That the therapist doesn´t care is the hardest part in a forced termination

Thanks for your thoughts on this. I´m sorry you´re going through this as well even if you have gotten a bit further in your process.


No, I dont´have any actual support besides the psychiatric nurse (who isn´t a good support) and this forum. It´s more or less impossible to get others who haven´t been in therapy understand this and why I grieve.


I do participate in support chats but the people answering to those chats are laypeople, often very young, and they never really grasp the complex of problems.

Thanks for your insight on this. I have thought about this as an opportunity as well as she told me she was worried how I would react when she told me we had to end therapy. By that she just kept going instead of telling me that 20 sessions couldn´t be exceeded.


What´s strange is that she also kind of lied to me when she after like five sessions or so told me I could see her as long as I needed and during our time together she often encouraged me in different ways as if we could just decide for ourselves how long we were going to meet.


That strengthens your thought that she might have cared "too much" about me.

As you say, she must have on some level knew that the amount of sessions would be found out in some way or the other but she kept going. To me that´s a strange way of caring as she must have realised it would end in me just being "thrown out" of therapy.

Perhaps she didn´t want to see it, she told me she felt a tussle between me and the organization's rules and in a way it seems she didn´t want to let me go.


But now it´s still a fact that she has her work, her husband and so on and I´m just left on my own and that makes me feel she didn´t care in a way that made me end up in a better position but in a worse.

I just hope this affects her on some level or else it´s just horrible knowing I, who looked for support, is the only one in pain.

I don't buy into all these notions about therapist altruism and caring. Seems they are mostly in it for themselves, and when a therapist goes too far with trying to help, it could be due to some overpowering need of their own.

Also, whether the therapist genuinely cared is a red herring. Seems OP is miserable because she knows the therapist cared MUCH LESS and suffers few or no consequences from the failed relationship, while OP is tortured to no end, which is thoroughly degrading.

For me a sign of strength was when I stopped scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for signs of therapist caring, and acknowledged that I'd been used... AND stopped taking personally, since it was not actually about me.

I know you struggle with the dilemma of writing/not writing to your T and telling her about how you feel about what she's done. My take on that is that if her response is really important to you, then it's better not to write it because based on your description of her it's unlikely she'll respond and you'll get hurt again. If expressing yourself is more important to you than getting a response, then it might worth it to write it, send it out and be relieved that you poured all your feelings in writing and now she'd have to deal with it at least a little bit. I've written letters to my Ts in the past, but only when I knew that I was doing it purely for the sake of letting them know how their crap impacted me. But when I felt that I needed a response, I wouldn't do that. So, this is really a question of what you'd be trying to achieve by doing it.

I have to say that, like BF, I don't buy into the idea that your T cared about you. When "caring" involves lying to the one you care about, denying them a chance to decide for themselves how they'd like to proceed, keeping them in the dark about the fact that their process WILL be interrupted suddenly, at any moment (because in your situation, the abrupt termination was really the matter of WHEN it would happen, not IF it would happen), that kind of "caring" doesn't look like caring to me at all.

She knew damn well what she was doing and she knew that the abrupt termination was inevitable because sooner or later the administration would find out because you can't keep doing this forever. But, apparently, she didn't give two shits about it. She was okay with your therapy getting terminated abruptly at some point. She knew that she would suffer no consequences, as the case is right now. As you said, nothing has changed for her. She still has the life she had before. And, probably, still works for that church. And what would happen to you in case of abrupt termination was of no consequence for her. I don't know what kind of "evidence" of not caring anyone needs in this case when the facts speak for themselves.

As far as why she did what she did, as I said, I hate to speculate on this because I really don't care and I really don't think it's important or relevant, but, since I know that you care about it and you are trying to make sense of what happened, I can throw out a couple of ideas.

She clearly (clearly to me) did what she did to gratify her own emotional needs.

She might have been

a) fascinated by your story

this is not uncommon that people (not only therapists) get fascinated by other people's stories and love to analyze them in order to understand something about themselves and their own lives

b) liked you as a person and liked socializing with you

c) was using you as a "guinea pig" for practicing

d) suffered from a "hero complex" (wanted to see herself as a rescuer)

e) all of the above or some of the above

..and God knows what else..

I really don't want to continue this analysis. As I said, I've thrown out some of the ideas for you to consider because I know that you are trying to integrate this experience, to put pieces together and to see the whole picture.

