Transference and termination

I ended therapy a few days ago because I love her and because she's not my mum. I am flipping between feeling heartbroken and liberated. Does this get easier or am I bound to send a snivelling "can I come back please?" email?

I have never done that, so I don't know the outcome, but I admire the courage. Keep us looped on how it goes and what happens.

Ugg sounds scary

Any chance it makes sense to stay and work through it?

Thank you, but it doesn't feel courageous. It just feels very sad.

I get it. Leaving might be the best thing or at least taking a break. I had to leave T1 and it felt awful for a few months. Eventually I came to terms with it. Finishing services was the best thing for me.

Yes, that would make total sense. However, I prefer the wine-alone-at-midnight approach.

It's hard to know whether to value the vulnerable bit of me which says stay with her and trust her, or value the protective bit of me which says it's safer to cope alone. I guess it's an age-old therapy problem which none of us have resolved or we wouldn't be hanging around here like loose ends.

How did you spend those few months? I mean literally, what did you do to spend the time? Currently, if I don't re-read her emails for 10 minutes because I am busy taking a shite, I feel like a self-sufficient hero. It's hard to imagine how I can fill my time with anything but her.

You sound so much like me. I HATE being vulnerable. It is a huge struggle and I have quit therapy SO MANY TIMES because I listened to that protective bit. I have also gone back and my T has been there with acceptance and compassion when I was ready. It is hard to put yourself out there but it can be so worth it if you can. At least tell her why you want to quit, tell her how you feel.... even just a baby step in that direction could help open it up for discussion.

I was quite honest with her about why I was ending. She replied with one of those bittersweet therapy responses where everything is very intimate and yet perfectly removed.

How did you know when you were ready to go back?

It took me about 2 weeks. I was completely shut down from everyone and everything and just wanted to do whatever I could to forget my T.... I stayed plenty busy but in my down time I would find myself stewing on it, I would re-read emails and look on her website, etc. At that point I knew that I needed to at least attempt to find closure. Well "finding closure" ended up meaning that I stayed with her and I am still working things out and probably will be for a while. I still pull away and test her, I still have feelings for her that we discuss occasionally, but I also know that I can be open and vulnerable and she isn't going to hurt me. I have this whole rejection/abandonment thing so it has also helped me to realize that it's why I keep pushing her away and that maybe that feeling isn't 100% accurate. I'm not sure any of this is helpful but I hope it might be somewhat?

It does get easier. I have moments where I want to go back to my former T, but for a litany of reasons I can't and won't. Asking to go back isn't inevitable, because if it was I would have done it. Feel free to PM if you want to discuss this with someome who gets it.

I really get this. I called her voicemail one day and then I would count days since I contacted her. About 5 million times I swore I was just going to email her and had to stop myself. At the start it was one day at a time. I cried a lot. Then I felt this incredible freedom. I didn't have to agonize about transference anymore. It was done. I found a new therapist who turned out not to be good. I joined classes and even started a Tumblr. It was like a break up to be honest but one that was so worth it.

It is helpful, thank you. The feeling not being 100% accurate is a useful thing to consider and I suppose is at the crux of the issue; am I ending because that's wise or am I ending because I am acting out a long-learned response?

It is safe thing for you to feel that she won't hurt you and that you can be vulnerable. It is such a valuable piece of work to go through, I am pleased you could do it.

I hope I can get to the point where I feel the freedom more readily than I feel the grief. At the moment, it is all just too sad. I admire your resolve, especially in the face of getting involved with a therapist who wasn't good for you.

What you did was very brave: you realized that you wanted your therapist to be someone she was never going to be. There is no "working through it". You want something from her that she can't give you. I don't see what spending more time in therapy with her is going to achieve. In my experience, yes it does get better. In my case, I didn't choose to stop, I was terminated with a letter so no closure. But underneath the shock and the pain, you know what I felt? RELIEF. Relief to be finally done with this toxic/messed up "relationship". It took two months to be ok with it and after four months I barely thought about her. Now she randomly pops into my mind once in a while and that's it. It often feels like it happened in another lifetime.

Yes what Myrto said. The relief is overwhelming and out weighed any bad times. Took a little bit to get there though.

This really resonates with me. I agree that there is no "working through it". It just is and some things are stuck regardless.

Your termination was brutal, that must have hurt. It sounds like real healing for it to now seem like another lifetime.

I have thought about this plenty of times, and I've told T that I "should" leave, etc., but never actually done it. I've always decided it was just too cruel, and that the part of me that wants to stay deserves a chance, I guess.

Oh yes. This really sums up the feelings at the end of TWO messed up T relationships. I am in therapy again and working on some pretty big issues and for some reason, my current T "relationship" hasn't turned the corner into toxicity -- though it did teeter on the edge. Sometimes I wonder if I really did "get the lesson" of what a therapist can/can't give and now I can approach the process with myself in the very center, using it for just really concentrating on my own issues and not entangling/enmeshing with the therapist. I notice that I feel less curiosity about her, feel less drawn to her, less jealous of the *perceived*wonderfulness of her life. She does not pop into my head very much. I barely think about her. I'm making more progress with this T than any of the others but the bond isn't that strong either. I feel like I'm doing this process much more "by myself." I kind of miss the drama and atmospherics with past Ts, but maybe when a client lets go of the obsession with the T, the progress can happen more easily because therapy is truly "about the client." I certainly don't have the answers here....

Sometimes it feels easier to make more progress with a T you are less attached to. When I felt so obsessed by the T I was seeing, I couldn't focus on the therapy. Now that I'm seeing a T that I like but don't have the same attachment to, it's easier to concentrate on what I'm seeing her for rather than focusing on the therapeutic relationship.

Ugh. I couldn't maintain the feelings of loss and of something having been severed. I made contact and we have future sessions planned. I feel less frantic, but I don't know if this is just because I am short-term feeding an addiction.

In the less self-critical moments, this is how I feel - that the part of me who needs her can be vulnerable and safe with her and that I can allow that part to be nourished ...

... and then I think f**k that $hit, this won't end well.

I had mild transference for my T, which did resolve. We were focused on a period in my adolescence for some months, and during that time I often felt young and somewhat childish, and quite clingy. It felt like a long time between sessions, and when I did see him, I would typically get teary when there was only five or ten minutes left because session was almost over. It was a kind of parental transference but since it wasn't from a period in early childhood, it wasn't as strong as it is for many. It was unpleasant and a little embarrassing, but I wasn't in sheer misery, as I know sometimes clients are.

When I had worked through pretty much everything from the particular period of my life we had been focused on, I started to feel more adult again and the clingy feelings dropped off almost entirely. I do think it helped enormously that my T was very consistent, and did not make me feel special to him or like we were friends, but he was kind and compassionate.