Afraid of terminating therapy

Hi everyone,
I've been in therapy for depression for almost 7 yrs now and I have made lots of progress. I'm terrified to stop seeing my psychotherapist. I know this day will come soon or later... I feel I will never be ready for that. Is there anyone who can share with me his/her experience with this. I'm afraid I will feel so lonely...

I am sorry, I have not been in therapy for 7 years. But during my teenage years and into my early 20's I went to see a psychologist on and off for about 5 years. And you know what, if you are not ready to quit therapy dont. As long as you feel you are making progress then continue! If going to therapy makes you feel better, if it helps you survive or live a better life then why worry about how long you have gone!

Sarah, I was in therapy for 9 years and terminated because I had to move and change jobs. BUT, 9 years after that, I felt I needed therapy again and relocated my therapist and went to see her for another 9 years, 1996-2005. This time, everything got resolved well and we spent 14+ months just working on the termination process.

It is very hard work but not impossible and you can't tell what the future will hold. I'm 57 now and doing great; healthy, wealthy, and wise

I don't plan on terminating therapy. I feel that once I have reached that point

Sarah, you don't have to end your therapy.

Thank you for your replies . I should have mentioned that I'm Canadian and in my country, health care is insured and paid by our taxes and that it is the psychiatrist who determine that you are well enough to be on your own now...The psychotherapist is member of your care team along with the psychiatrist, the nurse, and the psychologist. I think this explains why It's not me who will decide when to terminate... I don't know if the psychiatrist asks the team if they agree with his decision to terminate the appointments.

As bad as the shape of the medical care in the US, I am glad we don't have national health care. Its bad enough an insurance company telling us what they will cover and then cutting fees of our providers but at least I have the opportunity to make choices and still have some level of coverage.
Can you continue to see you t outside the system?

But without thinking about all that, you are in a different place now then you will be later. And later is not now, so try to stay in the present and get as much as you can out of it.
I look back to where I was when my depression first hit and where I am now. I am no where near well enough to stop therapy but I have come so far.

To soothe your worries you should bring this up to your t; he/she may be able to explain the process and your options once its time.

I fear having to come off my meds - which will be years in the future and I have mentioned this to my pdoc. She took me through the process and while I'm not completely comfortable with it I understand it and that helps.

But in the end, just remember to breathe!

Sarah, talk to your therapist; I'm sure they also ask for your input! My therapist retired, not a whole lot I can do about that, but it was not a sudden happening or situation. If you need a longish period of time to work on termination, I'm sure your team will factor that in. You won't be thrown out on the street the next day :-)

Sarah,
I know exactly how you are feeling. I've been in counseling for 2 years. I am not only attached to my T, I feel like I won't be able to cope without his support. I can't imagine not ever seeing him again. I get weepy just typing it. I pay for my counseling out of pocket. He feels it's unethical to keep a client hanging on. He feels you teach them until their are strong enough then you let them go. I feel if I'm willing to keep paying you, you should be there for me as long as I need you. We haven't even discussed terminating and I'm not anywhere near it, but I'm already concerned about it.

This is so hard.

I just read an article on this site called "Terminating Treatment: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do". Unfortunately, I fit right into the textbook cases cited. My T has been extremely professional, and deals with my termination anxieties appropriately. What has led to the upcoming termination (end of March), after about 8 years, is her belief that she can no longer be of any help to me. My love for her has superseded my interest in solving other issues in my life. My primary purpose in attending our sessions has been as an oasis of sorts, a place to try to feel good, to have a beloved “friend”. Her stated purpose is to help me help myself through my issues; to find my way through life without her.