I understand that, at this stage of grief, you need to understand why the other person did what they did. I needed to understand it too when I was traumatized. It took me a long time to go through the process of thinking of different possibilities and a process of going through the "E-motions" to finally arrive to the place where I didn't care anymore.

As much as I understand your need though, I will not go beyond just making a few assumptions. I just don't believe that I'd be helping you by offering my analysis of your T's possible motivations. The most important thing is that she did what she did not for your benefit but to fulfill her emotional needs, whatever they were. The rest, to me, is irrelevant. But, again, I understand your need to go over it again and again to make sense of what happened.

To accept that someone who was important to you didn't care about you is the most difficult thing to accept. I wonder if there might be something in you that still wants to hold on to the hope that she did, in fact, care.

Since none of us actually know the therapist, I think it’s unfair to assume we can judge whether she cared or not.

It is entirely possible that the therapist cared but found herself in a tough spot.. She saw Sarah as someone who was VERY attached to her and decided that any additional sessions were worth the risk. Maybe she didn’t know what to do since she was in too deep?

I see complete incompetence all over this, but I don’t buy that the therapist didn’t have genuine feelings towards Sarah. Maybe it’s my own stuff talking now...

I can’t help but wonder if Sarah using the last phone session to ask “How did you feel about me and why?” would be more productive than running circles around details about the termination. She’d have a chance to hear for herself, judge the sincerity, and test by pushing back and questioning.

Yep! Well said.

I keep seeing this trend again and again when fairness to the therapist, who traumatized the client, somehow has greater importance that fairness to the client who's been traumatized through the actions of the therapist.

I am perfectly comfortable with not being fair to the therapist in this situation and with judging her however I want to judge her and I don't have any need to know anything about her as a person and about her feelings for Sarah in order to judge her actions on their own merit. Actions speak for themselves and who she is as a person and what kind of feelings she had or didn't have for Sarah and what her intentions were is completely irrelevant to me. I separate the person from their actions. It is not the person I am judging but the actions. That's why who she is as a person and what she was feeling and thinking makes no difference to me. Her actions were harmful and this is all I need to know to judge what happened.

I am trying to respond to Sarah's topic of the thread as it was titled to the best of my ability. That's why I will not side track and get sucked into a debate on whether the therapist cared or didn't. I tell my opinion to Sarah and so does everyone else, as this is what the thread is about, I believe. I don't believe it's been intended for a debate. It was intended for OP to process her grief, and, in this type of threads, the most appropriate thing to do for anyone who posts is to accommodate OP's need for processing IMO.

I’m not concerned at all about fairness to the therapist, I’m concerned about fairness to Sarah.

I think implying that Sarah should process or accept not being cared about is harsh, whether it was directly said that way or not. Especially when it’s obvious that Sarah is deeply invested in being cared about.

I realize my post came across as sympathetic to the therapist (not my intention), but I do think based on what Sarah describes that this was a close relationship that involved a great deal of caring. If Sarah felt cared about during her therapy, I think it’s highly unlikely that an awful termination changed any of that. I think looking at it as ‘cared’ or ‘didn’t care’ is too black and white.

Don't know if this will help with an understanding, but your observations above suggest to me that the therapist is living partially in a "fantasy world", in touch more with her hopes and wishes with regard to practicing "therapy" and not so much with reality.

In that world, then, it's like you were more a fantasy object than a real person -- someone to care for. But the caring was within the fantasy world, not objective concern for you as an independent, real person, with your own real life and everyday concerns, apart from the therapist.

Super sucks. And -- even though it's only digital and virtual -- you are real to a bunch of us here.

I was just thinking how often people don't take responsibility for their mistakes or minimize them. Very direct shifting blame is not as common as implicit defensiveness, avoidance, or the kind of non-apology when someone says things like "I am sorry you are hurt by this". Or unwillingness to examine/discuss own reactions and acts. Very often people just stop engaging when it becomes uncomfortable for them, something clashes with what they believe/want for themselves, rationalize that decision, and then withdraw. The latter can sometimes be healthy self protection but also often driven by denial, IMO.

