by my first T. In some ways, it is very similar to yours so I understand the range of emotions a painful termination brings. My former T said it would be "egregious" for him to stay on as my T. It is still difficult for me to talk about today (eight years later). No one fully understands how my life changed that day, including me.

Feel free to vent here….

The emotional damage caused by a therapist's "boundary issues," followed by termination, is HUGE, even if the termination felt mutual.

No advice. Just...sorry. I hope you can find a therapist who gets this.

[PeeJay]

Originally Posted by BudFox

Hi,

First post here…

I worked with a T last year for several months. Came in seeking help coping with chronic illness, major depression, relationship problems, death of family and more. And with likely developmental/attachment trauma as underlying issue.

After couple months we shared an intense emotional moment, and everything changed. I already was attracted to her, but now i was consumed by her. I think it was partly real attraction that I felt, but also idealization and projection of very old unmet needs. She began to feel like a goddess, the perfect woman I had always wanted. SHe had some boundary issues which she acknowledged, and I think this is part of why my feelings exploded like a mushroom cloud.

Then she let me know she did not share these feelings -- though did feel a strong connection with me. This was like dying. This plus my illness meant therapy was now unbearably intense at times. We agreed mutually, after much back and forth, to stop. But I saw it not as a final termination but a test to see if i felt better.

I felt worse. The termination itself became the biggest problem. I experienced it as a traumatic rupture -- the relative abruptness of it, nothing resolved, no real plan for transition or further support other than a list of referrals, and then resisting of all contact when I reached out, plus subtle blaming and shaming.

Her reasoning was that it wasn't working and ethically we must stop, for my own well being. My subjective experience is that the opposite is true -- stopping has made me worse, any positive contact makes me feel better. I know that she is btwn a rock a hard place, feeling pressure and guilt and is probably scared that she set off a bomb. So she pushed me off a cliff and walked away. She did try and I do think she is a wonderful person, but mostly i feel badly injured.

I don't see how this ethical. Most of the 5 Ts i have talked to since give her the benefit of the doubt, I should let it go. Few seem to get the attachment trauma dynamic, and how it feels like life and death. I see my inability to let go as a direct consequence of the mishandled therapy and termination, and the powerfully damaging messages sent by the overwhelmed T trying to escape the guilt and the mess.

Sorry for the long post. Anyone have similar experience? Not really looking for advice, just similar stories for perspective. And to vent...

Thanks a lot for reading!

My ex-therapist was the first person I ever cried in front of -- and not just any crying, but full body sobbing. I became attached to the person, which scared the **** out of me.

That therapist also over-shared details from the therapist's personal life, which made me feel like we were in it together and that we had a lot in common.

When the therapy ended on bad terms, it nearly wrecked me. It took me more than a year to fully recover, actually. I had no idea that therapy could be dangerous to our psyche.

You are not alone. Try not to beat yourself up too much. I was shocked that a therapist's behavior could leave me in such a bad state of mind - crying constantly every day. Really, it was a re-traumatization and it compounds the situation.

I tried to recover on my own but really only did with the help of a better, patient therapist with more experience with trauma and attachment problems.

I have huge attachment issues with my first T and I am choosing to terminate for many of the same reasons you identify in your mutual termination. I can relate to what you say about your T's boundary issues, and I think that is where most of the damage was done for me. Long story short, I f***ing love this guy. I have to leave because a boundaried relationship with him hurts me over and over again.
I am lucky because I have found a good T to work through the indescribable grief of losing him. There is an aching void that can't be filled by a new T but I think the grief is something I have a chance of healing from.
I'm sorry you are going through a similar loss. I think the uniqueness of the relationship intensifies the pain.

I am very sorry. I would say find another therapist, but it didn't help me at all with the trauma and pain of the termination.

I really am sorry. It's a hard thing to go through.

[BudFox]

Thanks everyone for the replies! Glad I found this forum. There is really no substitute for hearing from others with similar experience.

Originally Posted by PeeJay

That therapist also over-shared details from the therapist's personal life, which made me feel like we were in it together and that we had a lot in common.

