The truth of therapy these days

As another week passes, I’m trying to take hold of the mess of feelings that are overcoming me. Where to start? What is the most pressing?

My aunt’s funeral was yesterday. It was a beautiful sendoff to her, a tribute to her life and all of the things she was. I listened to each eulogy with tears running down my cheeks. It was harder than I expected it to be; this whole loss has hit me so much harder than I ever expected.

We did the funeral at the funeral home, then attended the gravesite for a final goodbye, and then it was off to the repass for some food. I sat with my cousin and her friend and we chatted for most of the time.

Afterwards, I went out with a friend. We did a little retail therapy at the bookstore (my favorite place) and then went out for an appetizer, dessert, and a drink. As we were driving in the dark, we passed the funeral home again and then drove by the cemetery. It was just on our way, not anything that was planned, but it reignited the grief in my gut. By the time I got home, I was feeling really unsettled about the fact that we’d just left my aunt at the cemetery and that her body was resting in that casket 4 feet down in the ground.

Obviously, this is how death works. But I remember feeling the same way when my grandfather died too. Their bodies are just a shell of what was once there, but I have difficulty resolving that thought in my brain. It feels cruel to leave them behind.

Even as we were at the funeral home waiting for them to ready the casket for the funeral procession, right after our last goodbyes, I struggled to right my mind to the fact that my aunt wasn’t there with us. It just felt so wrong. Our family was fractured, incomplete. It would never be whole again.

Let’s be real, it hasn’t been whole since my grandmother died in 2014, and especially so since last year when my grandfather slipped away too. But something about this, made everything just so much worse.

I felt so heavy last night. I texted with my other aunt for a bit, but she wasn’t particularly comforting. I don’t know what I expected from her, it’s not like we’ve ever been super close or anything, but I think I hoped that maybe she’d hear from my words that I needed some connection and give me that. It didn’t quite occur that way. Our conversation came to a halt and I gave up, putting my phone away and going to bed.

So that’s that. The funeral is done and it’s back to life as we know it.

Work is still a shit show, but I’m not going to go there in today’s post.

Then there’s therapy. So much ebbing and flowing in therapy lately. I left on Thursday in quite a state of frustration and sadness at the realization that it’s never going to be with M what I want it to be. Never.

I think I’ve known this for awhile. My blog posts would certainly indicate that: my reservations, my lack of willingness to submit to the relationship. There have been improvements, I don’t dispute that. Moments of connection, feelings of attachment, increases in excitement to go to therapy and relief at the ability to talk about whatever. Just a few sessions ago, I felt really good about our work together. I was beginning to think I’d overcame a big hurdle.

And yet, it continues to fall short in ways that just can’t be addressed – or rather, in ways that M is not interested in changing. As much as I was riding high in the weeks prior, all it took was a conversation or two to illuminate the cracks in the foundation that I’ve been ignoring.

What do I mean by this? Well, we were discussing my last post on Monday, more specifically the part I’d written about L. I told M about how the most prominent pieces of my relationship with L were those that occurred outside the therapy room. She gave me a knowing look and asked me what I thought about that, what it meant. I don’t remember what I said to her, but I think it had something to do with how it was interesting that what I remembered most was the stuff of loose boundaries. We circled back to my internal war about whose fault the end of our relationship was: mine for being too much or hers for setting the boundary bar so low to begin with.

M was talking about how the relationship itself was such a big part of therapy to me and I’m not sure why, but it set off a new edge of defensiveness in me. I think it stung because I felt like she was telling me that the relationship was wrong. There was almost a protectiveness of L, or at least the sacredness of the relationship we shared at one point. Or maybe I just felt accused of doing something wrong.

Regardless, I felt myself pulling away from her. I said nothing though, as I often do with her when I’m feeling frustrated by something she’s said. I just continued to let her talk, absorbing some of it as we moved onto other topics.

The topic of my aunt came up and I further distanced myself when M, although she validated my pain and the difficult nature of the loss, never took the time to tell me she was sorry for it. It just felt so impersonal.

By the time session was nearly over, our conversation had stalled. She looked at me curiously. “What else?” she asked.”I know there’s something else.”

I shrugged, because while I knew I was uncomfortable I wasn’t really keen on talking about it. Nor did I really have words to put to what I was feeling. I told her as much and voiced my hesitancy to even try to discuss everything tumbling through my brain. She pressed into that a little, wondering why I was afraid to share my thoughts and when the discomfort began. I hedged, because I honestly couldn’t remember in the moment, and eventually remembered the comment about L that had bothered me. I didn’t tell her specifically that her words had been frustrating, but I did admit it was the conversation about L that had set me off.