On the caring/not caring topic - IMO this is quite abstract and vague when it comes to therapy. Usually, when I say that a professional cares (or the way I want them to care) is about doing a job competently, in a timely fashion, and with consideration of the many factors involved. I don't mean caring like a parent would for a child, friends for each-other, or even a mentor for their closely supervised students. I do believe that most Ts want to care about their work in this sense, but many things can get in the way, including mistakes, lack of competency, or their own issues. I do not believe that most Ts care for their clients in a loving manner that they feel/use in personal life. I think most professionals in any field can let go of those in their previous "care", if nit, that is more a problem IMO. I believe that pretty much every human being prioritizes their own interests over others' in general, even if it manifests as a desire to help others. It does happen though that, if someone made a mistake that could not be resolved, they will ruminate on it for quite a while without saying it. I agree with others though that knowing whether she does that or not would not change much in your situation.

I also agree with heretoday about the fantasy world. I think the whole of therapy is very much a gigantic fantasy world, in many ways. Quite little of it is realistic, IMO.

Thanks for reflecting upon this. Yes, I´m not so much into the idea of writing to her anymore as she probably won´t answer to a letter anyway as you mention. Also, she doesn´t practise therapy on a regular basis which means that she won´t care about improving or learning anything.

Writing a heartfelt letter to her could also mean she gets reasons to brush me off even more, thinking there was something with me as a person who made her do what she did.

I´m more into ghosting her on that date which is set for our phone call. I don´t know if that will affect her but I can´t call her like there´s a chance to redemption as there isn´t.

I think my therapist did care in the beginning and thought she could give me proper therapy, that is help me to a better state in my life. But as time passed she understood she didn´t have the skills and then turned to different “kind actions” like complimenting me about my shoes and many more such things.

As you say she knew very well about the session limit and she kept going, even after her summer vacation. The summer break had been a good opportunity for her to also end therapy and telling me I couldn´t see her after her vacation. But instead she started on new therapeutic interventions just before she went on her vacation.

As you also say, she still works in that church and my hope is that she at least feels a bit of a bad conscience about what she did to me.

It´s valuable to me to read about what you think about her reasons for doing all this.

I think all of them matches up to what happened besides using me as a guinea pig as she doesn´t work as a therapist on a regular basis. To me it´s important to understand as if I can point to different flaws about her and her way of acting it´s easier to process what happened.

When you mention her emotional needs I just come to think about my previous theory about a possible reason for her doing this. I think she deep down wants someone of her own to care about as she said to me that she early in her life wanted to have children and when she later in life met her husband she couldn´t have children. She didn´t tell my why but I see her wanting to care for someone is channelled through her being a therapist, even if she doesn´t manage that well obviously. But as I saw her “exclusively”, we also had several sessions where we looked at pictures of me as a child I think something awoken in her. Even if there are just a little more than a ten years age difference between us. I can of course not prove this theory but still.

It´s for sure a misguided caring and I would also see it as a kind of denial as she kept going week after week. She told me there was a tussle inside her between wanting to continue therapy with me and knowing she wasn´t allowed to due to the session limit.

If she doesn’t care about improving, or learning anything, you’re obviously better off without this therapist. As I need to tell myself... I’m better off without any those “support” workers irl. I know more than they do .. and certainly more than they appeared to know. And I’m not even an arrogant A-hole like some of them are. A therapist who for whatever reason is not open to learning from their clients.. even the “bad object” or shadow in a client.. is not someone I would wish to work with.

Thanks. I think what came first in this was my therapist telling me, about five session in, that I could see her as long as I needed. That was long before I had gotten attached to her. My therapist sometimes gave me hugs which I in a way appreciated but also was hesitant about getting.

My therapist told me that she needs supervision to understand why she did this, why she exceeded the session limit and she also told me she was worried about how I would react when she told me we had to end therapy.

But all this was created by her, if I had known there were 20 sessions and no more I hadn´t engaged in therapy in the way I did. Perhaps I hadn´t even continued with her as I know 20 sessions aren´t enough.

I think my therapist had feelings for me in the beginning but she somehow changed her attitude towards me and didn´t even try to talk to a manager or similar. She just let her supervisor decide we couldn´t continue therapy anymore.

I´ve already had two phone sessions with her and she told me there is no more explanation to this and when I asked her "I assume you also think it had been better with some sessions to terminate" she vaguely stated that had been the optimal way of doing this.

There´s a big risk I get more wounded if I´d ask such a question like how she felt about me and she didn´t answer or use some standard answer like "I liked working with you" and that would add to my grief.

Thanks. Yes, I think she was partly in denial or didn´t want to see what was coming, the abrupt termination that is. She once said to me "you´re a very fine person", (not talking about my appearance) and in those moments I think she genuinely felt something for me/she cared for me.