When the therapy ended on bad terms, it nearly wrecked me. It took me more than a year to fully recover, actually. I had no idea that therapy could be dangerous to our psyche.

Same here re: the sharing of details. Its big part of what made this different from other Ts. Felt much more personal, familiar, and most importantly… ambiguous. This created such internal chaos. It was a "dual relationship" where you are going back and forth between personal and professional. She admitted to this after the fact, which is good, but it barely put a dent in the guilt and shame I felt.

I also had little idea it could be so dangerous. As one T said to me, clients receive little info about the risks or possible outcomes.

Originally Posted by Echos Myron

I have huge attachment issues with my first T and I am choosing to terminate for many of the same reasons you identify in your mutual termination. I can relate to what you say about your T's boundary issues, and I think that is where most of the damage was done for me. Long story short, I f***ing love this guy. I have to leave because a boundaried relationship with him hurts me over and over again.
I am lucky because I have found a good T to work through the indescribable grief of losing him. There is an aching void that can't be filled by a new T but I think the grief is something I have a chance of healing from.
I'm sorry you are going through a similar loss. I think the uniqueness of the relationship intensifies the pain.

So you fell in love with your T? And you terminated because of the boundary problems, or because your feelings for him made it unworkable? Sorry you are going thru this too. What were the boundary issues?

I have horrible internal conflict because, like you, i was getting hurt over and over. But I also feel overwhelming desire to go back because of the attachment pull I guess, plus I need the meaningful connection desperately. I became a junkie and she was my fix, and then the drug was withdrawn with no tapering, no replacement, and i went into a spiral.

For me what became very dangerous was the idealization (not sure what exactly led to that). She felt so perfect that I could not bear to go on without her in my life. Thought about her constantly. So when she cut me off, became distant, subtly blamed and shamed me, the disillusionment was crushing.

Aching void… indeed, well said. Good that you have someone to help you now.

[BudFox]

For anyone who has been through a forced or questionable termination, did you try to pursue some sort of reconciliation or pursue further help/therapy from the T? Since termination I have become obsessed with this to an alarming degree. Cant let it go.

The abrupt termination was like telling a heroin addict that his addiction is bad for him and the solution will be to take away the heroin, cold turkey.

There was no transition plan, other than some referrals and the insistence on no more contact.

So I tried to enact a transition in lieu of T doing so.

[archipelago]

I have not had your experience, which sounds very painful. I have terminated a therapist for reasons quite different from what you have had happen, and I did have a very painful experience about it due to attachment issues. At the time I was not as aware as I am now of how powerful early attachment issues can be especially in therapy. I did feel like I was in drug withdrawal as you describe it even though I knew that I had made the right decision to stop working with him. I felt a range of things, betrayal and loss as primary. Luckily my new therapist formed a strong bond early and was very relationally focused. That helped enormously. I didn't process the old relationship since the two are colleagues and there was actually nothing problematic necessarily about the former therapist.

Now I know more about attachment and about the very powerful effects of attachment trauma. Activating that can be huge. And can potentially lead to massive affective dysregulation and other difficulties. I don't know if that is happening with you, but if it is, attending to yourself is really important and going over what the other person did probably gets in the way of that. One way to return to baseline is having someone come in who can help you feel more regulated. Sometimes it takes another attachment figure to step in.

[angelicgoldfish05]

Possible trigger:

suicide attempt

Welcome to PC BudFox! I'm glad you posted what you are going through and hopefully you will find good support here. I have found it to be a good augmentation to therapy. I am able to reach out at all hours of the day and at least share what is going on even if no one replies. I can't do that with a T so it has been great. Also, it is just a comfort to be so open and share with others who are going through the same thing. I have been able to share here things I wouldn't be able to tell anyone else at times and I don't fear too much judgement. It has helped to hear from others who have gone through the same experiences as I, so I do not feel so alone. Also, there are not many groups in my town, so I am able to connect with others in a "group like" therapeutic (for the most part) setting. I also like that it is anonymous (though I won't go overboard sharing personal details because it is an online thing, even though it is well moderated).

