Ending well

Hi everyone. I haven’t been around much in the last little while, HCW in the effin’ pandemic and whatnot, but I think about you a lot. 💜

My T will be retiring shortly and I’d love advice and insight from people about ending well or how your T’s retirement went for you.

I have been with this T for nearly 10 yrs and it probably is a good time for me to move on anyway. Which does not mean I feel ready for it or cheerful about it. I‘m grieving the loss hard and feel trepidatious AF. I have been with her through some major changes in that time—like my whole life blowing up kind of major—and she has been my kind, constant, reassuring safe person throughout.

The last few months have been very turbulent because I’ve been trying to tie up all these loose ends and I think I’ve overwhelmed her. (Let me put “tie up loose ends” thru the euphemism-to-English translator for you: I brought up something that happened between us about 2 yrs ago. It has not sat well with me since, though we discussed it at the time and she apologized. I apparently have been unable to really let go and get over it. I wanted to talk about it more because it still held so much intensity for me. In my mind, it stood in the way of me feeling okay about things when we part ways.)

For me, therapy by phone has not been well-suited to working through intense issues about the therapeutic relationship. I think we misread each other a lot. I suspect if she could see me, she’d immediately know I’m in an awful space, but somehow I don’t think she gets that by phone and instead reads me as being difficult. Or else I can’t feel her compassion without seeing it on her face? We have not come through this as well as I’d hoped. Which is to say, we’ve lost some of our ease, trust and closeness with each other. I’m kind of devastated about this. She also seems incredibly distant to me and the more I want her to just be human (which she always has been thus far), the more stiff and clinical she gets.

For nearly an entire decade she has titrated no-expectations-holding-quiet-space, gentle acceptance, clever insight, kick-in-butt, and remember-to-exhale in almost perfect measure. Lately, it’s been kind of ill-timed and out of whack.

Like last week she responded to a moment of exceptional vulnerability (and the result of a lot of work) with an admonishment to do better. I cannot even begin to say how out of character this is for her. It’s hard not to make these moments of misattunement all about me and how I’ve effed up or how she simply can’t stand me now. But I do realize that the world doesn’t happen AT me and You Obviously Hate Me is not the best thing to do with hurt feelings. (See? 10 yrs of therapy in action right there!)

I would really like to end at a nice place with a sense of friendliness and gratitude & an acknowledgment of what we’ve come through together and have meant to each other. (Or at least what she’s meant to me. I’m feeling extremely insecure at the moment about what I might have meant to her.) I’m not sure how to get from here to there. I find that I’ve been bringing up a lot of “this didn’t go well for me” and where previously she’d take that well, even congratulate me for saying it, it now just goes badly every time.

I’d love to hear your thoughts & experiences.

I had a T that I had to end therapy with. She ended up getting MS and wasn't able to continue seeing clients. I had been her client for 10 years at that point. It was very hard to say goodbye because I was very close to her and very attached. In the end though I made the decision to find a new T because she couldn't be reliably there for me. She stayed with me until I found a new T. So there were a few weeks where I would see a new T and then see her or usually just talk to her on the phone because coming to the office was too much for her. The last session was unbelievably hard. I cried (sobbed) the entire time. It was awful. It was good to have a proper goodbye but I was so incredibly sad at having to say goodbye to her. I couldn't imagine never seeing her again. Even now, IDK 3 years later, 2 and a half, something like that, its still painful. I was definitely way too attached.


I like that you'd like to end with an acknowledgement of what you have come through and meant to each other. Maybe you could write her a letter expressing your emotions? I made former T a card and I sent her an exact replica of a little mouse stuffed animal that I would often take to therapy. It was a good way to end.

Just be honest about where you are and what you are feeling. The gloves kinda come off. The changes that happened before, might not be forefront today, and thats okay - you can still be very grateful for them today.

Kinda simplistic, but its still a huge day, like a wedding day - every word is weighted. And things will now be different.

Going forward, would it not be possible to have video sessions instead of phone sessions?

It might make it easier to 'see' one another as you discuss this topic that is close to your heart. Phone feels quite clinical and what with the lack of visual cues highly prone to misunderstandings (or misinterpretation).

