It hurts all the time

It hurts all the time. Almost six weeks since my last session with her, five weeks since the email, and it still hurts all the time.

I feel hopeless. I need an ending. I miss her, gut deep yearning for her. She knows me, she said she loves me. She said beautiful and intimate things to me. She was cold in her email, suddenly and without obvious reason. I am confused and shocked.

I dread her contacting me in the future. I don't want the hope that she could be available again, it's too painful. I want this to have not happened and that is impossible.

This pain is deep hooked, shame cored. It feels targeted and punitive. Young me knows this kind of abandonment in her belly and bones. I am struggling to keep pace with everyday life, adult and aware.

I know her coldness and flippancy. I have encountered her unprofessional responses and casual cruelties before, but not like this. I regret accepting the previous ruptures as part of our work together because they weren't ok. They weren't reparative and this rejection isn't ok.

I want her back. More than anything, I want her back. Her hands, her voice, being known by her. I feel heartbroken.

So deeply sorry for you. Your ex t is such a huge bs artist. Did she ever even explain anything else than the "time off" thing? Do you have any new councelling contact now to discuss this? I don't know if it helps at all, but even with no proper ending it will start to sting a little less slowly. Time will work, just too slowly for our taste

Thank you. I haven't had any other explanation or communication with her. She sent the email saying that she needed time off and that has been that. Several people have said I should contact her to ask for more information (I didn't reply to her email), but it feels too risky. I am frightened of her potential reply and also of the potential for a non-response.

I have had a few sessions with a couple of other therapists, including the therapist she named as a referral, but I am finding it hard to work with them. The therapist she used as a referral had no knowledge of the referral, was last in contact with her five years ago and has been very vocal about her behaviour being unethical and retraumatising. This in itself feels bizarre - for the referral therapist to be so disparaging of her. Maybe reality is dawning on me and the realisation is hard to go through.

I hope things will start to ease. I have already seen some shift. I don't feel as angry or nasty all the time in the way I did initially. Now I feel sadness. Hopefully things will move again.

Hugs, if wanted. I know I'd be feeling exactly the same if this happened to me. It's so wrong for her to do that to you. Unethical. And I'm sorry.

I think you'd mentioned possibly seeing another T? Did you end up doing that? Wondering how it went.

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.

Even if I can move past that, I don't know how to switch to working with someone else so suddenly and without closure. Am I there to process the immediate hurt of the termination or to unpack how to re-enacts my childhood experiences of abandonment and neglect? To do the latter (which feels like the fundamental hurt), I need to open up and expose my vulnerabilities with someone new. I don't want to do that.

It feels such a mess. I don't know how to process and move forward without the ending I should have had with her. And yet I also don't know how to work through this without support.

It feels unnatural and in many ways I feel like I am arriving at someone else's door as a loaded client.

I can relate to you, and I empathize with you. I didn't get any closure from my ex-T. And she's been haunting me since. I send her an unaddressed letter every year on the anniversary. It's been almost 7.5 years. I also relate to feeling like "a loaded client" to my T. And I was. I actually told T I hated her at one point. She even was helping me look for another T. I wound up staying with her though. I think the turning point for me was when I realized I could never trust ex-T again because up until then I fantasized being able to go back to her.

I say she's haunted me, AND over time it has gotten a lot better. I only survived thanks to T and this forum.

What happened, you didn't deserve. You didn't do anything wrong. As L says: your job as a client is to show up and be open and honest. That's it.

And your reactions are normal reactions to an abnormal event. It's traumatic what you are going through. And I'm sorry you are forced to have to go through it.

Hugs

Thank you, Scarlet. I remember you talking about sending her yearly letters and I was thinking about it the other day. I really understand it. I can see the appeal and the healing quality of it. I like that you do it and I like that you haven't disappeared from her horizon.

I have had fantasies about turning up at her door and not leaving. I don't imagine being aggressive or destructive, but being immovable and solid in such a way that she can't ignore me. It seems like a similar thing, albeit more intrusive than your letters, but then I suspect I am a more hostile being than you are!

I'm really sorry about all of this. What an awful, gut-wrenching experience. A betrayal, in some ways, and I'm sorry it's been difficult to find solid ground again. From my armchair psychologist position, I think one path forward -- if you choose to keep going with therapy -- would be to find somebody who can help you process the intense, shocking loss of the situation. How to function, how to make sense of things. Basically grief counseling. Then gradually you can make more connections to the deeper layers. Really, anybody worth doing this work with will know about the re-enactment of childhood pain without you saying a word, based on the connection you had with her and the loss you feel.

I started to see a second therapist after a somewhat retraumatizing situation with my therapist, although nothing even closer to this scale of pain, and it's been helpful that she has been fairly neutral. A new T would likely want to validate how not okay your therapist's behavior has been, but maybe you can cut that off before it starts so you can have space to make sense of the narrative yourself. It's not going to be easy, but I hope you can find a way to move forward from how gutted you must feel right now.

comrade, I am so, so sorry that you're going through this. Honestly, I think that somehow the entire dynamic of psychotherapy needs to change. People's lives can be ruined by an ineffective therapist, and that is - if anything - unethical. I don't have answers, but I sure know what the problem is.