I think she in a way longs to take care of somebody and that her grief about not being able to become a mother isn´t fully processed. It´s not that I suddenly defend her in all this, not at all, but as I´m used to look at things from many angles I think this plays at least a little part in all this.

Also - why telling me about such a loss and grief? She told me in the beginning of therapy and even if I think it´s positive if the T shares something about herself this was perhaps too private.

What I also get back to is the fact that she didn´t only exceed the number of sessions but she also encouraged me in many ways to believe we were going to continue. It seems she tried to convince herself that her breach wasn´t that serious by saying things like "20 sessions aren´t that much, it´s just a day if you see it that way". She wanted the whole situation to be otherwise I think.


But then, since the ending was a fact I can´t feel she cares anymore, she offered me those phone sessions, sure, but then what?

I appreciate you saying I'm real to all of you, that warms my heart.

Although I am very sorry that this happened to you, Sarah, I can see (and I hope you can, too) that this experience has provided a lot of information that you can use when and if you look for another therapist. Kramar.

Thanks. I really hope my T is ruminating about this as you mention in your post. If I knew she actually did it had at least eased my pain a little as then there´s some kind of equality in this.


I think I connect the feeling of that she doesn´t care to the fact that I assume she just puts it all behind her and gets on with her life. It´s of course impossible but if I got to know she thinks of me, she replays part of our therapy in her head, she feels sad about what happened and also worries about me, then I would feel she cares about me even if we now don´t have any contact no more.

Your former therapist does seem to be honest about the huge blunder she made, and doesn't seem to know why she made it herself. Thisseems like malpractice/ totally out -of- control poor judgment that hurt you. She seems to be as puzzled why she continued down a path that was reckless for your welfare as you are, and seems to be somewhere in the rescue fantasy territory. I do not think though, that she doesn't care. From the telling here, she got caught up in her caring and over-promised.

I bet she cared very much about you, and thought a lot about you. It reminds me of the teacher in Dead Poet Society or the therapist in Good Will Hunting ( both Robin Williams) in the sense that when new real-life teachers came to the school where I taught after seeing these movies, they wanted to BE that hero, that protagonist. Something in you clicked with something in her that wanted to give you more than she really had to give. It is kind of a mistake of excess, caring too much not not enough , caring too much in the wrong way.

For helping professions and teachers, there are dangers in indifference but even more danger in loss of perspective. In breaking known rules to keep working with you, even as you say through the natural breaking off time of the vacation, she seems to have engaged in wishful thinking and distorted thinking.

I am so so sorry she hurt you and for how hurt you are. I bet she feels heartache in private moments- or if she doesn't, she isn't a very contientious person.

I see the trend also. Therapists are routinely given benefit of the doubt re: motives and character, while the battered client is regarded with suspicion in terms of their ability to correctly read the situation.

Call me nuts, but if someone feels a therapist did not care, or care enough, or care in the right way, or their caring felt counterfeit... I'm inclined to believe them, rather than fish for other answers or condescend to the person about their distorted perceptions. The original post in this thread strikes me as sensible.

I feel like this topic is getting more and more loaded. It definitely seems to trigger some people, myself included, I've got to be honest about it..I'd like to go back and address a couple of points that seem important to me..I didn't have time to do it today..was busy the whole day..and I don't know about tomorrow, but I'll try to get back here and comment in a couple of days..

Thanks, reading your post moved me. I agree to the "rescue fantasy territory" and she seemed to have gotten there pretty fast, she told me after about five sessions or so that I could see her as long as I needed.


I think she partly knows why she went down this road but that´s nothing she shares with me. Her lies are very difficult to bear.

It sure must have been the way you describe it; that there was a resonance between us and it´s also now why my grief is so profound. At the same time I hope that ghosting her will make her realise what she did to me, or perhaps it won´t at all.


It´s too hard to even understand how a person can be caring (as she was before all this happened) and then alter to be someone who distances herself.


I also grief that I see no other way out than to skip that phone call we have scheduled as I´ll never be able to talk things through with her in a way that makes me feel better about all this.

I think she might feel some heartache when I pop up in her mind. But at the same time I think she´s relieved about not having anything to do with me anymore.

