I still suffer from complicated feelings towards my therapist after termination

My T terminated me abruptly last September and from one week to another I couldn´t see her any more.

I´d say my feelings towards her and what she did to me, abandoning me, haven´t subsided although half a year has passed. My feelings range from anger to love and I feel jealous and angry when I think about she´s married and that she has love and caring in her life.


It´s not that I don´t think she´s worth it but I´m still angry as she left me in my loneliness. Therapy should have been one path to make me feel better and to come out of loneliness and she just left.

I´m angry about I can´t send her a letter and get a response at the same time as I don´t want to write a letter and telling her how she has hurt me.

Does anyone feel similar as I do about their former therapist?

Hey sarah. I think your feelings are probably quite normal given what you’ve been thru. The ending of therapy can be difficult under the best of circumstances so an abrupt ending is just unethical in my books.

Can you write her a letter expressing everything you’re feeling and needing? I’m not saying send it. But get all those feelings out on paper...and once you’ve written it you can decide if you want to send it.

Would you also consider working with another therapist to continue the work you started and also help you process this loss and the accompanying grief?

I hope you get some healing and peace in all of this.

Yes. I lost mine in december, he quit the industry so there's no hope of me updating or anything for 2 years.

it really sucks, mostly i love him and miss him, but sometimes i am really upset that he left, it feels like he didnt care

Yes, I feel the same, even after more than 2.5 years post termination.

I believe based that the rejection and abandonment by my last therapist replicates events and situations in my early life experience -- but that doesn't change the damage from the therapy. It's not just "re-traumatization". It's trauma in its own right, of its own.

The therapy evoked those early longings, then replicated the abandonment and rejection just as cruelly as the original. And this was by society's licensed, supposedly trained and educated "helpers"! The people in my early life were just that -- people with flaws and foibles. Blaming parents for children's difficulties and then just -- what they have done in my life is far worse IMO.

So, then -- how forward? Some people have found help and support with subsequent therapists. I'm not, myself, going to try that again. I have found some help and support in peer groups and have been lucky enough in recent years to be able to find that. I know it's not always easy or possible.

Yes I feel the same aswell. Mine didn't abandon me as such and gave me 6 weeks notice, although I do feel so abandoned by her.
Feelings range from missing her to hurt and angry. Also I feel like I take one step forward in dealing with the loss to ten steps backwards.
It's been 2mths of just hell!!!

When my first therapist abandon me 9 years ago i felt abandon for a few years. It is hard and i was very angry at her for abandoning me after seeing her for 7yr. There is no time limit on this and it does hurt like hell sometimes i feel hurt still hugs

Quote:

Originally Posted by SarahSweden My T terminated me abruptly last September and from one week to another I couldn´t see her any more.

Did she give you a reason for termination?

Quote:

I´d say my feelings towards her and what she did to me, abandoning me, haven´t subsided although half a year has passed. My feelings range from anger to love and I feel jealous and angry when I think about she´s married and that she has love and caring in her life.

I can see why you would feel this way.

Thanks. Yes, I did write such a letter a while ago but it made me more upset and angry knowing that if I´d sent it, she wouldn´t respond to it. I haven't got access to therapy, I´ve been waiting for two years to see a therapist within public health care and that was why I contacted this former and alternative therapist who then abandoned me.

Thanks for your support on this.

Thanks. I totally agree to what you say about therapy being retraumatizing in some cases. It´s not spoken about that much and especially not by the therapists themselves.


In Sweden where I live there are some psyhcologists who study negative effects from therapy but there´s still not enough written about it. It can easily become another abandonment, another trauma, another grief that adds to the client´s issues.

Thanks. Yes, she exceeded their session limit and when her supervisor found out, the supervisor told my therapist to end our contact immediately. But my therapist has a large part in this as she more or less lied to me and during our contact she told me I could see her for as long as I needed.


I believed her and that she had established the length of therapy with her supervisor but that was never the case. She felt for me and wanted me well but she couldn´t handle the fact that she also needed to stick to their rules and said she found it hard to tell me we needed to end therapy. By that, she just kept going until we had had almost 40 sessions and her supervisor found out.

