Ghosting my therapist today - I cry so I can´t breathe

I´m writing this in the moment I´m ghosting my therapist. I cry so I can hardly breathe. After an abrupt termination my therapist offered me some phone calls but because she caused the termination and I didn´t get any proper termination sessions I decided to ghost her.


Knowing that she now sits in her office waiting for me to call, we had a set date and time, is totally heartbreaking and I can´t take it in. It´s worse than a funeral and it´s like the "death" of our relationship. It´s completely devastating.


I didn´t want to call as she can´t help me in what I go through, a profound grief and it would only add to my sorrow to talk to her knowing she can´t be there for me anymore. A part in this was also to make her wonder why I didn´t call but I think she partly expected I wouldn´t.

She didn´t try or doesn´t seem to try to reach me but I expected that as she told me she doesn´t call clients who don´t show for session. Even if we had a scheduled phone session I assume she acts the same way.


It´s now so quiet, so empty. The grief is beyond everything.

I don't understand the reason for simply not having left a message or something that no further contact is needed or desired. Just seems inconsiderate to accept an appointment and not have the courtesy to simply cancel. You could have called the church or her number after hours and just left a message for her or something; it wouldn't have even required speaking to her personally. Just seems like this "ghosting" is a just creating more difficulty for you, whereas taking active control and actually actively cancelling would have been a more powerful decision.

Thsts all very logical. But emotions run to their own beat.
I agree with what you've wrote. But sometimes we just need to do things in the only way we can.

I think you should have called too. Even if you feel she didn't deserve a call, not canceling could mean you could owe her for the session. Plus now she'll likely call to make sure you are okay.

OTOH, by ghosting, it is as if the infant is saying, "it is NOT that mother refuses to come to me; it is that i refuse to call her." It gives the abandoned infant a sense of control in its impotence? IDK. My mother says that i stopped crying after a couple of weeks (after i was born).

I dont´think I have any obligations towards her after what she did to me. It isn´t a matter of not needing further contact, it´s the opposite, and that´s why I now decided to ghost her. To leave her a message about cancelling the phone session would only give the impression that I´m fine and that I´m ok with us now ending when it´s actually all very traumatic to me.

I disagree with the above posters. It is fine to ghost if that's what you want to do. Never mind what she thinks or feels. She really should have thought of that before she unethically led you to believe she could continue to see you.

Take care of yourself Sarah, it is a terrible grief. Hugs.

I saw her for free so she won´t charge me. Even if she had I´d probably done the same thing. She won´t call me or check up on me as she already terminated me, the phone calls were a bad compromise for not offering me a proper termination.

Thanks. I think she mostly got irritated when I now didn´t call her but as we hadn´t decided a place to meet I know she´s in her office anyway and she could just continue with other things when she noticed I wouldn´t call her.


Yes, this went wrong from the beginning when she after just a few sessions told me I could see her as long as I needed although she knew about the session limit within church and although she hadn´t talked to her supervisor about it.


It was already back then a road to disaster.

If you terminated I'm not quite sure why you had an appointment. Was this supposed to be a goodbye session?

It seems like in the past this has happened very similarly. A therapist terminated, she offered a bit more contact to discuss the matter, you refused that contact and then were upset about that lack of contact which you refused. Maybe I have you confused with a different poster?

I wasn´t me who terminated, then it had never been a situation of now ghosting her. I wrote about how my therapist terminated me in several posts not long ago.

I´ve already had two phone sessions with this therapist and I then talked to her about the importance of not just ending it all abruptly and I tried to find a solution. But she couldn´t offer a proper termination and I´m left behind in a traumatic situation. I´ve written about the termination in several posts not long ago and they explain more about why I now decided to ghost her.

Sarah, I know this is a huge grief for you. Even though it may seem counter-productive, I encourage you to really feel it, in order to work through it. There are online resources for those who are grieving (and not just grieving an actual death), and I can send them to you, if you like.
When you feel ready, journaling can also help you say how you feel about what happened, how you feel now, and what (if anything) you would want in a future T, with specifics.
Kramar.

