Defining Abandonment

This all makes logical sense, like the over -intellectualizing defense I favor to which my T objects . What's missing is the unconscious , mirror neurons, attachment theory. . . The art of therapy and the science of therapy. When the therapist says" Stay the course with me, I will be right with you, right by your side, trust in me, I will not let you down, you are not alone. . . These are the words of love, even if not the context of it. There's some aspect of connection that exceeds the description below, in which you imply that any credulous grown up knows what therapy is and should take it in stride if their therapist moves to Chicago or India, dies, takes a new job, or plain old doesn't like you any more .

I don't really think that's the entire criteria though maybe it is an aspect. It seems like the members here are especially communicative writers and especially inquisitive/analytical about the "meta" aspects of therapy. There's also a nice bond and continuity between the members.

I had a therapist who discontinued services with me and didn’t switch me to anyone else. She said I was fine on my own. I ended up in the hospital a month later for the first time in 5 years. She got in big trouble. My Pdoc said her behavior was what caused me to end up in the hospital.

This is a caricature (straw man) of my position. I said nothing about therapy going on forever. I am not required to solve conundrums like... how should a client caught in the snare of dependency/attachment react when faced with planned abandonment.

I'm calling out therapists for drawing susceptible people into exploitive faux relationships that expose them to high degree of risk for traumatizing experiences like abandonment and rejection. The rest is details.

Hi Esme,

Ha, count me in as a member of the over intellectualizing club! But in my defence...

It's not that I don't see these things, just that I don't think they come into play here. The OP has asked us to define abandonment from a T. They haven't asked: "When do you feel abandoned?"

It's interesting that you say I expect everyone to have an adult reaction to difficult feelings, because this is what my T has pointed out I do to myself, and what we spend a lot of time working on. It's a weakness of mine and it's entirely likely I'm blind to some of the nitty gritty nuances at play here.

But for what it's worth, I would never expect someone to simply keep calm on and carry on if they lost their T. If my own therapist moved on, I'd feel quite sad, have feelings of loss, and most likely feel rejected and possibly even abandoned. But I wouldn't describe this ending with my T as an abandonment, short of him texting me to not bother coming in next session.

I strongly disagree with you that "I will not let you down" and "Stay the course with me" are loving statements in the context of therapy. I actually think they're signs to get a new therapist. The first statement is impossible to follow through on, because the therapist is human and will most likely fail to get it right at some point. The second point implies the therapist can navigate a client's problems (unknowable) and that the client should trust them, instead of giving space to the client to decide whether a T is trustworthy or not. Some clients are vulnerable and will ignore inner alarm bells when a therapist makes a statement like this. That's a dangerous thing, because not every therapist is ethical.

I once told my therapist I didn't fully trust him (or anybody). He didn't give me platitudes or say, "Believe in me." He simply replied that I must be in a place where I'm still judging his trustworthiness, and that's OK. Looking back, I'm glad he gave this answer - - he gave my own instincts and feelings space.

I don't really understand what mirror neurons have to do with defining abandonment, but I'd love to know.

@Budfox. This whole exchange is deja vu for me.
1)I write a reply to something you've written.
2)You accuse me of being disengenuous.
3)I ask you a completely valid question.
4)You say I've created a straw man.
5)You rage against therapy.

So I'm going to enact step six and say, "I'm not going to get anything out of a discussion with you, so let's park it here."

Completely agree.

Like I said in an earlier post, this forum is also going to attract people who are simply interested in what therapy is.

OK, from from an intellectual(ized) standpoint (count me in, too), here's a definition of abandonment from that great current resource, Wikipedia:

From this definition, feelings are an essential part of what makes up abandonment. It's not just an "objective"/intellectual thing. Not just a feeling state either, though. People can, in reality, be undesired, left behind, insecure, or discarded. That can be a social reality, not just a feeling state. I would argue that we get clued into the fact of that state by our feelings. And, as the Wikipedia article say, it can have a biological impact on the person.