So, your post. I relate to so much of it! I fell in love with a former T, became obsessed (and yes he was perfect, I idealized and worshiped him). But it ended badly for me. I had his personal info (he shared with me) so I was calling and calling one day, very depressed, and getting his voicemail. He too gave me a no contact thing, although he never told me this it just happened. Over a year ago, he all of a sudden stopped replying to my emails. He never returned any contact I made to him. And he had given me address, phone number, etc.. So I emailed, sent letters, packages, money, tried calling a few times. I often fantasized about going to his house at night, overdosing in his front yard, and having him find me dead the next morning. That is how extreme I wanted to show him to demonstrate the extreme pain this loss had caused me. Yes it was re-traumatizing from probably a past attachment of some sort. I had no idea that all that would happen and I didn't know a thing at the time, about transference, countertransference, or attachment issues.

Long story short, nearly a year after he cut off all contact without talking to me about it or telling me why, I drank a bottle of booze, called him several times and got his voicemail and left messages, the last one I told him I was taking the bottle of pills right then. Because I had failed. And I did. I took the whole bottle and almost died. I wouldn't have cared if I did. He hurt me that much. And I allowed it. I was so vulnerable because of the attachment, and he just dropped me like I was nothing to him. And gave me no explaination. I was shattered.

Here is where it begins to take a turn, thankfully. I have a new T. I was soooo resistant about this at first because no one could ever be like my old T (I don't care that he hurt me I still idealize him and still love him). However, I needed something. It is like if one med gets pulled off the market and you all of a sudden can't take it any more for your life-threatening disease. You still need to take meds for it, so you look for a new med or you die. That is what finding a new T has been like.

I have seen new T for 9 sessions now. She is the only one, besides posting here, that I have told about everything that happened with old T. She talks about old T and allows me to process the relationship with old T as much as I need to. Even if it takes a whole session, she is fine just working through that and allowing me to process and giving me good feedback. It has helped. It will never replace old T. And I have to be honest when I still hold out and hope to see him again someday. If only to heal this rupture in my heart once and for all. It would be so nice to come out on the other end with a male person and have it not end in sex and then abandonment. It would be nice to have a relationship with a male person such as this and have it be healing instead of sexualized. It would be nice to have an older person to look up to and be mentored and sheltered by. I still hold on to the hope that someday, he will be what I need him to be.

[angelicgoldfish05]

Originally Posted by BudFox

Came in seeking help coping with chronic illness, major depression, relationship problems, death of family and more. And with likely developmental/attachment trauma as underlying issue.

Budfox, you mention the death of a family member. How long ago and what relation, if you don't mind my asking? From what I have read (and my obsession with my previous T cause quite an obsession... like years long, it was bad), this kind of thing can happen when you experience a great loss of another kind. For me it was my ex-fiance. We had been in a relationship for 6 years and it was breaking up. In the midst of this breakup, I saw my old T. I immediately transferred all my loving feelings I had had for my fiance onto my T. In this way, he held me together during a great upheaval in my life and a great loss. He was my glue. I was totally fragmented and going through I psychotic break that landed me in the psych ward. He was my bridge to sanity. He was my rock and my anchor. I realize you cannot place a human in God's place, but I did. I didn't mean to. It's just that you can't see God. And this T was a physical manifestation for me of a savior, just like I had learned about (religion).

Anyways, I read somewhere, perhaps when I was researching erotic transference, or maybe it was in the memoir of a t who had been stalked by a woman who had erotic transference towards her (I can't find the book right now, I read a lot! I'll get back to you on this one when I find it)... But it said something about a loss happening, and this kind of erotic transference/obsession stepping in to fill the loss... Something like that. Sorry if this doesn't make sense, my mind is being scattered today

[Psychdyke]

I had a therapist abruptly terminate me once. Over email, nonetheless. I'm leaving out large portions of the story for anonymity purposes, but basically I had developed a sort of negative maternal transference towards her that she was clearly not trained to deal with. It took several days of heartache and crying to convince myself that I needed proper closure with this therapist. To ask her the hard questions I needed answers to about what had happened with our relationship and to show her how deeply the termination had hurt me. It took about half a dozen unanswered emails begging for a final session that convinced her to meet with me.
It was awkward. It was tough. We both shed some tears and we both said what we needed to say. The experience was extremely therapeutic for me and, I'll wager a guess, enlightening for her as a therapist.
I realized how I had contributed to the termination and decided these were aspects of myself that I would need to continue to work on if I wanted more healthy, successful relationships in the future. I thanked her for all she had done for me. While I wanted to keep her in my life because I actually enjoyed her as a person, I knew that that was not possible and our professional relationship had come to an end.