My love for my T has severely hampered the ability to succeed more thoroughly in therapy. She strongly recommends that I see a male T, if only to deal with the pain I experience as I obsessively think of my life after therapy, living without my beloved T. The thought of losing her feels so similar to the pain of my mother’s death, 40 years ago. My T and I see the parallels, but that doesn’t ease the anguish. I am depressed, can focus on almost nothing else, don’t have joy, want to die in my sleep. If only my T would agree to try being friends with me once our sessions have terminated, I tell her and myself, I could deal with life’s foibles and let difficulties roll off my back. I no longer idealize her; I see she is not perfect. I hope she will miss me as I will miss her. Oh, this is so textbook, I know. But of course she does not agree to be my platonic friend, for reasons unexplained to me, and won’t even allow me to take a photo of her as a keepsake. I am dying inside. I feel so pathetic, like a corny soap opera. Sometimes suicidal thoughts are pervasive. Other times I am able to distract myself with silly entertainments. But focusing on what is important to my life has lost its appeal. Almost nothing matters except being with her.

I was in therapy for a little over seven years. 'We had a good working relationship. He was kind and listened and seemed very caring, but it ended badly and abruptly last September.

I thought I would die at first. I thought I would not be able to go on without him I thought I would get worse and end up hospitalized forever. I thought there was no hope for me.

But things haven't been too bad. In some ways things are a lot better. I don't have therapy anxiety anymore and don't have to worry about him anymore. I actually make myself get out of bed now even though I still struggle with horrible depression and severe anxiety. In some ways I feel as though I have a real life now, not depending on someone like I was. I'm depending on myself to get by and messed up as I am, I'm still around and more engaged with life than I was when I was seeing him.

I think in some ways I got so caught up in HIM and what he would think and say and how he cared about me and this relationship that we had that I wasn't living my own life. Now I am and it's very, very, very freeing. It really is.

So what I'm trying to say is you can be ok afterwards. I had a bad ending and I'm ok. I imagine you could be even better if you have a good ending.

Hello puzzle_bug1987,

Thank you for the pep talk. I need to remember things like that. I also need to remember that I had life before therapy, and I will have a life afterwards too. But it's not the therapy per se that I will miss, it will be my T. I still don't know how I fell so adoringly in love with her. Somehow I talked myself into it, I believe. If you know the old song by The Police, "I Can't Stand Losing You", that pretty much says it.

Yes, I loved my therapist too. Very much. But that relationship is over and the love is fading fast. I won't see him ever again and I have to let go and move on.

It's not built into a national health care system that we don't get to make that choice. My therapy is funded by public health and I can continue as long as I need to. My pdoc/T does not make that choice, I do.

But that is a side issue, I just wanted to clear up the point. Sarah, I think bringing it up with your T while it is still a future event is a good idea. This is something that is really hard for many clients, so your therapist will hopefully be able to help you work through this fear.

I find even the time between each session hard to bear, sometimes. So I definitely understand the fear of termination. I think that even if it is our own choice it can be really difficult.

I think it will leave a hole in my heart that may never heal, at least not for a very long time.

My previous T, whom I have not seen for almost two years, I think about daily. I miss her very much.

I've been in therapy for about 6 months now.... I returned to my therapist after 9 years. There were some issues which I discussed and opened up about, with my therapist. I'm going through a period in my life where I need some support.... in fact he tells me I don't have any serious issues... but I still feel the need to go. The fact that I know I will soon might need to end them, is bothering me!!! I look forward to those regular sessions:-(((

I really understand. I have not yet terminated in my own therapy but of course I know I must. I have had many times in my life where I felt a hole in my heart after someone left. I plan to talk to my T about my termination this week and I'm dreading it, but it also helps me bring clarity about the process.

Here's a realization that came out as I wrote this two days ago. Read it all the way to the end and you'll get the connection:

The Pain of Termination

When I was a young boy and was ill or scraped a knee, my mother would sit on the edge of my bed and sing to me. The song was about hope for a better future, a better life. She’s been dead forty years as of this January 10th. I was 20 at the time. I’m 60 now, so I’ve lived two additional lifetimes since then. I am more than 10 years older than she was when she died. She sang in a soft, melodic, sad voice, and it was just for me. (I just broke down and cried as I wrote that.) … and it was just for me. It was so sweet. It was the embodiment of love. She was telling me that I will be alright. There is hope, there is love, you will feel better soon. I remember feeling the chilled sweat of a fever, but knew I would be better soon, because my mother loved me. She stroked my forehead, and sang to me. I have no idea if she sang that to any of my three siblings (I should ask them one day), but during those pained, shivering moments she was there just for me.