Thank you, ElectricManatee. It does feel like a betrayal, not just of my trust and our intimacy, but of my boundaries. I did not agree to work with her in such a flippant, careless way. She has moved our relationship into an unprofessional sphere. I am also aware that despite her overstepping my boundaries, I am still respecting hers - I am not contacting her or pushing for information. Part of this is fear about what I would get back, but part of this is also being a good girl and not making a fuss. I can feel that this might change.

Thank you for highlighting the grief aspect. It has prompted me to contact someone who specialises in grief and loss.

I am having lots of thoughts about the inherently painful manner of psychotherapy and whether it's healthy for me at all. I don't feel robust enough for it and I am not sure I ever was - probably demonstrated by my drive to fight her throughout the relationship. Fight as a defense. Anyway, thank you Beth.

So sorry you're going through this.

I don't think it was at all appropriate for her to tell you she loves you and other intimate things and then abruptly end the relationship.

I'm so sorry. I feel so upset for you and angry on your behalf that she told you those things and gained your trust (possibly well intentioned at the time) only to end things abruptly in an email. I'm not surprised you're in so much pain. I echo what Beth said that it's so unethical and something needs to change. I know I speak of therapy positively but I absolutely appreciate the emotional damage it can cause too and I'm just so sorry you're having to face this. It should never have happened and your ex therapist should be accountable for this.

Dear Comrade, I think it is totally understandable that it hurts all the time. What your T did was unfathomable, and yet it happened. It was so cruel. And yes, someone else said betrayal. I think that is a good word. Betrayal.

I hope you will find your path forward, either with a different therapist or some other modality. I imagine it will take time. But know that you did not do anything wrong. You are not to blame. You are innocent in this. This is on her. This was her action. And yet, you are stuck dealing with it. Talk about it here as much as you want. It helps to not be alone with things sometimes.

HUGS if wanted, Kit

Quote:

Originally Posted by comrademoomoo I am having lots of thoughts about the inherently painful manner of psychotherapy and whether it's healthy for me at all. I don't feel robust enough for it and I am not sure I ever was - probably demonstrated by my drive to fight her throughout the relationship. Fight as a defense. Anyway, thank you Beth.

Yeah, I'm having a lot of the same thoughts about whether therapy is more healthy than hurtful for me, too. I hear you.

I don't know comrade, I don't try to give you advice or anything and I realize things can be complicated, but in your position I would like to hear from her wtf was up. I would already be miserable and think of the worst so knowing more wouldn't hurt more, I'd presume. Maybe she really had a mental breakdown or something like that and the answer she might give would lead you to right tracks why she did what she did. I don't know if it would make you feel any better and whatever the explanation is there is no excuse for her to do what she did the way she did.

Dear Comrade,
I'm so sorry. I feel sad and angry on your behalf. What she has done is so not ok!

I would want to know as well. I think it would help me process it if I understood what was going on that led her to terminate so abruptly. It could be that she won't tell you, or might give some vague reason like "personal issues," but I personally would still take the chance and ask.

Also, if I remember correctly, I thought her email suggested that this might be a temporary break from doing therapy for her. By not responding, she might just think you're done and don't want to see her again. When there may be a chance you could resume with her in the near future, or at the very least, have an actual termination session (as I could understand your not wanting to continue regular therapy with her).

I am so sorry. I had an experience with a previous therapist with some similarities I think, emotional intimacy and lots of ruptures, loose boundaries and ongoing conversations about whether we should continue, but I was still hit by a ton of bricks when she announced one day that we had to stop right then and there. I did later email her asking for an ending session and we ended up having a few more sessions, I think it was better to have those than not and we managed some useful conversation, although inevitably they still turned into more push and pull and distress too.

I experienced awful awful grief, was just paralysed and ended up taking time off work etc. Tried a few new therapists and stayed with one. I chose someone who seemed very boundaried - in contrast - and that has been helpful for me, I feel so much safer than I did with the previous, even if I sometimes miss the looser boundaries of before. The pain eased gradually but it took me a good two years to process that relationship with a new therapist, alongside other things. I still fantasised about contacting her again/going back to her for a long time.

I think new therapist was careful not to say too much about my previous therapist at first, understanding that I'd been very attached to her and would get defensive, and as someone else said, she immediately understood it as a reenactment of childhood pain. I feel very lucky to have found her, I just hope you may find someone who helps you but I know it can feel so hard to find the right therapist and I remember how uncertain I felt about what I was looking for at the time.

I think I'm glad now about what happened, because I don't think I could have ended that therapy myself, I was too caught up in the dynamics and I see now how damaging the relationship had always been, even if some parts were good. The ending was so very painful though. I'm thinking of you.

How are you doing comrade?