A final meeting for closure will only work if the therapist is open minded about it and not defensive.

Similarly to ex lovers, the best way to get over a therapist is to get a new one. You will quickly get over your old obsession and probably start a new one if you're still experiencing attachment issues. I still think about my old therapist and feel longing for her. But I have accepted that people come and go in our lives and the best thing to do is hold them in your heart with memories of what they did do for you. Grieve what you have lost, but pick yourself back up again. Because your therapist was only human and full of his/her own faults. You deserve better and you will find someone who loves you as intensely as you love them, if you keep yourself open to it and not stuck on past relationships.

Originally Posted by BudFox

So you fell in love with your T? And you terminated because of the boundary problems, or because your feelings for him made it unworkable? Sorry you are going thru this too. What were the boundary issues?

I have horrible internal conflict because, like you, i was getting hurt over and over. But I also feel overwhelming desire to go back because of the attachment pull I guess, plus I need the meaningful connection desperately. I became a junkie and she was my fix, and then the drug was withdrawn with no tapering, no replacement, and i went into a spiral.

For me what became very dangerous was the idealization (not sure what exactly led to that). She felt so perfect that I could not bear to go on without her in my life. Thought about her constantly. So when she cut me off, became distant, subtly blamed and shamed me, the disillusionment was crushing.

Aching void… indeed, well said. Good that you have someone to help you now.

I left because I kept being hurt. His boundaries were quite inconsistent at times, like he was very big on self disclosure, and encouraged email between sessions, but then would withdraw and go all 'professional' in his language and demeanour without warning and I found that confusing and painful.
I can relate to the thing about it feeling like a drug (in fact a line in a poem I once wrote went "I crave it like it's smack/I don't know where it's leading but I keep on going back")
I think I realised that I was going to be heartbroken either way, because I would never have the relationship I wanted with him, so I had to choose between the repeated pain of rejection, which I can't heal from in an ongoing relationship, or grief, which hurts even more, but that I can heal from.
Sometimes a T just doesn't have the skillset to deal with severe attachment issues. I think it's best in those cases that both client and T try to learn something from the situation and move on, though it's undoubtedly painful for both.
I hope you find healing going forward

[MoxieDoxie]

Originally Posted by Echos Myron

I left because I kept being hurt. His boundaries were quite inconsistent at times, like he was very big on self disclosure, and encouraged email between sessions, but then would withdraw and go all 'professional' in his language and demeanour without warning and I found that confusing and painful.

yup that is me now with my T. There was a time last summer that I swore he was my friend more than a therapist. I am all consumed with ways to get his attention. My blog posts inspirations are ways to either get him to be proud of me or be pissed off and jealous that I know more about his therapy mode than he does. Any attention in my book is better than complete silence or being ingnored until the next session.

I am sick about how I feel inside and what needs I want met. I never had a nurturing parent and at times I feel like I do things that are like a child screaming "Hey Mom! Look at me! Look at what I made!" Every time I get that attention from him it is honestly a negative reenforcement. Like rewarding a dogs bad behavior. You are suppose to reward the behavior you want not the negative behavior.

If I do not get the response I expect it puts me into a depression suicidal mode and I want to push him out of my life but because of my attacment issues I am unable to follow through with it. I rather have a dysfunctional relationship than none at all.

They say new neural pathways are created from therapy and that is what is the healing. I do not know how true that is I just know how can all this be good for me? Without him I am dead so I guess that is one good thing.

I filed a complaint against my therapist and it helped me tremendously. But I don't know if you have grounds to do that. I did so I filed one. I don't really care what the outcome is. I just needed him to know how much pain I felt from what happened. I really think in a lot of ways he was suited to deal with the issues I have, but he just couldn't admit it.

