Reactions 1st Session Back After Vacation...

How do you all handle your first session back after your therapist returns from a long vacation?


I had my first session back today after nearly 3 weeks and I was excited to see her until last night when I decided I didn't want to go after all.

I did go, but I spent the first 10 minutes with my head under a blanket not looking at her, then another 15 minutes looking at her from under the blanket, and the remainder of the session I went to sit at her feet with my head leaned on her chair and my arm wrapped around one of her legs.

I feel silly even as I write this, and a little confused...and I know she probably is, too.

I dont know why I reacted like that...

I feel similar actually in that I end up not wanting to go after weeks of missing him! I also have a tendency to pick fights or criticise him when he gets back. I think it's part of my attachment style and we just talk about it. All part of the work!

I'll find out tomorrow lol

lol good luck and do let me know.


i dont want to be the only leg clinging client

Lol I'm sorry but that's funny
I think I'd scare my t if I did that. I will let you know though.

I am like this too! T said I was like her grandson when her son went away on business trips. Her grandson would cry when he went and ignore him when he came home.
I call it push pull or that attachment style, I can’t remember the name, my brain is mush tonight.

It’s the attachment style in the Mary ainsworth- strange experiment, where the children did not react at all to their parents!

Had my first session after three weeks on Friday. It was the same as every time before. Right before he leaves, I get anxious about it and think the weeks without him will be a disaster. Then it turns out to be mostly fine. Then when he gets back I seem to have forgotten that I'm really attached to him. Therefore, I don't feel like I can trust him anymore during the first session and that's all we talk about. I'm usually disappointed that I don't manage to talk properly, even though there might be loads to discuss from the weeks where he's gone. Then a few days later I freak out, call him, and the next time we see each other it's back to normal.

I’m usually okay when my T goes on vacation. I go about my usual routine and although i think about him at times when he is away, it’s really more of a passing thought. The first session back though, even if I didn’t feel it while he was away, I always feel incredibly anxious when I’m back in session again after a break. I always get a “how does this work again?” feeling. Like I’m back to square one.

At this moment on day 10/32 I'm not planning on turning up for my first session. I get it's just a holiday but emotionally it's so much more.n

For our other sessions he's always just let me be mad at him.

I found them the same as any other appointment. The woman went on vacation once for about 6 weeks and I also had to be away for a couple of weeks so it was about 2 months between appointments and when she got back, she, for some inexplicable reason, asked me if I had missed her. I said probably about as much as she missed me. She never brought it up again.

I always felt pressure to fill my 50 minutes with the right content, and during sessions after vacations, the pressure would increase. I felt I could never "do therapy" right.
It was also annoying because she was obviously on vacation... I saw her Facebook photos. I knew where she was. I saw pictures of her posing with a hundred scantily-clad gentlemen in (fancy beach town). She'd come back with different color hair or a tan or some new jewelry. But I couldn't ask how her vacation was. Very frustrating.

With my first T, I didn't really care if she went on vacation or how long she was gone. With my second T, I didn't care at first but the longer I saw her the more I missed her when she was away. She would go abroad for several weeks and it was agonizing. The first session back would be weird, never enough time, by the time we got back into the "groove" time would be up. I would send her with little handmade cards and such on her trip and one time sent her with a plastic soldier when I was feeling particularly vulnerable and thus ridiculously worried about her safety so sometimes we would talk about those things. Like how many times I checked the news for news of a plane crash in the country she was visiting. Stuff like that.

but i did react...i put my cheek on her leg and wrapped my arm around her leg and cried and got her pant leg wet (but i barely spoke.) I think we talked for a few minutes at the very end.

lol stopdog, I have missed you. (I've been here before under another name about 5 years back...I cant remember what it was though.)

omg i did this too. she went overseas and i was so panicked...i made her text me when she was boarding and when she landed for every plane trip and there were 6 of them and the last one was 30 minutes late and i just about had a meltdown. why do we get doomsday thinking like that?

I go through this whole routine when she is leaving about what will happen to me if something bad happens to her. I want her to tell me that I will be taken cared of. I also want her to tell me I can't come with her. She doesn't/hasn't told me either of these. When she gets back I am usually a mix of feelings. I'm apprehensive of "approaching" her with anything because what if she doesn't respond the same. And yeah, there's the wanting to ask questions about her vacation but feeling like I can't so there's that vast chasm that fills the space between us.

She wants to talk about me being mad that she left. I'm more mad and lost before she goes. I'm not mad when she returns, I'm more scared. Can't seem to get her to understand that.

It feels like longing to me, or that's what I feel when I read these words. A longing kind of deep that it doesn't really express itself with words. I don't think it's silly at all. That sitting at her feet thing-- when I was working on a very specific trauma thing I used to have that longing frequently with T. That's the only lasting physical desire I ever had, never wanted a hug or a handshake or any physical contact.

I’ll find out next week. OP, I would probably cling onto his leg too, if I could. Sadly, I don’t think my T would encourage physical contact.

I remember reading a comment on a thread on attachment on PT before I joined. I can’t remember who wrote it, as it was a while ago, but it was the reason I joined PT (it made me laugh and it made me relate). The comment said something along the lines of “I’m so attached that I could carve a hole in T and set camp in his left thigh”. This is how I think I will feel during the first session after his holiday: like I would want to make sure he’s really there.

mine doesnt allow physical contact either, and its been two years of that. im not sure why she didn't push me away. but she didn't. i don't think id try it again, though.


that last sentence, "like i would want to make sure he's really there"---> that's exactly it. I knew she was back in the states but it didnt sink in, and it still felt wrong in session. Felt new, like a stranger. I needed to touch her to make she was really there...



32 days seems pretty extreme....where did he go, mars?





Anne, did you ever act on it? Sitting at your T's feet?

I did tell her a few weeks ago that I wanted to do that. It comes up a lot, actually- this urge to go sit on the floor and put my arm around her leg. Seems like an odd thing to want, even as a child. Did you ever figure out what that was about with you?

He didn't tell me, but I know he's a fan of little English villages. But he did say I could schedule a one off session with him and told me to please email if I felt bad. I haven't done so yet.

Purple, actually I think this is a pretty typical child reaction.
I’m not calling you a child, or even thinking of child parts, really, because I don’t know a lot about that. But your description of your reunion with your t is something I can see (have seen similar from) a young child.

For children, sometimes sitting like that is a way to quietly connect or receive comfort when they are tired, absorbed in what’s happening around them, or just not in a space to engage any more fully.

It reads to me like an authentic honest way to reconnect, and it seems like your t intuitively understood that need to reconnect on a different level.

I did not act on the desire. Sometimes desire does not come with real desire, if you know what I mean. Sort of like how when I ask my child if he wanted X to eat, and he said yes. Then he didn't eat it. Why? Because wanting something to eat and wanting to eat something are different. Perhaps only parents can make sense of this logic.

Yes, I do know what that was about for me, but I'm not comfortable sharing it online. But I don't think that the desire is weird, it seems to me like a safe physical connection.

I think I want the food and I want to eat the food, lol. Its very hard for me to verbally process abuse trauma without holding on to someone physically... (unless i put it in the sandtray.) So I never talk about it...