I just sent a termination email

I just sent my therapist a formal, civilized termination email. I think I just got tired of the ambivalence and decided there wasn’t clear benefit to me any longer despite giving it 17 months. He’s on vacation next week and maybe it was triggered by that. I had asked towards the end of our session 2 weeks ago if he’d still read my emails while on vacation (he reads them but decided to no longer send replies a couple of months ago) and asked if he’d consider sending a brief response since I wouldn’t see him for 2 weeks. He said no (he said it nicely, but it was no). Of course I understand that it’s his choice and he’s allowed to respond any way that feels right to him. But his decision not to ever reply feels rigid and it was a decision made without having a conversation with me first and it was done abruptly after responding to my emails for over a year.

I am self-sufficient, independent and have had quite a bit of experience with important people in my life not responding to my requests and I just don’t understand why my therapist thought it was important for me to experience that in our therapy relationship. I clearly keep asking for something that he is not able to give, so it seemed best to put an end to the pattern. I also told him he was kind, patient and empathetic and thanked him for that. I told him it was a tough decision for me and that I will feel a loss for some period of time. I asked him to send my bill to my home and said I’d send a check.

I’m not sure if this was the right way to end things, but I did feel some urgency to end things now and not wait until the next time I see him. I hope I’m not running away from something good. I feel a mix of relief and loss. I suppose he will never send a response which saddens me, but it’s also something I’m used to from him.

Sending hugs...

Sending hugs

I am glad you are doing what is best for you. Personally I never agree on emailing or texting..I believe communication should be on the phone or in session. But its real ****** to respond to you all this time and then not.

Good for you. I think taking back your power like this was a good thing.

Hugs (if you want them)

That must have been hard, but you have every right to decide that this is a dealbreaker for you and then act on that decision.

I'm sorry you're hurting so much.

Lrad, I just want to extend my good wishes to you. I think it's a hard thing to leave a relationship that's otherwise good but not meeting your needs.

If it helps, I left an extremely good therapist after a year because he was too rigid for me in places where I needed him to bend. Six months on I'm glad I had the courage to end it and not just hope it would get better. It was the right decision.

Recognising your needs, recognising what doesn't work anymore, giving yourself more opportunity to find what is right, and taking the wheel are all things to be applauded.

I think therapists sometimes need a reality check that they've been HIRED by someone to do a job, and that will involve negotiation and check-ins and discussions on what's working and what's not. You can only go so far with someone who gives blanket nos.

and if he does send you a response to this email, i want to be the first one to call BS on his boundary rule

sarcasm aside, good for you for standing up for yourself and for what you feel is important to you! ex-T did something similar, where he suddenly change a boundary without pre-discussing it, and the rupture it caused definilty lowered my trust and changed my perception of him. the relationship was never the same after and it did have a detrimental effect on my therapy and the relationship with him. it too was one of the many reasons why i decided that i wanted to work on getting myself un-attached to him so i could end therapy and get myself out of that 'relationship' with the least amount of hurt and damage to myself.

all my best to you

To me you are brave because I a can not be as brave as you.

Thanks to everyone for your supportive responses. I’m not sure how the ending goes, but I suppose he’ll just send an invoice like I asked. He typically does invoices on the first of the month, so I guess I’ll receive it by March 3rd and I assume I’ll feel sad when I get it. I don’t know if he’ll ever respond to my termination email. He’s blank slate-ish so maybe not. In any case, he’s gone now and won’t be back for a week and a half and I know he wouldn’t respond while on vacation or his day off or weekends. He’s consistent like that. Curious if he’ll ever respond though. I guess I’ll have to wait and see.

This was very brave of you. I don't think that unilateral decision was fair, and beyond the issue of email itself, is the plain statement of authority on his part, on who makes the rules and the reminder it is him not you.I think StopDog is right about taking your power back. It would be different if he had never allowed email.