I also doubt a T would see a client for 10 years and not have the client mean something to them and/or having had an impact on them. Worth discussing by all means.

When I knew the two I hired were retiring - I just quit going. In my case because both of them would have tried to turn it into a thing and since I had never hired them for that, it saved me a lot of irritation by just stopping. I had no need to witness their weird attempts at reconciling their transition for themselves.
I am sorry it is causing you distress because the therapist can't figure out how to retire properly.

Hi Favorite Jeans! It sounds like a sad time with your T retiring at a time when you’re not able to meet face to face, even though I’m sure you’re right and that you’ll be fine, but still I imagine this is really tough and sad. It’s striking to me how you say that there is so much potential for mis-atunement over the phone. I also agree with this - I’m super sensitive to things like tone and body language, and these things can be missed or misread by phone or even by video call.
I wonder whether since your T is retiring she would make it possible for you to meet face to face before she retires? I realise it might be out of her hands though. Or might she be able to reserve a session or two face to face when that becomes possible, even if it was after her retirement? I realise this will depend on other people’s rules and so it might not be possible, it’s just some thoughts. I think if I were in your place I would make those kind of suggestions to T and explain pretty much what you have explained here. I hope that you manage to bring it all to a good ending. I know from the things you’ve written over the years that this T has been really caring and really helpful, even if right now it’s really difficult to experience that.

The way you describe your T as being distant and stiff and not responding to you as you needed in moments of vulnerability, and that when you bring up stuff it goes badly, is pretty much the same as how my T was in my last 8-9 sessions with her, I tried to fix it with her, but couldn’t. My therapy had been fabulous with her, it helped me so much while I was seeing her. It was a terrible ending, left me in a terrible state. I look back and can’t figure out what I could have done differently. I think the ending is so important - particularly if you’ve been seeing someone as long as you have. Would you consider bringing in a consultant T to help you both sort this out?

I’m so sorry this happened to you too.

It’s never occurred to me to bring someone in to help us out. Is that a thing?

I can’t imagine that there’s anything you could have done differently. That really stood out for me here. That sounds like the kind of thing a parent says about their child (“how could I have missed that she was high all the time?”) not something a client says about their therapy relationship. You say that when you’re the person in the more powerful, responsible role.

But I’ve been feeling that way too: what have I done wrong? How have I messed up? I sent her an email apologizing for having been too blaming toward her recently. I meant it when I wrote it and no doubt I was too blaming.

But if you’d told me last year at this time (OMG I could start many sentences that way lol) that I’d be so abjectly apologetic toward T in an unconscious effort to get her to like me again because she’d been so offended or overwhelmed that I had not been entirely fair in expressing anger toward her? I would absolutely not have believed you. I would have said that I felt secure enough in the relationship and that her ego was so clearly strong enough that such a thing would never be necessary.

And yet here we are.

Thanks Stopdog. Dude. Why can’t she figure out how to retire properly!?

This is kind of priceless. Not just weighted but a little stilted, not totally natural.

I think also, like a wedding, there’s a whole relationship with many defining experiences there regardless of the fanfare around one event.

Yes it is a thing to bring another T in to help out. I’ve never done it, but people on this board have done it. Thanks for what you said about whether I could have done anything differently.

I continue to identify with things you say about your situation. I too believed that my T was strong and secure and that it would be fine to discuss/ reflect on things that happened between us that triggered emotion.

I haven't had a "good ending" with a T--an abrupt ending brought about by me with ex-T and a drawn-out attempt to fix things with ex-MC that concluded with us terminating right at the end of a session. We'll see what happens with my current T (had a bad/abrupt ending due to a rupture, then I ended up going back a couple weeks later, and it's now been 18 months since that). So maybe I'm not the best to advise on this.

But what I'd suggest ties into what Una said. I know you likely feel some pressure to make it a "perfect" ending and to work through/address every conflict or misunderstanding you've had in the past 10 years. But that puts a lot of pressure on you, and, I imagine, on your T. Could you try to just move forward from right now? Not go back into the past so much. (Though I'm sure I'd be tempted to do the same.)