As she continued to try to get at the heart of what was bothering me, I told her that I didn’t see the point in discussing it, because I knew what she was going to say and I knew it wouldn’t be helpful to me. And that was the truth: I knew exactly where the conversation would go. I explained to her that I knew she was very sure of how she conducted therapy, to which she nodded in agreement. So of course she wasn’t going to change just because I was unhappy with her methods.

We finished session with me confessing, for not the first time, that therapy can feel very cold to me at times. She nodded, and suggested that maybe we go there on Thursday.

I left, feeling uneasy about the direction that the conversation had taken. I hadn’t expected that at all. Over the next few days, I pondered here and there how I might approach a conversation with M on Thursday, but not much came to mind. Honestly, I wasn’t optimistic that I’d come away from any conversation feeling much better.

And so before I knew it, I was back on the couch for my second session of the week. I immediately retreated into myself. I wasn’t completely withdrawn, but as M stated at some point, I wasn’t giving her much to go off of. She kept asking “What else?” when our discussions died down and I’d shrug, as if we hadn’t left off Monday in kind of a precarious place. But she wasn’t bringing it up, so I wasn’t sure if I should either.

Still, I’m not one to mince words and I faltered under her gaze. I looked away and said “I feel like you want us to talk about what happened on Thursday.” She replied by saying something like it was up to me, which was confusing because it seemed to counter to what she’d said before I’d walked out of the office Monday. Although, in hindsight, I guess just because she’d encouraged me to talk about it didn’t mean I had to.

We talked about it, kind of. M came at it from her perspective again while I just listened and nodded. I’m blanking on what she even said. It wasn’t really anything I hadn’t heard before. I do remember her saying that because of the way my relationship with L had ended, she had been careful about the way she interacted with me. She knew she was coming at it from a place of firmer, tough love. And at some point, I can’t remember when, she also said that with all of her clients she conducted therapy in a way that discouraged an attachment at first. She was doing her best to avoid me mistaking our relationship for a friendship.

I really didn’t like what she was saying, but I kept my mouth shut. Eventually, M asked me if I had any comments, questions, or other thoughts. I still stayed silent, because honestly what was the point? She offered for me to say what I wanted to say and she wouldn’t respond to it if that would help me.

For a minute, I sat quietly, trying to gather my thoughts. I do think sometimes that M thinks I know exactly what I’m thinking or feeling and am just purposely withholding, but that’s not always the case. More often than not, I don’t have the proper words just all ready to go. It takes time to shape them into something that I feel accurately represents what’s really happening for me.

I did manage to string together some thoughts. I told her it felt like I was being punished for how my relationship with L ended and that connection, to me, was such an important part of therapy. I told her about how it felt like she was constantly asking me what she could do differently but when I would tell her what I needed, she just kept doing things the way she wanted. I told her how I didn’t want a new therapist, because I didn’t want to start over right now, but that sometimes this is still hard for me. I told her how her not saying she was sorry for my loss on Monday was hurtful.

At some point, M also brought up again how important boundaries were and I remember replying that I never said boundaries weren’t important and I wasn’t fighting that. I just needed more connection. She asked me if I wanted her to respond or not and I couldn’t make a decision. By this point, we were out of time anyway. One of the last things I remember her saying was essentially that I might not like how she operates, but she is different from J, L, and Dr. N I have to accept that. She didn’t say it so harshly, but that was the gist of what she was saying.

And so I left, again, feeling worse than when I walked in. Which was exactly what I was afraid of in the first place.

I know I’m not remembering everything about our session. I know I’m leaving things out. As I type, moments are coming back. I do know that she told me how it was brave of me to share how I was feeling despite the fear that nothing positive had come from it. She told me that her way of therapy wasn’t a form of punishment. We had also talked about how something that I felt was so connecting with Dr. N (her saying she was proud of me), was something that M stayed away from because she wanted my validation to be more internal.

The point of all this is that it highlights to me things I know I’ve been trying to ignore, things that are probably always going to bother me:

• M is purposely structuring therapy to avoid encouraging an attachment between us.
• She is not going to change the way she conducts therapy to fit what I feel I need, whether I like that or not.

That’s the truth of it. If I struggled with the “hard truths” with L, then I’m struggling massively with these truths. At least with L, I felt her care, it wasn’t something I ever questioned. It was hard for me that our relationship could never be more than that and that she had other clients for whom she also cared, but I knew on some level that I was important to her.

With M, her care does not feel so palpable. It’s hard to truly absorb, because it’s so subtle. She cares about me in that broad way therapists care about their clients, but she’s not going to be demonstrative about it.

It bothers me that there have been so many times where she’s asked what I needed from her, but then won’t give me the things I do ask for. Maybe my asks are just crossing her boundaries, but I’ve never felt it unrealistic or unreasonable to ask for more concrete ways of showing she cares or doing things to help enhance the connection.