I know we are speculating and trying to mentalize, but after teaching for so long I draw on my own experience and those I watched ( boarding school). Whenever someone crosses a professional line, they are usually reeling if they have a good heart at all. In my town, a T saw a woman as a favor to her husband, a friend, on a Sunday. She made a very big mistake that had a bad outcome, even though her intentions were good and the favor of evaluating her informally with a dual relationship seemed small until judged in hindsight. Although I am not privy to her thoughts either, I can only imagine she will regret as long as she lives her small lapse in judgement that led to great pain. I am pretty sure your T is not proud of herself; we just have the question of how much remorse does she feel. Your T is in a double bind right now bc any further ending/ bonding she does with you exacerbates her mistake, and I am sure she has been warned to back off. This is a lose-lose situation, but not one set up by you. I am so so sorry.

Thanks, I value this. I think besides the reeling a person like my therapist should also look into her motives for why she did what she did. I think it´s more or less impossible to define the concept of caring in those situations and in the situation you mention in your post.


The case you describe, did the pain also come from that therapist having to end her contact with that woman?

Yes, the amount of remorse is very central to me, I could bear my situation in an easier way if I knew my T did really regret all this and that she feels bad about it.

In a way I think her supervisor made way for her to leave her responsibility behind and also gave her an excuse to put aside her own wrong-doing in this. I mean, being able to refer to her supervisor´s decision even if I think she felt sorry about all this when it just had happened.

I just wanted to go back to this thread to share some thoughts that came to me lately.

Sarah, you've said you'd feel better if you knew that your T cared about you (and may be still does). Are you sure about that? I mean, I do believe it'd make you feel better..temporarily..but then you'd continue being in pain because of the fact that you can't see her any more. Do you believe that knowing that she cared/cares would help you complete your grieving process sooner, make a closure and move on with your life? I doubt it for some reason.

I recall situations from my own life when I had to accept the fact of being "dumped" and I was confused about whether the other person cared about me at all or not, and I also felt that if I knew that for sure, if I knew that they cared, I'd be able to make a closure. Then, at some point, I thought about it deeply and realized that knowing that they cared would just make me want to seek their company again, because it'd seem so stupid that we both cared about each other and couldn't continue seeing each other. It'd make me want to keep reaching out to that person and to convince them that we should meet and work it out somehow. This would've kept me stuck much longer than the harsh reality I had to face and deal with.

I believe, there are times when harsh endings are the only way in which life can end situations that are not serving our highest good. And it is harshness that makes it clear to us that it's a done deal and forces us to accept that it is a done deal. And when we accept it and learn the right lessons, we transform and evolve, which is exactly why the harsh ending was needed in the first place.

Thanks. There´s a large difference between being "dumped" in real life and in therapy. An abrupt ending to therapy can never be justified unless something serious happens to the therapist or there are circumstances that leave no solution.

In my case an abrupt ending could have been avoided in several ways and because my therapist couldn´t handle the situation an abrupt ending can´t suddenly be "the best thing".

I can´t see how acceptance can be forced, at least I don´t function that way. If I now had the possibility to actually get to know to what extent my therapist cares about me, if she does, if she thinks about me and such I would have felt less "thrown out" if I knew she does care.


The longing is there regardless, even if I now feel she doesn´t care that much anymore I go back and think about her and our therapy and I just cry. Sometimes the grief gets complicated because I at the same time have thoughts like she has forgotten me or that she just keeps on with her life. If I knew she thinks of me and misses me I think my grief would be a bit different, perhaps a bit easier.

I think, I made it crystal clear on this thread that I disapprove of what your T did and consider what she did unethical. When I say "dumped", I am not referring to regular relationships break ups. I think, you can be "dumped" by a therapist as well. I was. The way my first therapy ended totally felt like the therapist "dumped" me in the similar uncaring way, which was actually much worse than your case. But I was taking my point outside of therapy as well. There were situations in my life that felt as devastating as being "dumped" by my therapist. I mean, many times we find ourselves in circumstances that are cruel and unfair. In that sense, it might be helpful to look at all of them from a perspective of how we make sense of what happened and what kind of lessons we can learn from it.

I know that. My point had nothing to do with that.

I didn't say you should force it. I suggested to look at what happened from a different perspective.

That's exactly what my question was about. If you knew that she cares, do you believe this would help you to accept what happened, to get closure and to move on with your life?

When you say "different" and "easier", how different would it be? What exactly would be different then? Would it get processed sooner? And, generally speaking, do you want eventually to get to a place where you would not miss her any more, where you'd be free of any emotional attachment to her? I am NOT saying you should push yourself to that place. I know perfectly well that feelings cannot be eliminated at will and that it takes however long it takes to process them. I am just asking if you WANT to be able to get to that place, the place of emotional independence eventually?