Think about what you might want to sort of wrap up your work together. Could you maybe try to focus on what you've achieved through working with her, like your accomplishments in therapy? To discuss where you are now v. where you started? And sort of also honoring the good parts with your T vs. focusing on the negative?

That sounds really painful. It also sounds like your former T cared about you a lot and tried really hard to ease the transition for you. It’s hard not to get attached.

I am still undecided about further therapy. On the one had therapy is always such a freaking mess and eats up so much energy. And on the other, well, depression is a chronic relapsing/remitting illness for me and I’m trying so hard to stay moderately sane.

Yes. That is largely what I want to do. I honestly had no idea that bringing up this thing that was still bothering me would be such a shytshow. I kind of thought we could deal with and move on.

Essentially she had her daughter come by during my session to pick something up. It seemed largely nonessential/non-emergent and I was upset by that beyond anything reasonable. It happened right after a session in which I’d told her that she occupied a maternal place in my heart and that this was Intense and painful for me. So it seemed to me that in having her daughter show up during my session, she was being pretty insensitive and careless toward me.

When I told her how I felt she apologized but I never really got the sense that she truly understood the degree to which this event had disrupted my sense of trust and safety with her (profoundly). So after having let it rest for a long while I brought it up again because it was still bothering me and it was hard to feel okay about her and about therapy without addressing it.

She really just didn’t get it. She just didn’t seem able to wrap her head around the idea that something like that could hurt me so much. And I felt that her inability to understand that meant that she had no idea of the power she held in my life, even though I’d really tried to tell her.

I think what I really wanted from her was some version, of “wow, I really messed up there.” I got apologies and “if I’d realized it would hurt you I’d have done it differently” but all that mixed in with a lot of stubbornness and flashes of anger and making me take apart what meaning I assigned to it. Eventually I just let it rest. As I saw it, she’d made a huge mistake and I was shocked that she couldn’t just see that and own it.

So that’s the long version. That’s why things feel so raw and difficult.

So I just gave more context to what happened in my reply to LT. I think the surprise for me was that until those terrible few sessions, I truly believed that all that was keeping us from fully healing this issue was my lack of courage in bringing it up. (Because I have a lot of shame for feeling so deeply upset about this and feel that a better version of me would have just been able to let it go.)

I was fully confident that once I brought it up, she’d handle it just great. But instead it was horrible. She wasn’t vulnerable or real at all, she hid behind some stiff, bizarre clinical persona that I’d never before seen. She seemed incredibly irritated by my intense feelings and was quite reactive in a way I’d never known her to be. It was actually quite scary, she was unrecognizable.

So of course I eventually went into frightened kid mode and apologized for everything, trying to get her back.

It’s messed up.

I want to pivot to a warm summative few last sessions. But I’m kind of wary of her now. Which, again, is devastating because this is so different from what I’ve known all along.

I had a similar t-child-appearance - t warned me that his son would be coming to the office with his puppy to pick something up, and would i mind stepping out. I was like, if hes bringing the puppy, i wanna stay!

It was so long ago (altho towards the end of my therapy) that i dont really remember what happened, but i do remember it feeling like a Transactional Analysis Diagram! This person is related to that person, etc etc. Like i could see the relational brainwaves. I felt a little left out from their relationship, but i felt they both recognized my position, i.e., future stepmother to the boy, it could still happen! Plus, really tiny puppy, right?

It sounds very different from what happened with your t and her daughter. Your t was oblivious to her daughters intrusion on your shared space. Big boo-boo on her part. I dont understand why she didnt see that. Sorry for just stating the obvious, but wow.

There is something in how your T is retreating to the clinical, being more distant and detached, that makes me wonder if this ending isn't painful for her, too. That does not make it OK, not at all. She has an ethical and human obligation to be present, caring, connected, and to make room for all of your feelings in this space up until the very end. But her reaction seems more human to me than clinical, honestly. Like she may be guarding her own heart a little here, and is also trying to "hurry up" therapy and get you to a place of independence, so she doesn't have to feel bad about ending the therapy prematurely.

