It hurts all the time

Also thinking of you comrade.

Thank you SlumberKitty. Talking here is proving really valuable, it helps a great deal that people here seem to understand how painful and impossible this feels. Equally, it's sometimes quite difficult for me to read posts here. Reading people's experiences of being in active therapeutic relationships highlights what I have lost - the good and the bad bits.

Yes, I definitely see the potential benefit of contacting her for more information. However, part of my hesitancy is that I know one email exchange would not be enough for me. I would want to continue to engage with her (either to argue or to hurt her or to try and process how I am feeling) and I know that she would not respond to something ongoing. I am also very afraid that she wouldn't respond at all. Reaching out to her only to be ignored feels far too risky and I want to protect myself from further abandonment - or from the confirmation that she has indeed really gone.

I don't trust that she will make contact again and even if she does contact me, there is no indication that her intention would be to continue work with me (even in the form of providing an ending). As such, I feel that I need to arrive at some certainty for myself as there is so much ambiguity surrounding what has happened. Part of that certainty is to draw some lines for myself. I want her back, desperately, but I can't tolerate the tantalising possibility of contact from her. It is also in my nature to cut off and avoid and that survival response has kicked in (thankfully - it feels safe).

Also, I am very aware that one or two termination sessions would not be enough time for me to process all of this. She always stated that when we agreed to end the work, we would have six months to work towards ending the relationship because we had worked so deeply and intimately. Ha.

Thank you for posting this, I found it really moving. Your experience sounds very similar to mine. I am sorry you were hurt in this way. It's brutal.

I think I can begin to see some relief or benefit to the relationship having ended. As you say, I would not have been able to end it myself but now that I am distanced from it, I feel released from it. I always knew that how she worked with me was borderline unprofessional, and at times outright unethical, but there was also something enthralling about that. My young parts loved her loving me (or at least her messed up version of that) because they are so starved of love.

Thank you everyone for checking back in with me. I don't know how I am doing really. I haven't yet found anyone I am happy to work with, although I am trying sessions with the therapist she referred me to. I don't feel any connection with her, she irritates me, she's not C, she wears stupid glasses, but she seems relatively professional and we have looked at a few useful things. Today, I was supposed to meet with the grief specialist I had contacted, but she didn't send me the Zoom link so, yeah ...

At the moment, I am aware of being in a very ambiguous place. She's not dead, but I feel bereaved. The work has ended without an ending. We are out of contact but there is the spectre of potential contact in the future. I am trying to process what's happened, but I feel out of step with what has happened. Of course, ambiguity was a big part of the relationship all along so it makes sense that it is present now, as dreadful as it feels.

I keep saying thank you, but thank you to all of you. This makes a difference for me.

I can't figure out a word to describe her that wouldn't get censored right away. But yeah, all of those words!!!

Yes! I can totally relate to this. And it's like a ghost haunting you. It's not fair that other people still get to see her. It's not fair that her life gets to go on. Grieving someone who isn't dead is extremely difficult because there is no closure. And it's extremely confusing to the mind. (At least that's how I experienced it.)

All your feelings are valid. Your experience is real. What happened was not right or okay.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScarletPimpernel ...Grieving someone who isn't dead is extremely difficult because there is no closure. And it's extremely confusing to the mind. (At least that's how I experienced it.) All your feelings are valid. Your experience is real. What happened was not right or okay.

I strongly agree ^^^.

I agree with this post. I can relate.

I think this feeling is normal and expected. I experienced this exact thing with my ex. One day he's there, the next he's just poof, gone with no further contact. But he's not dead. It's been very difficult grieving that loss. I feel a lot of empathy for what you're going through with your therapist.

I understand your feeling of being "released" from it. I felt that in a way after leaving ex-MC. That was different, in that we weren't forced to leave, but with the last rupture with him, after trying for a few months to repair (or just go on as before), it just seemed like the relationship had broken down. Like I couldn't get the same feeling from looking at him that I once could or the same sort of comfort.

I also think I would have had a lot of trouble leaving the relationship had the rupture not happened. And it caused a fair amount of distress at times due to the limitations of it. I felt trapped in a way.

Granted, I shifted some of that onto my current T, but it's still different. I'm not crying driving home from his office like I often did from ex-MC's because the hour of feeling connected and accepted and understood for the week was over, and I was back out in the real world. (I do cry sometimes at being back in the real world now, but it's different.)

I know your relationship with your T was very complex, with a considerable amount of conflict, but also a high level of attachment. And it can be very hard to break those bonds on one's own.

It's such a deep kind of grief, and made so much worse (in my opinion) by how disenfranchised it is. She's not dead, she's not an ex romantic partner or long time close friend. Which many people see as a more "legitimate" grief. Heck, even therapy-goers (who are unfamiliar with attachment wounds and depth therapy) might not understand...

I'm so sorry you're hurting. I don't know much about your work with her but I know it was deep. She left you mid "open heart surgery" in such a callous way.

I know I'd be devastated if I was in a similar situation. I'm reminded of "@here today" who used to post here about their T had basically ended therapy very abruptly too.

Oh Comrade, a year ago today I could have written your last post word for word, and know only too well the immense pain and confusion that it causes. I am so desperately sorry that you are going through this, and I am not sure that I have many words of consolation. We too were supposed to have six months and then, poof, just gone. No gravestone to visit. No closure. 4 months after the event I did have a termination session, and it helped. Massively. At the time I hated it because I didn't feel like I had enough time to go through everything that needed saying, but having her sit there and listen as I vented my anger and my hurt and my pain did help. Only because she accepted it, and apologised. And that isn't guaranteed, sadly.
Personally, I would push for it though. If not you asking, maybe this new therapist. Can they contact her and ask WFT professional to 'professional'? (in MASSIVE inverted commas because how she has gone about this is far from professional). I think most decent therapists know the importance of an ending, even if an ending is NOT what is wanted.

I know I am also lucky in other ways, as after that termination session we have stayed in some form of contact. Just the odd one line message every two weeks or so but God has it helped me to get to the place I am now. I still have days where I miss her like nothing I have ever known before, but there are also better days, where I can see a future and I can see the sunlight.

I get the sense that you had a turbulent relationship with your Ex T, I don't think many people with attachment and trauma wounds would say that they didn't, but it must make it really difficult for you, and again, I am so sorry that you are in that position, not having had any time to work any of this through with her. Not knowing. Not understanding. All the feelings and no idea what to do with any of them. I don't really know what to say, other than I really hope that you can find a way through this to a better place. Take care of yourself...

I am so sorry that you are going through this. Grief over the sudden ending of a therapy relationship is very similar to bereavement. It's another kind of loss after all.

"One of the things I am finding difficult about working with someone else is knowing what I want. Overwhelming, I want them to be her and to know me like she did, for us to be as connected as I was with her and her with me. Ridiculous and impossible."

Yes, exactly this ^^^. There is nothing so gut wrenching as desperately wanting a new T to be just like the old one. Feeling that same connection, wanting to hear the same tone of voice, the same phrases. But it never is the same, and that takes a hell of a lot of getting used to.

Endings with no proper closure can be traumatic, and hard to deal with on top of whatever it was that took you into therapy in the first place.

Time will heal, eventually..... but it's whether you can live with feeling how you're feeling in the interim. If the not knowing is just going to drive you berserk, then maybe you need to make contact and ask for an explanation, a closure session, whatever you feel would help (you might not get it of course, but at least you will have tried). If you think you can live with not knowing why, then let it lie and try not to let it consume you. Only you know how bad its making you feel and what would be the best course of action for you.

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