Can these feelings be "mistaken"? Well, sometimes, and maybe. But the tactics that therapists and their ethics definitions come up with to decide it's the "client's fault" make me feel sick. Yes, another feeling state. Disgust. Let me have nothing (more) to do with those people. Survival, on my part.

But I can still talk about it, I don't have to walk away. And I think it's important to talk about, and to continue the discussion.

I had dinner tonight with a friend from a support group who is not of an over-intellectualized persuasion. He had a rejecting experience from a therapist recently -- I didn't entirely realize it until after we had talked about it, but he interpreted the issue, and the therapist's criticism (countertransference?) as all his fault.

I'm glad I have had the experiences here in this forum of getting my feelings validated that something's wrong with therapy, not just me. As we left, he thanked me for helping him see/feel it wasn't all his fault. That had been a very bad, depressing, somewhat devastating and discouraging experience for him.

So, people who post here may be a subset of the whole therapy-going population, but I'm not so sure that we're unrepresentative, either.

I agree with nearly everything you've said, here today.

But the question OP asked was "What is abandonment from a T?" not "What is abandonment, the concept?" With the former I think you need to look at what the therapist has said and done, with an eye to societal and business norms. For the other, you can consider the more subjective things, like emotional states. That distinction seems essential to me, though it seems less important to other people in this thread.

I agree that it's important to keep talking, though I'll explain why I'd rather not talk to posters who condemn therapy entirely.

The first is that they discount all the research that says therapy is, on balance, helpful, and decide their own subjective experience negates that finding. I find that incredibly arrogant and anti-intellectual. It's not really someone who you can talk to, in my view.

The second is that by assuming their subjective bad experience means all therapy is bad, they've actually invalidated MY subjective experience of therapy, which had been very positive.

When you fail to give witness to someone's painful experience, you do them a disservice. But, equally, when you dismiss someone's meaningful experience (and I'd argue that therapy is very meaninful to many people on this site), you are doing something that's just another type of cruel.

I have the ability to imagine a world where therapy was absolutely terrible, and to sympathise with the poster. But some members can't entertain the idea that their experience isn't mine.

Those are the forum members I don't see the point in talking to.

People who want to discuss their bad experiences, but are open to my very different experience? I'm all ears.

People who just want to repeat ad nauseum that therapy is bad? Eh, I'll pass.

To me the client's experience is what matters, not therapists' definitions of abandonment, which exist to protect them from legal trouble, and to help them avoid seeing what they do to people.

The problem with trying to distinguish abandonment from an ethical and healthy ending is that this exposes all the contrivances and bizarre assumptions that underlie the relationship, including the fact that a human being's suffering has been handled like a commodity and harvested for profit (in my opinion). So things get confusing.

First of all, you still might have 10, 20 or even more years still left. My own analyst is 3 years younger than you and couple of years ago we had some interaction based on what I understood that he is not considering himself being old yet. Of course, his body is ageing but his mind is sharp and vital. I hope to be that way too when I'm 70.

Secondly, I don't really know if, in your particular situation which sounds very complex and very difficult, whether there ought to be a better way and if there ought to be, what it should look like. Maybe there would be a suitable way for you but only you can find it out.

We all have one life and for some people it is fairly simple and for some people it is quite complex. For some people, it takes years or decades of good therapy to arrive at a point where they can really be themselves and lead the lives they want. As a saying goes, all roads lead to Rome - so it's quite likely that good therapy is not the only way. However, I don't think anyone else than the person himself is responsible for finding his own way of reaching there.

What I'm quite sure of though is that those other ways are no simpler nor shorter. It takes as long as it takes and for some people unfortunately the baggage is that complex and heavy that it takes their whole lifetime.

From here today: "From this definition, feelings are an essential part of what makes up abandonment. It's not just an "objective"/intellectual thing. Not just a feeling state either, though. People can, in reality, be undesired, left behind, insecure, or discarded. That can be a social reality, not just a feeling state. I would argue that we get clued into the fact of that state by our feelings. And, as the Wikipedia article say, it can have a biological impact on the person."

I studied social science in school, so I don't see that there is much that is "objective" or a definition that is only "intellectual" when defining something like abandonment in therapy or elsewhere.

