Reasons why it's really hard when your therapist leaves

You go to therapy. You talk to a person who, for most of the time, sits there without expression and basically takes in what you have said and feeds it back to you in a more eloquent way. Sometimes they ask you carefully worded questions that are designed to get you thinking about the right kinds of things, or talking about the things you need to talk about. If you're lucky they may even add in a word of wisdom or two, if the moment calls for it. You leave, you go home. You know their name; you can probably take a guess at what decade they were born in and you can make a few assumptions based on their accent, dress sense or body language... then you start to feel like a Sherlock Holmes wannabe... but at the end of the day, you don't know them. You know nothing more than what you create in your mind based on their interactions with you. So, why then do you end up in pieces when they go on holiday, or God forbid: leave you for good? Why does it matter that this blank slate has abandoned you? Why not just move onto another one and do the same thing all over again?

Here are a few of the reasons why it FUCKING STINKS when your therapist leaves:

1) You tell your therapist about stuff you wouldn't talk to anyone else about. For most of us this takes a leap of faith: trust. If you're like us you would have spent months and possibly years sussing them out to see if they can handle what you have to say. You test them with small pieces of yourself and they cope well, and you feel understood; validated and even cared for for possibly the first time in your life. This feels great even though its a difficult process. You then feel great about this person because of that and you learn to trust them and they become someone great in your eyes. 

You might even start to think that they are so great they are better than anyone you know in real life. Fair enough, this is because you are only seeing that one sided, polished act that they have spent years learning how to perform and you have added this onto your carefully composed picture of what you think they are like the rest of the time in their perfect, harmonious, well balanced life. This picture can become a safe place for you. This picture of this person might be all of the things you crave for your own life. This is the person who can save you and help you. No wonder you feel great about them. Unfortunately, you have now instilled them with a lot of power, because if they don't live up to your expectation of them, there is a long way to fall. Suddenly, they tell you they are leaving and it's no fucking surprise you feel awful really is it?

NB When I say 'you', I am not lecturing. I am talking to my own self. Don't feel bad. If anyone should know better it's me. I of all people should know that therapists/psychologists/counsellors are as human as I am, with all of my flaws.

"But T understands me too and that matters a lot. It's not just that I need 'a' person; any old person. It's something that works for me that she has. She has an ability to take my jumbled up mumbled words that are so ineloquent and decipher what it is that's going on in my jumbled up brain and feed it back to me in a way that makes sense to both of us. I don't want to face the prospect of seeing someone else, who can't get what I'm on about and doesn't take the time to try to understand. I know it's not necessarily so that another person would be that way but it may be so. There are fits and there are non fits."

2) If, like me, you have a dissociative disorder which makes for a wonky life, where sometimes you're just not sure what's real and what's not, having a stable presence in your life can be a very reassuring thing; even if it's only for an hour a week.

"It's just that, T is like my anchor. I trust her... not completely, but more than I've ever really trusted anyone and it has taken a long time to build up that trust. I know it's still fragile too and as I say, not complete. I still wait for her to hurt me and reject me... and leave me like others always have. And now that's what she is doing: leaving. I know she says she's coming back but there is a big part of me that just does not believe that. Good bye is forever. Oh my God! I struggle when she takes a week off on holidays!

I feel reassured when I drive past her work on my way to mine in the mornings and I see her car there. 

I like how her car is there. 

It reminds me that she's real. 

And if she's real, I must be real. 

And sometimes I struggle to believe I am real. 

When she goes away I feel like she has stopped existing: no car outside her work equals: did I make her up? Do I even exist? Car there equals she's real; I'm real, maybe other parts of my life are real." 

And she's one person who is consistent. 

She's the kind of person who gets up every morning and makes herself presentable and goes to work and eats lunch in the middle of the day and at the end of the day, goes home and does the same the next day. That is so important to me. I struggle with all of those things. Consistency has been foreign to me in my haphazard strewn together life. I have loved having a consistent, safe person in my life. It hasn't just been about the hour or so a week; it's all of the moments in between when I feel so changeable and unreal and I'm in my chaotic, unstable, morphing mind, hanging on by my fingertips to my 'normal' life and I think about my T and I remember how consistent she is and it helps me to remember what kind of life I want. Solidity, structure, boundaries, safety, energy, positivity, certainty."

 

And we have gone through a process. A long, long process. I've been seeing her for three years now. That's a fucking lot of time. I don't want to start again with someone new, with the old insecurities and fears. When I first met T, it was months and months before I stopped worrying about ridiculous things too absurd to even start to tell you about (and I've told you about some pretty ridiculous worries I have in relation to T).

That's just two reasons why it fucking stinks. I'm sure there are more. You may have some in mind yourself. I'm sure I will have plenty of time to think up more over the next few months.