Now "ghosting" my therapist is what´s left

Today me and my therapist had our second "phone session" after she abruptly had to end therapy with me. During therapy she acted in a careless way and gave me more sessions than she was allowed to within the organization where she works.


When her supervisor found out she ended our therapy, no termination period given. My therapist knew about the session limit from the beginning but kept going for nearly twice as many sessions. She fooled me to believe that we could continue, she opened up to new exercises, said "this and that many sessions aren´t that many" even though we had already exceeded the session limit. There were many more similar examples on this.

First I thought of writing her a letter about how I feel about all this, as a concluding letter but as I realise she will never care about it anyway or she´ll just say she´s sorry and nothing more I´m going to ghost her.

We scheduled another phone session but as it doesn´t ease the situation and the ending isn´t important to her I´ll just ignore calling her. I don´t expect her to call as I was the one calling her on the last two phone sessions.

I´ll never accept what she did to me and it´s just dishonest to have a phone session where I pretend we can end therapy on a positive note.

I'm sorry the phone sessions weren't helpful for termination sessions. ((hugs))

I’m so sorry you’re hurting Sarah.

I’m here because I had a painful termination recently too. I joined this forum because aside from writing here, I’m not sure what more I can do to process my feelings. My therapist is gone and out of the picture now, and that’s where I would have gone for help . I know we are internet strangers, but I feel your loss to my core.

I haven’t had contact with my therapist in over a month. It’s felt like mourning and like I’m processing a big loss. In terms of how the first month of no contact has been going for me - I cried on and off for the first two weeks and cried for the pain I believe therapy has caused me. For the second two weeks, I’ve been trying to piece myself together and move forward. I’ve been questioning a lot, getting angry a lot, and every day is different.

My therapy termination was sudden, though in my control. I simply just snapped and had enough with how therapy was making me feel (unimportant, disempowered, controlled, excessively vulnerable, sensitive to nuances, and all around pathetic). Also very enmeshed and attached to my therapist which made it nearly impossible to break free from. It wasn’t until I went ‘no contact’ that I could assess how deeply into transference I was, and how damaging that was to me. As much as you are upset about a sudden termination, in a way I feel like you avoided weeks/months of drawn out abandonment. Sometimes ripping off the bandaid is more humane in the long run.

Anyway, I know I’ve just been sharing but wanted you to know that there’s someone out there that knows how you feel. Hugs (if wanted) and hope you find the closure you need soon.

What is ghosting?
sorry english is not my first language.

English is my first language and I do not understand what Ghosting your therapist means.

ghosting in general means you drop all contact with a person and never give a reason, basically just fade away.

Ghosting can be a way to end a relationship on one's own terms. I can completely understand why you'd want to do it. I'm sorry your T hurt you so badly, and that these phone sessions haven't been helpful. I hope you find something soon that is helpful.

I completely understand the way you feel and why you want to "ghost" her. I'd feel the same way, frankly. What she's done is a betrayal, and I don't care if that was done with good intentions.

But I do want to urge you to keep talking about it here. By the way, you may also contact TELL for additional support. Even though they provide support to people who were abused in therapy and your case doesn't fit that category, what your therapist did was still unethical and harmful. I think, they'd be supportive if you contact them.

Ghost him to ash.

Strangely enough, the expression "ghost your therapist" was found in NSA surveillance archives among California stoner surfer micro-cultures to mean an ultimate, irrevocable transgression: "He trashed the house and burned it down, brah. He really ghosted his therapist this time."

Thanks. I´m very sorry you are going through this as well. Thanks also for sharing your story. I understand the longing can be painful even if termination is a choice of one´s own.


I think no one should be put through a very abrupt termination unless it´s absolutely neccessary, for example if the therapist gets very ill or similar. A forced termination is never ideal but getting a few sessions for some closure is better than just being left into nothing like I am. I got a couple of phone sessions afterwards but as I then just got to know my T hadn´t been honest with me, there was no closure but more of an argumentation.

Hugs back to you.

I think that this could be a thread of great magnitude. The decision to ghost your therapist is a critical one. And I think there are many reasons for doing so.

For me, at the present moment, it is a decision that "why should I put more into a termination than the therapist deserves."

But the truth is, my therapist has already ghosted ME, by leaving no clues as to when or whether she will return to my city.

Yes, there are people out there who know how you feel, SarahS.

HUGS

Thanks. I appreciate your tip about TELL, I'll contact them. I still can´t and won´t understand why my T did this. When I talked to her on the phone for a second time I asked her again about why she let me believe we could continue therapy for as long as I needed it and she told me she kept going because she was worried about how I was going to react when she told me we had to end therapy.


But that´s not a valid reason for continuing to see me for as nearly twice as many sessions than she was allowed to. What´s even stranger is that she during this time said things like "20 sessions aren´t that much" and "we are going to continue, we´ll see each other again after my vacation" and so on.