I abruptly terminated with my former T, so this isn’t the same, but she did offer a phone session (and not an in-person one) to “talk about it.” In my case, I caught her in a lie.

I did not call. It felt like a death and I was extremely sad for months. I think I did what was best for me. I wasn’t going to feel any better after a phone call and nothing would have been resolved after a phone session. So I didn’t call.

You don’t owe her anything. Her feelings are hers alone. If you’re doing the best you can, that’s all one can ask.

I don't believe in shoulds.

You have to do what is best for you right now SW. The first days of anything are really the worst. Try to take each day 10 mins at a time. You will get through this.

Thanks. Yes, I can´t get by the feelings, they´re all there and I´ve been grieving for more than a month now. I´d be happy to get the tips you have about the online resources for people who grieve.


I have a notebook I used to journal after my sessions with my therapist and I´ll try to write something there, I also wrote about the first phone session I had with her after the abrupt ending.


Kramar tillbaka.

Thanks. As you say it´s more or less like a death of a person who meant so much, it´s just devastating. I think ghosting her was the "right" thing to do for me as well as I didn´t want to like "treat her nicely" by cancelling as she has abandoned me and I had nothing to talk to her about on the phone.


As you I feel nothing had been resolved by talking to her as I´ve already had two phone sessions and even if she said she was sorry about what she did she still abandoned me.


May I ask you what you T lied about?

I don´t generally like endings like this, who does, but in this case there was no proper solution to it all. What she did was not just a mistake to feel sorry about and by that she could never be the person consoling me in my grief. Perhaps you felt the same.

((((gentle hugs)))) I know this has been a difficult situation for you. I hope that you can heal in a manner that works for you. Kit.

Agreed.

I don't believe in an obligation to be courteous to someone who has lied to you and was not responsible enough to consider how their actions would potentially affect you.

Take care of yourself Sarah. Grief like that takes a long time to process. Hugs.

I grieved my last therapist for a solid year. In some ways, I'm still grieving. It takes a lot more time than I was prepared for.

I do resonate with all you wrote.

At the end, the sessions with my former therapist were chippy. I had recently realized (maybe within the past two months) that I was attached to her. Very unexpected for someone like me. The sessions were heavy and my admissions of finding it hard to even sit near her, were met with, "Ugh. Not again." It was a roller coaster. I'd be okay one session and then one leg itching to run out the door, the next.

A few sessions prior to termination, I had walked out and let my emotions get the best of me, saying I'd mail in her outstanding payments (inferring I was done) before leaving about 1/2 hour into session.
Days later, she asked me to come back and we had a couple more anxiety-ridden sessions. At the end of our last session together, she admitted she was having to talk about me in her own supervision sessions with her therapist and that she wanted to keep me and not lose me. This did not sit well with me. I now felt obligated to stay and I ditched the plan I had (which was to cancel the next session and slowly fade-out). After she said that she didn't want to lose me, I found myself not wanting to disappoint her, so I didn't cancel, never revealing that I was thinking about letting things naturally dissolve.

It didn't matter, though. She ended up taking care of that for me. The night before (what ended up being) my final session, she text messaged me that she had to cancel our appointment (it was already the 4th cancellation in as many months) because her grandmother died and she need to leave out-of-town right then.

In my gut, I knew something was up- but I wasn't sure what to do. The next morning, when she should have been "gone," I was pumping gas and saw her car outside of a restaurant. This ended up being a stroke of luck, because it prompted me to snoop on her boyfriend's Instagram page (I felt bad about this, but even more so, now) and later that night, he uploaded pics of her golfing with him (and her daughter.) Under his IG caption about enjoying a "Friday night golf session," she said: "Thanks babe! I had so much fun!" Ouch. In the meantime, I'm absolutely heartbroken.

It became clear I couldn't trust her again. If I had to guess, I do think her grandmother passed; I don't think she'd lie to that extent, but she didn't have to leave when she said she did... which went against what she was trying to get me to learn through therapy: stop picking emotionally unavailable women who spend their time avoiding me, as I try and get them to love me. As she said (in those instances where other women in my life lied/avoided), I deserve someone who can meet me with the truth.