[BudFox]

Originally Posted by archipelago

I have not had your experience, which sounds very painful. I have terminated a therapist for reasons quite different from what you have had happen, and I did have a very painful experience about it due to attachment issues. At the time I was not as aware as I am now of how powerful early attachment issues can be especially in therapy. I did feel like I was in drug withdrawal as you describe it even though I knew that I had made the right decision to stop working with him. I felt a range of things, betrayal and loss as primary. Luckily my new therapist formed a strong bond early and was very relationally focused. That helped enormously. I didn't process the old relationship since the two are colleagues and there was actually nothing problematic necessarily about the former therapist.

Now I know more about attachment and about the very powerful effects of attachment trauma. Activating that can be huge. And can potentially lead to massive affective dysregulation and other difficulties. I don't know if that is happening with you, but if it is, attending to yourself is really important and going over what the other person did probably gets in the way of that. One way to return to baseline is having someone come in who can help you feel more regulated. Sometimes it takes another attachment figure to step in.

Thanks archipelago for the thoughtful post. Yes, betrayal and loss for me also, though also confusion, powerlessness, rejection, shame, humiliation, profound disillusionent, list goes on…

Affective dysregulation, yes very much so. Increased depression and sense of hopelessness. True that going over what T did or did not do at some point becomes a problem, but my issue is the inability let go despite knowing intellectually that I should. Partly my own inner conflicts, and partly the result of a traumatic rupture that was not anticipated.

I've been cycling through new Ts and none has worked out for long term, some have made things worse, because of a seeming reflexive aligning with ex T and letting her off the hook. Last guy said "neither of you had the wherewithal to manage the situation". Wow that is nuts. But yes finding another T that I like will hopefully help.

[BudFox]

Originally Posted by angelicgoldfish05

Possible trigger:

suicide attempt

Welcome to PC BudFox! I'm glad you posted what you are going through and hopefully you will find good support here. I have found it to be a good augmentation to therapy. I am able to reach out at all hours of the day and at least share what is going on even if no one replies. I can't do that with a T so it has been great. Also, it is just a comfort to be so open and share with others who are going through the same thing. I have been able to share here things I wouldn't be able to tell anyone else at times and I don't fear too much judgement. It has helped to hear from others who have gone through the same experiences as I, so I do not feel so alone. Also, there are not many groups in my town, so I am able to connect with others in a "group like" therapeutic (for the most part) setting. I also like that it is anonymous (though I won't go overboard sharing personal details because it is an online thing, even though it is well moderated).

So, your post. I relate to so much of it! I fell in love with a former T, became obsessed (and yes he was perfect, I idealized and worshiped him). But it ended badly for me. I had his personal info (he shared with me) so I was calling and calling one day, very depressed, and getting his voicemail. He too gave me a no contact thing, although he never told me this it just happened. Over a year ago, he all of a sudden stopped replying to my emails. He never returned any contact I made to him. And he had given me address, phone number, etc.. So I emailed, sent letters, packages, money, tried calling a few times. I often fantasized about going to his house at night, overdosing in his front yard, and having him find me dead the next morning. That is how extreme I wanted to show him to demonstrate the extreme pain this loss had caused me. Yes it was re-traumatizing from probably a past attachment of some sort. I had no idea that all that would happen and I didn't know a thing at the time, about transference, countertransference, or attachment issues.

Long story short, nearly a year after he cut off all contact without talking to me about it or telling me why, I drank a bottle of booze, called him several times and got his voicemail and left messages, the last one I told him I was taking the bottle of pills right then. Because I had failed. And I did. I took the whole bottle and almost died. I wouldn't have cared if I did. He hurt me that much. And I allowed it. I was so vulnerable because of the attachment, and he just dropped me like I was nothing to him. And gave me no explaination. I was shattered.

Here is where it begins to take a turn, thankfully. I have a new T. I was soooo resistant about this at first because no one could ever be like my old T (I don't care that he hurt me I still idealize him and still love him). However, I needed something. It is like if one med gets pulled off the market and you all of a sudden can't take it any more for your life-threatening disease. You still need to take meds for it, so you look for a new med or you die. That is what finding a new T has been like.