She didn´t held back but kept talking in terms like she had the freedom to continue therapy with me. She often encouraged me and our progress in therapy and then it all ends. I think there´s more to this that she doesn´t share with me. I think she realised she doesn´t have the knowledge to deal with abandonment fears and similar and the session limit was just one part in this.

I feel so let down and so fooled. I´ve been in this so long, with this T about ten months and now I´m back again in my grief, in my loneliness and my hopelessness.

Thanks. As my therapist didn´t make any effort to convince her supervisor to let us have some closing sessions I don´t feel I should go after her and make the end easier for her. Also I´m not sure the session limit is the only reason she now ends therapy even if she claims it is.


I think she got cold feet when she got to know more about my issues and then suddenly realised she couldn´t handle them. But a professional T would of course still end therapy in a proper way even if her knowledge wasn´t enough to proceed into new areas.

I want my T to feel, at least to some minor extent, how it feels to be left and to wonder what has happened. I think she´ll just let things be when she notices I don´t call her on our upcoming phone session but hopefully she´ll be reminded of how she has acted towards me.

So it seems to me that if you hadn't received twice as many sessions as she was allowed to give you, you'd be also terminated, albeit maybe more gently, but without the extra 20 sessions.

No one 's asking you to pretend you're okay with it. Why not have a phone call where you tell her how you really feel? I don't have a dog in this fight no matter what, but I would feel better about termination after a T gave me more than expected, rather than less. Not trying to tell you how to feel, just that I see it differently, for whatever little that is worth.

Thanks. Yes, that´s correct but if my therapist had adhered to the rules within the church we hadn´t entered into therapy at all but just into more of a brief counselling.


I´ve already had two phone calls and I told her much of what I wanted her to know. Even if she kept saying what she did was wrong I never felt she agreed there should have been some termination sessions. I told her it hadn´t matter to the church and their organization if we had gotten like four or five sessions to wrap things up but she just kept referring to the session limit.


I think there´s more to this that she didn´t let me know of. She said she kept going because she was worried how I would act when she informed me we had to end but I had of course accepted it if she hadn´t fooled me for such a long time. Letting me believe we could continue as long as I needed it as she put it.

I now can´t really appreciate she gave me more sessions as more sessions meant more attachment and more dependency which is very hard to handle now when I was more or less abandoned.

I wonder if it was a situation where she thought she could convince the higher-ups to continue, perhaps it wasn't she was trying to "fool you" but she deluded her own self. It's certainly still her responsibility and of course it's painful but it seems like she was at least trying to be helpful. I still tend to think you are better off now than 20 sessions ago, but I can understand that doesn't make it feel better than it does right now.

If you decide to seek therapy again, perhaps this will be an experience that teaches you something about what you want or need in a relationship. I know that getting therapy outside the public system is very difficult in your country, but I hope that if you want it, you're able to find something that works for you.

Thanks. Yes, perhaps but as she never even thought of firmly establishing she could go beyond the session limit I think she acted careless as she must have understood how this might end.


I don´t think she planned to fool me but in a way she still did as she didn´t just exceed the session limit but she also almost every time said things that were connected to future therapy. Also, I can´t see how a therapist can be so worried to tell a client therapy has to end so he or she just keeps going. I´ve understood my T probably has little experience from longer therapies and she said they had never had such a case within their congregation.


But as I see it there would have been solutions to this, it´s perhaps too much to ask but I think she could have seen me outside her regular working hours for like four or five times.


I´ve always known I need a longer therapy and to feel safe within therapy but that´s more or less impossible to reach unless you can pay for your own therapy. I´m like crippled by this experience right now and I just cry and at the same time as I miss my therapist I also dislike her for what she now did.

Sarah, my heart goes out to you because I know I'd feel exactly the same way you are feeling. What your T did IS a betrayal, in my book for sure.

To me it also wouldn't matter if she was extending sessions out of compassion for me (which I do believe was the case).

The point here is that your T completely denied your right to decide for yourself how this problem of limited sessions should be resolved. This was supposed to be your decision and your decision only. By making that decision for you without asking you about it first and by lying to you about what the real situation was she disrespected you. If she'd told you from the start what the real deal was and offered you to extend the number of sessions at the risk of therapy being terminated any time if her superiors find out, then it would've been your decision to go ahead with it or not. If you'd decided to do it, then, at least, you would've been prepared for an unexpected termination and wouldn't have been traumatized by it.

So, yes, she was dishonest and irresponsible. When "compassion" doesn't take into account the realities of the situation and when the "compassionate" person doesn't ask the one they want to help if the person wants the kind of help they want to offer, that's not real compassion to me. It is someone trying to boost their self-image of a heroic rescuer.

Unfortunately, therapy profession is full of those who use it to built the "hero" self-image to make themselves feel good about themselves, which has nothing to do with helping others.