I felt betrayed and abandoned. I no longer trusted her and she wasn't the "same" to me anymore. The thought of hearing her voice just made me want to cry and I terminated the easiest way for me: Through a letter I sent via certified mail.
After she rec'd it, she called me, I sent her to my voicemail, and she left a message saying, "Since I've known you for a while, here's what happened" and proceeded to tell me about how her grandmother was suffering from a long bout of cancer, died that night, and she drove to pick up her daughter and straight out of town.
That, too, broke my heart. At the end of the message, she said thought it was a good idea to terminate (I had already done so via the letter) so I could find someone I was more comfortable with. She wished me the best, told me to take care, but multiple times said she would like to talk about it (honestly, I haven't thought about that part in a while- it actually made me tear up just writing that) and then repeated it a few times. "I'm here to talk if you need to, which I would very much like."

I remember thinking, "I wonder if she thinks I'm just being an avoidant and running away again," as she had told me and one time, asked me "not to pull by avoidant bullsh-t with her."

The abandonment pangs were excruciating. There were a few times I nearly called her. Once I composed an entire email and was thisclose to pressing send. But what was the point? She hurt me, or at least, her actions did. What closure would be obtained if she was still skirting the truth?

After termination, it took a few days to get out of bed. People in my life didn't understand me and admonished me for getting attached. They looked at me like I was crazy. I soon stopped talking about her, but the weight of her hung heavy on my shoulders. It's been over a year and sometimes, I still "talk" to her as if we're in session. As a matter of fact, I find when I find something funny about life, I still occasionally think about telling her and then I remember where we are. Nowhere. Nothing. And all we were was therapist and client.

On some days, the burden of the thought of her returns and I find it hard to breathe. Almost like something sitting on my chest and my skin crawls and I itch to see her. And then I remind myself that's my attachment trauma and a response of the nervous system. Usually, I lay still, feel the feelings, try and release them through my feet and have a good cry.

I know what you're going through and how devastating it is. I felt lost, confused, betrayed, abandoned, heartbroken, angry, and sometimes, apologetic because I didn't behave perfectly (my issues, again). Anyhoo, if you ever need to message me when you're having a hard time, please feel free to do so

Yep! Agreed.

I’m still processing my own therapy trauma, but it gets better.

Thanks. No, as you say I didn´t see the point in treating her nicely, that would be telling her we could cancel the phone session, as she has hurt me so much. It had been another thing if she made a mistake that couldn´t be avoided but now she had so many chances to prevent this abrupt temination from happening.

Yes, it also seems hard (impossible without enough money) to find a therapist who can help me through this grief and who understands my situation has to be dealth with both as the grief it is but also in a way of understanding transference love.

Thanks. Interesting to hear your termination story. It´s a red flag, not to sound judging about your situation but more in general, if a T talks about wanting to keep a client and not lose them. If it´s a T you pay (not free therapy that is) I would see that as a way of keeping a paycheck.


It must have felt like a huge betrayal when you saw your T outside that restaurant. Such behaviour could perhaps be "expected" from a friend or an acquaintance but not a therapist! If sounds to me a bit like she wanted to get back at you when you wanted to quit therapy and that she withdrawn as you wanted to withdraw/quit. Just a thought.


If she couldn´t handle seeing patients at that time she should have told you, not making up a story and then go play golf. I would also have reacted to the fact that she was able to enjoy such a "jolly" thing as golf in a situation like that.

I can really relate to what you write about what a final session or phone call could do to your grief as you had already caught her in a lie. I felt similar to that even if my T did say she was sorry but it can never be the same after losing trust in or respect for someone.

I perhaps missed that bit but did you tell her that you actually found out about her lie?

I too find a relief in crying about it all but sometimes it also feels like life is too much about crying and grieving. Not that I mean one shouldn´t or one should just "get a grip", I never liked that idea bu sometimes it´s just exhausting to grief and to cry.


I´ll send you a PM as well.