I have seen new T for 9 sessions now. She is the only one, besides posting here, that I have told about everything that happened with old T. She talks about old T and allows me to process the relationship with old T as much as I need to. Even if it takes a whole session, she is fine just working through that and allowing me to process and giving me good feedback. It has helped. It will never replace old T. And I have to be honest when I still hold out and hope to see him again someday. If only to heal this rupture in my heart once and for all. It would be so nice to come out on the other end with a male person and have it not end in sex and then abandonment. It would be nice to have a relationship with a male person such as this and have it be healing instead of sexualized. It would be nice to have an older person to look up to and be mentored and sheltered by. I still hold on to the hope that someday, he will be what I need him to be.

Thanks, angelicgoldfish05. I can relate to your first paragraph about the forum and talking to others in same boat. Helps in ways that therapy never could.

So you were still in contact with your T for a year after termination? And he was responding and providing support? If so i am surprised as that would seem so problematic for both.

I also fantasized about ending my life and leaving a note saying "this is partly because ex T destroyed me". Or at least threatening to do so. Crazy, have never had these impulses before in my life. I not only wanted to show her how badly she wounded me, but also inflict pain on her. Not because I hate her, but because it doesn't feel bearable unless she suffers too. She did tell me she is hurting too, but I want to know every detail (which will never happen).

Wow sorry you went thru all that. Serious stuff.

Same here, still think my ex T was incredible in some ways, and every T since has been a pale substitute, demoralizing, because they do not get me like she did.

Glad u have a new T that is letting you process it on your terms. I also want to go back and heal the rupture someday but not sure about that.

[BudFox]

Originally Posted by angelicgoldfish05

Budfox, you mention the death of a family member. How long ago and what relation, if you don't mind my asking? From what I have read (and my obsession with my previous T cause quite an obsession... like years long, it was bad), this kind of thing can happen when you experience a great loss of another kind. For me it was my ex-fiance. We had been in a relationship for 6 years and it was breaking up. In the midst of this breakup, I saw my old T. I immediately transferred all my loving feelings I had had for my fiance onto my T. In this way, he held me together during a great upheaval in my life and a great loss. He was my glue. I was totally fragmented and going through I psychotic break that landed me in the psych ward. He was my bridge to sanity. He was my rock and my anchor. I realize you cannot place a human in God's place, but I did. I didn't mean to. It's just that you can't see God. And this T was a physical manifestation for me of a savior, just like I had learned about (religion).

My father died about 12 yrs ago, then my mother 7 yrs ago (this preceded onset of illness and depression), then younger brother 2 yrs ago. The latter two were sudden, no warning.

Plus relationship with longtime partner/girlfriend has been on verge of ending for a while now.

Add in chronic illness and social isolation, and my ex T became a massively important figure in my life. Like you, total crisis and upheaval and thank god i have this wonderful T for support.

Funny, I saw her also as god-like and told her she was like a deity to me, or a guardian angel. Now almost a demon.

[Restin]

Goldfish, I SO relate to your analogy of losing T and seeing another one being like have a life-supporting med taken off the market and having to try something new!

[musinglizzy]

[QUOTE=PeeJay;4285844]

That therapist also over-shared details from the therapist's personal life, which made me feel like we were in it together and that we had a lot in common.

When the therapy ended on bad terms, it nearly wrecked me. It took me more than a year to fully recover, actually. I had no idea that therapy could be dangerous to our psyche.

QUOTE]

PeeJay, how did it end on bad terms? This is kinda how I'm feeling with my T now. But I don't want it to end on bad terms.....

