I met
my therapist because I needed someone for my son who has ADHD and behavioral
problems. She later asked me if I also needed a therapist and I said yes.
I was in therapy with her for two years for depression, PTSD, and anxiety.
She was very good in helping my son and with helping me. I grew very attached
to her. I was able to tell her about things which I had never told anyone.
I was very suicidal at times and she helped me through it. I always told
her I was grateful for her help, and showed her the respect and kindness
she deserved. One day she said she was leaving her group of therapists and
taking another job. She was not sure if she would be continuing her private
practice. She would no longer be my therapist and I needed to find someone
else. I told her I could not bear to start therapy over again with someone
new.
Although we met several times after that, she changed her manner and became
cold and distant. I gave her a letter thanking her for all she had done for
me and for my son. She never said one word to me of encouragement, or support,
or caring, or anything positive about me. Am I wrong to expect that she would
say she wished me the best, or hopes all goes well for me, or something of
that nature? I am hurt beyond belief and I have cried every time I think
of her. I feel I can not trust any therapist, that I am completely alone,
that she threw me out like garbage (get rid of it quickly and don’t
think about it again). I was so distressed the last time I saw her the only
way to get through it was for me to put myself in a safe place inside my
mind so she couldn’t hurt me.
She not only never told me that this termination could happen, she kept
reassuring me that it would not happen. When it did, why could she not say
one kind word to me?
“It was nice to have known you” “I also learned something
from you”
S O M E T H I N G............
or when a therapist says nothing it really means, JUST GO AWAY?
Yes, you have been deeply hurt. And yes, your psychotherapist
could have handled the
termination with
more sensitivity. There’s really no excuse for her to have not said
something.
Yet the point
of your question goes far deeper than your feeling hurt by the manner of
the termination.
The fact is,
when a client’s progress in psychotherapy is based on the satisfaction
of receiving the psychotherapist’s unconditional acceptance, everything
will come crumbling down, like a brick house in an earthquake, when, for
one reason or another, deliberately or inadvertently, the psychotherapist
withdraws that acceptance.
In other words,
when psychotherapy recreates the dynamic of a mother-child nurturing, you
will want to bask in the imaginary
hope of liking and being liked and cared for by the
psychotherapist. This is the essence of
common love.
You will feel enthralled by the psychotherapist’s physical appearance,
by the psychotherapist’s demeanor, by the mysterious techniques the
psychotherapist uses, or by receiving so-called “healing energy”
from the psychotherapist.
But just as all
common love must eventually encounter the disappointment of the
love-hate
flip-flop (which occurs when the mother is “absent” and the
illusions of acceptance are broken), you will have to encounter within the
psychotherapy all kinds of perceived emotional injuries, simply because life
itself is filled with emotional injuries and betrayals.
And so, effective
psychotherapy must be more than just a mothering process—it must also
involve a
fathering
process by which you can learn to trust in something greater than the mere
presence of another person, something of solid confidence that can help you
to tolerate the
fraud and brutality
of the world that will assault you for the rest of your life. Sadly,
if your psychotherapy fails to teach you a stability in something more than
just another person, you will be left, at the end, tearfully yearning for,
well,
S O M E T H I N G. . . .
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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