She was reckless in that sense even if she didn't plan it would end this way. But she knew about the session limit from the beginning and she should never had encouraged me to dig deeper into my issues, nor should she have told me I could see her for as long as I needed as it was never true.

Hi SarahSweden,

My heart bursts when I see this kind of scenario unfold. However much suffering you are going through, just remind yourself that it will get better in time! I know sometimes it feels that it won't especially after so long! But it does subside.

This happened to me once! It devastated me for about a year and played a role in my attempted suicide. There is a grieving process that we must go through and that looks different for everyone. I recommend looking up the grief and loss process; perhaps recognizing the similarities with your predicament could shed light on what you are going through and provide some much need self-validation.

As hard as it is, just remember that this feeling you have, this loss - it is okay. It means that you loved your therapist dearly and it makes sense why you would be so hurt. However you need to process it, let it out. Tell us how you feel. Tell us the anger and the rage that you feel - the abandonment, the loneliness. Share it! We know how it feels and we will help you.

I wish there was an easy fix to fast forward this process. I also struggle with the resentment towards my abusers when it is I who am suffering and they are out there enjoying life. Life is unfair. So unfair. We don't deserve to feel the way we do and yet we have to take responsibility for our burdens and somehow strive forward. Sitting in our yuk isn't conducive to healing if that is all we do. I know I had to force myself to get up and make new friends and new memories. (Still trying). It is easier said than done, but the worst thing we can do is allow our therapist who abandoned us to interfere with our present moment. Grieving is something we all go through, but it is important to seek out and replace lost supports. Otherwise we risk further suffering.

At some point in time, you will look back on this experience and learn a whole heck of a lot from it. About the world, about relationships, about people. And it won't hold so much weight. You will safely say that it was but one chapter in your life and from that point forward - you approached relationships with others in a different way.

I hope this isn't painful to read or triggering. You are not alone. Harness the pain - it is inevitable part of life and loss. You are bound by the same human condition that we are and we can connect on that.

Have you sought out support groups for grief? Sometimes that can help.

Thanks,
HD7970ghz

Hi SarahSweden, I hear you. I still have lots of complicated feelings about ending therapy with my T back in Sept. I hear you. HUGS Kit

Thanks for your supportive answer. I´m sorry to hear how you also suffered from a similar reason and because of what your therapist did to you? Did he/she terminate you abruptly?

I both grieve and try to create some distance to it all, I think one of the hardest parts is that it´s so unfair. My therapist is married, she´s employed, she has colleagues and so on and she doesn´t suffer as I do. It was ME she should help, not create more pain.

I find it especially hard to know she´s got love and intimacy, probably because I went to therapy partly because I've never had that. Now I know she already has all that, she has found someone to live with many years ago.

I also often think about if she thinks about me or if she has just kept on seeing new clients. I though not think she´ll ever be in the same situation as with me as she said they had never had a similar situation at that clinic (church). She had never seen a client for as long as she saw me and that makes me think she still might think about me.

I´ve had a similar longing and grief about a former therapist some years ago and even if I still can feel a bit of sorrow about our ending it happens very rarely.

I haven´t looked for support groups but I´m hoping to get access to therapy but I still don´t know when I´ll start. I also think all those termination cases are rare in a broader perspective and grief for a therapist is not so easy for others to understand. I now mean people who haven´t been in therapy.

I cant believe your therapist was like that. Its so mean and unprofessional not to mention an ethical tight rope if you ask me. I am sorry you are going through this.

Thanks. Yes, I have ambivalent feelings towards what she did as she told me that she needed supervision for it and that she doesn´t herself know why she couldn´t tell me we had to end therapy within the session limit. Within those 20 sessions that is.


I don´t think she meant to be mean but she acted recklessly and she must have understood that some day or the other her supervisor would find out. I just hope she has also felt bad about it but it hurts me to know that it won´t affect her nearly as much as I´m affected.

As you say, in an ethical sense this is way out of line and under other circumstances I could have filed a complaint. But what is now is only to try to bear the sorrow and process it all so I can think of her without feeling anger and frustration.