I have no recollection of her singing to me when my feelings were hurt or I felt sad. Physical pain and illness merited the song, but emotional pain somehow never received the same solace. It was as if it didn’t require the same degree of care to heal. So emotional pain found its own way to heal. Something hurt my feelings, made me “feel bad”, and didn’t get the same caring and love as physical maladies. I suppose I could have intentionally injured myself to garner that special attention, but I didn’t go in that direction. The route I took was to “cure” my emotional pain by converting it to anger. “I feel bad. Why don’t you care? I hate you! I hate you!! How do you like that?! There, now maybe you feel just as bad as I do!” I didn’t say those things, but that is where I believe my mind went. “Emotional pain isn’t worthy of your love? Then I will hurt your feelings. I will show you how I feel.” But that anger didn’t have the kind of impact that I intended. Instead of my mother reeling from pain and sympathy, she struck out at me for being so angry and rude. Because she couldn’t read my mind, she couldn’t possibly understand that I felt hurt. She didn’t know why I was so angry. It must have seemed to her that I was striking out for “no good reason”. That I was being irrational. And I was being irrational. I didn’t learn how to express my hurt feelings in a way that would gain others’ sympathy. “You should know that I feel bad,” I am guessing was the undercurrent of my mind. “Why can’t you see my pain?” I barely knew why I felt hurt, and didn’t know how to say things like, “You’re making fun of me, and that hurts my feelings.” Even now I don’t express those feelings well. My first reaction is still to translate pain to anger, and anger to angry words. And it still does not gain me any sympathy. Quite the opposite.

I have been under the impression that my psychotherapy would end when it felt right for me to end it. It seems like a natural progression: I started therapy when I felt the need for it, and I should end it when I feel somehow completed, finished, no longer need or want it. Now I’m facing a kind of forced termination of therapy. My therapist has decided she can not help me any more than she has, so she has set a termination date about six months after she first brought up the subject. She set the date almost three months after bringing up the “t” word. I didn’t have any say in the matter. Now that we’re less than two months away from the finale, I don’t feel at all ready. I feel that the decision was taken away from me. I feel “dumped”, like she has finally, after all these years of therapy, grown tired of me. “There’s still so much to talk about,” I argue with her and with myself. “I know this can’t go on forever, but I’m not ready. You can’t leave me like this. I have more I need to know. I need to know more about myself, and I need to know more about you. I know I’ve missed some very important points you’ve tried to make. Make the points again. I’ll listen more intently this time. I need more time!”

That’s where I stand today. She acknowledges my pain, that’s true. She let’s me know that she is very aware how difficult this is for me. She’s almost like my mother, who knew me so well, but never well enough. If I had some more time with her, I could be a better man. I might be able to understand love more, if only I could be the one to decide when it’s over. Not yet. Not before I say so. I don’t know how much longer, but I know that this is too soon. Don’t die so soon. Stay with me. I’ll be good. I can help you get better. I can be there for you. I can love you better than I ever have, better than anyone. You’ll see. You can love me better too. You’ll get to see more of me, you’ll get to see I’m better than you think I am. It’ll be good for both of us. You’ll see. It’s too soon. I’m dying inside and you don’t want to stay longer and help me. Tell me I’ll be OK. Tell me you’ll be there for me if I need you. I’ll be there for you if you need me. I would have been there for you if you told me you were sick and wanted me to be there for you like you were always there to make me better when I was sick. Don’t leave me like this. NO! NOT YET!! I’m not ready. You don’t understand the emotional pain I feel. If I hurt my physical body you’ll know. But I hide my pain from you, so you don’t see the pain, so you don’t know it. So you’re ready to leave me, but I’m not ready to leave you. I AM NOT READY!!!!! Don’t you dare. You’re not ready either. You weren’t ready. You were too young, too unfinished with your life. I wasn’t ready for you to go. I still needed you. You still needed me. I still need you!!!!