[BudFox]

Originally Posted by Psychdyke

I had a therapist abruptly terminate me once. Over email, nonetheless. I'm leaving out large portions of the story for anonymity purposes, but basically I had developed a sort of negative maternal transference towards her that she was clearly not trained to deal with. It took several days of heartache and crying to convince myself that I needed proper closure with this therapist. To ask her the hard questions I needed answers to about what had happened with our relationship and to show her how deeply the termination had hurt me. It took about half a dozen unanswered emails begging for a final session that convinced her to meet with me.
It was awkward. It was tough. We both shed some tears and we both said what we needed to say. The experience was extremely therapeutic for me and, I'll wager a guess, enlightening for her as a therapist.
I realized how I had contributed to the termination and decided these were aspects of myself that I would need to continue to work on if I wanted more healthy, successful relationships in the future. I thanked her for all she had done for me. While I wanted to keep her in my life because I actually enjoyed her as a person, I knew that that was not possible and our professional relationship had come to an end.

A final meeting for closure will only work if the therapist is open minded about it and not defensive.

Similarly to ex lovers, the best way to get over a therapist is to get a new one. You will quickly get over your old obsession and probably start a new one if you're still experiencing attachment issues. I still think about my old therapist and feel longing for her. But I have accepted that people come and go in our lives and the best thing to do is hold them in your heart with memories of what they did do for you. Grieve what you have lost, but pick yourself back up again. Because your therapist was only human and full of his/her own faults. You deserve better and you will find someone who loves you as intensely as you love them, if you keep yourself open to it and not stuck on past relationships.

Psychdyke, I think having a final session like you did is the right thing, and agree T has to be open to it. My T is not open to it. We did have a phone conversation that allowed for some processing, but for me it only scratched the surface plus it was done begrudgingly.

I think when there is strong attachment, termination needs to be planned out carefully. The quotes below talk about this. And one of the things that needs to be anticipated is that it might take months before the client finds a new T who can help. That is my case. Trying to move on but when there is a painful rupture it is much harder.

"An attachment relationship is one that permeates or ‘penetrates’ (Hinde 1979) every aspect of a person’s life in ways that mark it off from others. The more that this is true for a therapeutic relationship, the greater the significance of its ending."

"Attenuated therapy (winding down from intensive work to fortnightly or monthly sessions for a while), or offering an occasional limited series of sessions if a crisis arises in the client’s life, are other examples of helping the client to maintain a live sense of an available attachment figure."

[BudFox]

Originally Posted by Echos Myron

I left because I kept being hurt. His boundaries were quite inconsistent at times, like he was very big on self disclosure, and encouraged email between sessions, but then would withdraw and go all 'professional' in his language and demeanour without warning and I found that confusing and painful.
I can relate to the thing about it feeling like a drug (in fact a line in a poem I once wrote went "I crave it like it's smack/I don't know where it's leading but I keep on going back")
I think I realised that I was going to be heartbroken either way, because I would never have the relationship I wanted with him, so I had to choose between the repeated pain of rejection, which I can't heal from in an ongoing relationship, or grief, which hurts even more, but that I can heal from.
Sometimes a T just doesn't have the skillset to deal with severe attachment issues. I think it's best in those cases that both client and T try to learn something from the situation and move on, though it's undoubtedly painful for both.
I hope you find healing going forward

Wow, pretty much everything you said fits what I have been through. Uncanny how close this is to what I experienced.

I hear you about a T not having the skill set and wanting to bail out, but isn't it their job to have these skills? Or if T is overwhelmed, seek supervision or consult with another T, take a break and do some additional training, anything besides just running away.

Or if T does not have them, then there should be a rigorous screening process or careful monitoring of the progression of treatment to make sure things do not get out of control. Because my T let me get deep into the ***** and then decided it was not working, and pushed me out the door to fend for myself. Was like a surgeon realizing mid-operation that they don't have the skills to finish the job.

I will move on eventually, just having trouble right now, in large part because subsequent Ts have not understood the attachment thing very well.

Thanks for sharing your story. I think it can be a matter of what medicine can heal one patient... can kill another... there lies the danger... not all medicine is administered correctly either...

[BudFox]

Originally Posted by Coming up tails

Thanks for sharing your story. I think it can be a matter of what medicine can heal one patient... can kill another... there lies the danger... not all medicine is administered correctly either...

At this point I don't consider therapy medicine, or anything like medicine. More like poison, though the greater part of it was just a whole lot of nothing, a very elaborate con.