I assume he’ll believe me, right? Many months ago I sent an “I quit” email that was more about venting and he said he interpreted it that way. This one was much more clear and not emotional. I gave clear instructions to send me the invoice. I assume he’ll have to believe me, right? I guess I’ll have to wait to find out.

A lot of times assumptions about other people are wrong, especially about what they believe. I think the only person that needs to believe you is you. Are you really done, or is this another round of emailing in hopes of a "response" that you've been repeatedly told is not going to happen? I think it would be very clever of you to try yet one more version of trying to "get" him to respond to you, which may happen if he sends you an invoice as instructed. Because if he does send you the invoice, you "win" because he responded to your email. What if he doesn't? (rhetorical question)

Sometimes tone is hard to figure out in posts, and I just want to be clear that I'm not being sarcastic or whatever in admiring your creativity in finding new ways to email and the expectations of a "response."

Lol. Is that what I’m doing? I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it could be the case. I guarantee that in my real life, I’m far from being the manipulative flake that I must appear to be on this forum. But this therapy relationship has been utterly confusing to me since day one. I’ve never been so ambivalent about anything in my entire life. After thinking about going to therapy for an entire year, I finally took the plunge, and then for an entire 17 months I have been simultaneously both terrified and profoundly drawn to my therapist. It’s been a confusing and exhausting experience and I fully admit that in this particular relationship I have no idea what I want.

Also, well-intentioned responses are always welcome whether they are sarcastic or not, and whether I agree with them or not. FWIW, I asked my T to send my final invoice via snail mail and not email, so for that particular matter, I wasn’t trying to get an email out of him. Who knows what crazy tricks my unconscious is playing on me though.

It is great that you are open to people's suggestions and not just defensive.

Your post resonates with some of my own experience and my thought is....

What does him responding to your emails mean to you? I think you need to look beyond the surface and ask yourself what am I really needing/wanting here?

I think one should find a therapist that operates in the way one wishes. There are lots of them out there and it is possible to find those who will respond. It is also possible that therapy is just not the thing for right now.

I honestly have no idea why I get spontaneous intense emotions around the email responses. Like I’ve said repeatedly in many of my posts, I have managed to be very independent in my real life so it sort of freaks me out that it keeps coming back to this. I can actually go for long periods of time not caring about it and then, BAM, I terminate with him and use that as the excuse. Obviously it’s not completely just about the emails. Maybe it’s more about the unilateral decision by my T to retract email responses without even a discussion with me. I felt like I was treated like a misbehaving kid (I never misbehaved as a kid, btw). I feel like he encouraged me to be vulnerable, which I did via email. I know it was probably awkward and not very graceful, but I tried even though it was hard and new and unnatural and completely weird for me, and then when I did, he took email replies away. I guess that felt shameful. It was like he was telling me to be vulnerable, but then when I did, he was thinking, “not like that!” Now, I just feel like he thinks he has me pegged as being undeserving of email responses and there’s nothing I can do to change his mind. I will be the “misbehaving kid” in his mind forever, and I wasn’t trying to do that.

Ok well, thanks for asking the question, I guess. Maybe by replying to your question I might have a little better understanding. I’m open to anyone else’s interpretations because apparently I’m pretty slow at figuring these things out.

I want to be clear, I did not label you with those words, nor do I actually think that. It seems like a really big question to me, what do I want? And you have been clear that you want an email response from your T. Then he refuses to do it anymore, but that doesn't stop the want. What do you do in a relationship when you don't get what you want? That seems like a really big question to me too.

I said "response" to your email. If he sends you the invoice via snail mail as instructed by your email, I think he's "responding" to the email. Maybe that doesn't ping for the "response" you've been dying to get to your email, but I think it is a response, as opposed to him doing nothing-- I don't know, I just saw it that way and tossed it out here. I really don't have any investment in being correct here. I do hope that by ending therapy, you do get what you want, whether that's different therapy or something else that works for you.