I don't have any problem with any person saying that their T abandoned them. But I also think there's a cost to that. To that person. Looking at what you bring to the party, what you see as abandonment or not, has consequences for the future. I think self understanding is a good thing, and it has nothing to do with blame, unless all you care about is attaching blame to someone else. Understanding how I am sensitive to abandonment in general has helped me be more realistic in my social relationships, in the sense that being worried about being abandoned caused me to cling to people more tightly and to feel hurt if someone didn't want to or couldn't have coffee the third Sunday. I used to pressure others more because of my abandonment worries. When my first T abandoned me by taking a job at the place where I worked and I learned about it when it was announced in a meeting (had no idea he had applied for the job), that event really helped me to bring my feelings about my expectations for other people to the surface. I would not call that abandonment now, as I understand he like other people are allowed to look for jobs that would be better for them, even if that affected me.

More importantly, I am now alert that feeling hurt by other people because I wasn't invited to this or someone blew me off for that or whatever twinges of the traces of abandonment feelings set off in my daily life-- I can examine these feelings in a cooler way, I can hold them up to the light and scrutinize them. I am better able to see that what people do, blow off or whatever, is about them and not about me. My relationships are better because my anxiety that people are going to abandon me is reduced.

I do think it's important for people to see bad behavior by a T or anyone else for what it is, and to not blame themselves for how that person has treated them. I have seen people on this board post about successful ethics complaints where T's were found to have abandoned them or mistreated them. But I also think that nuance and context and being more reflective about the majority of situations where people *feel* abandoned might be helpful to people.

I appreciate understanding how I see things differs from other people. It's one of the main reasons why I read and post here. Considering other ways to see things doesn't mean you have to feel differently about it, or think differently about it. You can try on differing interpretations like you try on outfits, see if it fits. Giving oneself the opportunity to see things differently, considering the possibility of changing, I don't think those things are bad. Experimenting with seeing and doing things differently has been helpful for me.

Good post. If anything helps me “move foward” having my feelings validated is important.

I find that carefully chosen words, such as you’ve shared here, can be healing.

It does something to counter the reductive criticism and judgment some of us constantly received early in life...

Without providing referral to a new therapist. Exactly...

This is such a wonderful post, Anne. You've said so many things I wanted to say but couldn't.

OMG you said it all so eloquently. I am that person who is so afraid of being abandoned that I read into things. Of my best friend can't do something it sends spiraling down the "I am not important to he" hole and she doesn't want to be my friend anymore. Yes there were times I worried T was going to leave me because I was to needy or she would retire. I also have felt that way about my mom's death. What I realize and still am working through is that none of these people are father. My mom and T would give anything to still be alive and with me.

People are different. I didn't (consciously) experience hurt or abandonment, until my last T rejected me.

It's a long story. And complicated. I expect you may have a long, complicated story, too. But it doesn't seem very much like mine.

It seems now like a most important piece was for me to be able to see bad behavior for what it is. Seeing abandonment as abandonment is different from any judgment I might have about whether such behavior is good or bad, and also different from whether I am hurt by that behavior.

I could have said the same thing when I "believed" in therapy. I no longer "believe". One could interpret that as a therapy success story, then. But I don't. Life is life, we learn what we learn.

If therapy continues to seem to be the thing to do for you, then I can understand if you will continue with it, as long as it continues to seem to be the thing to do. I wish you well.

To me that is self-evident and I don't see the point of stating it, except to reinforce the victim blaming and gaslighting that is rampant in therapy culture, and to reinforce the idea that clients lack self-understanding and need someone to coach them or interpret their feelings.

Ethics codes specifically mention things like abandonment, sexual misconduct, psychological harm, exploitation for a reason. Clearly therapy is a breeding ground for such things. So if someone reports one of these horrors, the logical reaction is to say "yea of course".

In my experience and observation one of the insidious effects of therapy is to make people devalue their intuition and common sense, and to yield to the "psychological imperialism" of the psych industry. You were not abandoned, you just need more therapy to understand how you brought this on yourself, etc. I have experienced firsthand multiple therapists doing that routine. So so sickening.