Screw your T. Seriously. I too don't believe that another phone call would make you feel better. And, I also find the fact that it was you, not her who has been calling so far outrageous. She should be the one calling you and she should be apologetic and sympathetic to you if she wants to repair the damage at least a tiny bit, which doesn't look like she does.

Thanks. I really appreciate your empathy as it´s easy to feel lonely and not understood in a situation like this with my T.

Yes, during our therapy she extended the sessions out of compassion but it was also naive as she knew about the rules from the beginning. The effect the now abrupt end had isn´t compensated by her being caring and kind to extend therapy.


I hadnt´thought of the point you make about not giving me the choice of continuing under the risk of being abruptly terminated. But as she for some reason wasn't able to tell me we had to end when we had reached the session limit, the less she had been able to give me a choice. She knew what she did was wrong but never made any plan for our sessions or how they would end.

I think she saw me as a person "in need for therapy" and as I also know rather a lot about therapy, I´m interested in the process I think she found it rewarding to work with me. It seems she got her therapist diploma but haven´t had the opportunity to practise that much. It´s more or less impossible to make a living as an alternative therapist here in Sweden. They need to charge as much as a licensed psychotherapist who has a much more extensive education. Then most people choose a psychologist/psychotherapist.


As there´s something more to this she doesn´t tell me I won´t call her again. She and her supervisor have already shown me they won´t arrange for someone else to see me and my therapist can´t give me a proper explanation why it´s so impossible for them to offer me four or five sessions more to be able to wrap things up.


My T did ask me if she could call me on the same day as I texted her and told her I wasn´t able to see her for our very last session as I was too much in shock. It was when her supervisor just had told us we had to end it all. When we then scheduled a phone session instead she asked me if I wanted to call her or if she should call me and I then choose to be the one to call her as I don´t like to sit by the phone waiting. It has been so very hard as it is to be able to talk to her, to go into a kind of conflict with a person I trusted.


But I now worry a lot as I don´t have anyone else to turn to, to continue working on my issues. It´s not that I just need someone to process the grief and the betrayal but I still have issues I started to work on several years ago. But because of the lack of public health care I´m still stuck. It´s not just about like "boosting my self-confidence" or similar but deeper issues.

I think my T tried to repair some damage, not to suddenly defend her of course but she has said she´s sorry and that it´s her fault. But it´s not enough as this isn´t just a mistake, like extending therapy with one or two sessions but actively telling me several times that we will go on with therapy.

It's common for clinical people to CYA (cover your a s s). Nothing that happened was your fault. Also, because someone did something nice for you once doesn't diminish their accountability or cancel out something abusive or harmful that was done later. However, there is something to think about in making the best of things. Can you focus on ways in which she helped and when you might have felt cared about? Think of the good during your time with her?

A list of grievances with therapists seem to be growing, though this wasn't your fault, the solution can only be within you. Maybe you can give yourself some time to grieve and process this, but I hope you don't spiral down; as you said, in the lonliness and hopelessness.

You seem like you are really coming from a place of disempowerment. Is there anything people here can help with?

Also, I wonder if you've checked out any psychoanalytic societies near you? They often offer low cost and sometimes free therapy. I see you have some strengths and wonder if you are amenable to that type of therapy.

Sarah, can you search for other places that provide free of charge services? Are there any non-profit/charity organizations in your locale that can do that?

At this point what is done is done. It does not sound like you will be able to see this therapist again. I u derstand you are hurting but the best thing you can do for yourself is to try to accept the facts.

If she had followed the "rules" you would have probably only had 20 sessio s which would have included termination session, not added on at the end as the limit was 20.

You have said she is not licensed so she was probably in over her head a long time ago which is why she was afraid to tell you.

You also may be able to come to a better ending by looking back over your old posts prior to termination. In many of those posts you sounded very unhappy with the way your sessio s were going and there was a lot of talk about quitting. If you put yourself back into that mindset and remember that things were not all that great, it may help you better accept the fact that it is over now. Maybe the forced termination was actually doing you a favor, allowing you to fi d a qualified, licensed therapist to actually help you.

Acceptance always comes last :/. It’s a process. Everything is still raw and fresh. Sometimes we have to toss around the ‘why’’s a bit first.

Sarah - wishing you healing and closure!

I want to echo this and say that acceptance cannot be forced through intellectual logic. Anyone who believes that logic rules feelings is just disconnected from their feelings, and their intellectual "acceptance" is nothing but the denial of what they feel.

When someone has just been hurt and the pain is raw, what needs to be accepted and validated at the moment is the part that feels pain. Trying to rationalize the pain away is the opposite of acceptance. Once the pain is processed, then acceptance of the bigger reality can take place, but not before.

I also think it’s a process, and that “moving on” and acceptance can’t be forced.