Of course, that's not how it works, she's going about it all wrong. But there is something in her reactions to you, and the shift, that feels defensive and protective to me. I think it's possible she is having some FEELINGS that she has not adequately processed and that she is letting influence how she shows up. I'm not sure if that perspective helps or not, because her actions are still painful, but maybe it helps to think of them as coming from a place of anticipatory grief and loss for her, too?

This helps a lot.

It also rings true. She first told me she was retiring a year and a half ago when I said, toward the end of a session, “it’s weird but I feel like you’re pushing me on this, like you’re trying to rush me. It’s not like you. What’s up?”

Apart from disclosing that she was retiring, she said she wanted to leave me in a good place.

Maybe we both need to acknowledge (or figure out) that you can end well without working out every little thing. That there will always be stuff and that’s the nature of life.

I hate when I can't find the post that I wanted to respond to. But, I thought that this might help a little in terms of depression.

Anyway, I wanted to mention that TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) is a non-invasive treatment for depression. And you do not have to be in therapy while receiving this treatment.

A doctor in my area does this. Here is some information from his practice: TRANSCRANIAL MAGNETIC STIMULATION (TMS) & THETA BURST STIMULATION (TBS) – Advanced Psychiatric Therapeutics

I had a similar thing going on with my ex-T, except it was more pronounced in our relationship: we had a number of ruptures that never quite healed, the last one (or rather, attempts to somehow fix or at least understand it) taking up the last 3-4 months of my therapy with her (after which I gave up and terminated) plus another 2-3 months of trying to look back and understand a little later. Yes I was stupidly desperate to fix, if not the relationship then at least how I can think of it. It was ultimately a failure, and even now, almost a year later, I'm still not 'over' it.

And it was mainly the 'not getting it' part that made it worse and worse and worse. And that stiff clinical persona you mention elsewhere. She did get vulnerable every now and then, and that helped when it happened, but I feel kind of guilty and ashamed of saying that because, in hindsight, it was probably not a controlled thing but something I wasn't really supposed to see. And she never got curious about why I was so hurt

Oh, and the 'frightened kid' mode trying to get her back. And failing, of course, because the 'angry kid' was always nearby, ready to jump at every perceived threat, and the therapist tended to get into fights with that one rather than trying to help (or notice at all) the 'frightened' part. Utter rejection.

Anyhow, another thing that seems likely in hindsight, that it wasn't really 'not getting it', but kind of getting it on a cognitive level, but for whatever reason she couldn't cope with the realisation. Like, as my new T pointed out, using words that she 'retraumatised' me, but apparently failing to acknowledge the weight of that, and her responsibility in it. And she revealed stuff that lets me have some guesses as to why it might have been difficult for her, but all very vague and sometimes contradictory, so ultimately unsatisfying, and it seems pointless to even try to get a confirmation.

So your situation might be a milder version of this? Maybe your T is more aware that she ****ed up than she lets on? Or disappointed in herself that maybe she didn't do as well as she hoped? Or just can't figure out how to retire properly, lol.

Seeing how badly I handled my thing, I probably shouldn't give advice, but what did work for me in terms of last sessions (two singular ones) was to
1. write out any frustration / anger (that was likely to get out of hand if trying to repress it in session) in email (while also explaining what I'm trying to achieve), and with that (somewhat) out of the way
2. imagine what I'd do in a few weeks (after getting through the despair) in order to salvage as much of the wreck as possible, and try to focus on doing a bit of that in the last session.

If that makes sense. Obviously, your situation and your needs are different. But if your T responds well to emails, that might be an easier way to get your point across. Even if she doesn't, for me it was worth saying / writing down some things even when they obviously went unheard, just for the experience of having done it and the world still standing.

Of course, it helped that she probably also tried to make the most of these last sessions and maybe made extra effort to not get defensive? There was one thing I said in the very last session that only hit me afterwards just how badly that could have gone. It's always up to both parties, I guess, the good and the bad.

BTW, semi-random oddity: no experience with xT's family showing up, but I had a nightmare in which someone showed up in my session, my best guess being that it was her daughter (but she denied, then somehow turned into a monster)