However, if attachment is something she wants to avoid, if that’s her boundary, then I’m not going to get what I ultimately feel I need.

I think I’ve been aware of this on some level for a while, but didn’t want to admit it to myself. That’s why I’ve been actively pushing past the discomfort, hoping like hell I could feel connected on my own without her putting in her half of the work on that front. The truth is, she doesn’t want to. And to me, that’s the same as feeling she doesn’t care. I’m just a cookie-cutter client, and she’ll keep me at a distance like everyone else.

I don’t feel I need her to be my friend. I’ve seen how loose boundaries can erupt the relationship. I just want connection, I want the relationship I have with Dr. N or the one I had with J. They have/had steady boundaries and also we have/had a connection. Both things are/were true. Both things could be true here, too.

I don’t know how it changes things in therapy now. I know without a doubt that I’ll feel what’s lacking, as I already do. I’ve worked like hell to pretend I don’t, but it keeps coming back to the surface when I don’t mean for it to. The truth is that what I need and what she’s willing to provide are incongruent.

I try to tell myself that my needs are not wrong or too much. I try to tell myself that there are therapists that would be able to give me this out there. After all, Dr. N exists. J exists. L, despite her faults, exists. I try to tell myself that even though I’m not willing and don’t have the energy to search for that from someone else right now, it’s out there and I’ll find it again.

I know that on Monday I have a choice. I can go back to faking it and hope that maybe I can trick myself into believing I’m in an okay place with her for awhile. I can admit to her that she’s coming up short and how it makes me feel, knowing she’s not going to change, and just try to accept that. Or I can give up and withdraw and know for sure I’ll leave feeling worse.

I’m certainly not going to kid myself anymore. It’s too painful and gets me nowhere.

Dr. N and J have both told me in the past that maybe there’s something I can get out of this relationship even if it will never be what I want it to be. There’s something to be learned, something to be gained.

What that is, I’m not sure. But I’d like to believe it’s true. So I guess I’ll keep searching for this elusive silver lining.

What to do, what to do…

The other day, I read M one of my old posts. It’s one of my favorite posts I’ve ever written and it talks about all the reasons I’m not to blame for my mental illness. I wrote it back when J was still in the picture and we were trying to comb through earlier memories of my life in order to discover where my core beliefs first developed.

A few weeks before that, I’d read her almost two other posts that I’d written: one being all the reasons I’m worth growth and change and the other a letter to my suicidal self. She’d been very receptive to these written pieces and told me I should keep copies of them nearby for me to read at all points of life.

So I was excited to read her this post. I’d mentioned it and then a few sessions went by with other things dominating. On Monday, she mentioned that maybe our Thursday session would be a good time to finally get back to that. I was fine with that.

It’s a long post, but it felt important for her to hear, because it offers a snapshot of me at various times in my life. I thought it might give her a better understanding of me as a person.

I read her the whole thing. Upon finishing, she looked at me and said “so, why do you need therapy again?”

I didn’t know what she meant when she said that, if it was sarcasm or genuine or what her intentions were by saying. But I’ll tell you this, I was completely taken aback by her comment in the moment.

M kept talking about how she felt like I had all these insights and tools that other people wouldn’t have. She said that I knew so much and clearly I’ve known it for a long time, as that post was from 2019. She mentioned something about giving myself credit for the skills that I have and being able to work on maintenance.

Then, maybe because my face was betraying me or maybe because she just knows well enough where my mind will go by now, she said to me that her comment was a joke.

And maybe it was. Still, alarm bells were going off in my head. I felt very uncomfortable and very unsafe in that room all of the sudden, which was disappointing to me after the last few weeks having been improvement for us.

M talked a little bit more, but I didn’t absorb a lot of what she was saying. I was too busy still replaying that comment in my head and ruminating on it. With only a few minutes left in the session, M asked me if I had any thoughts. To my credit, I was able to tell her I was still thinking about what she said instead of completely shutting down.

I told her that I felt therapy could be very helpful for me because I need someone to help me be accountable for all these little changes and remembering this information. Clearly, even though I had all that insight almost 4 years ago, I haven’t properly held onto it. Plus, I told her, if I don’t have a safe space to be able to communicate some of my more painful and intense feelings I’ll go crazy inside my own head.

“That’s all you needed to say,” she told me. Then I bristled at that, because sometimes I think she expects me to have the words immediately when something upsets me, and that’s just not how I am. I need time to process and gather and honestly the fact that my turnaround time in this instance was only about 5 minutes was probably improvement.

I left, because session was over, and that’s what’s been swirling around in my head ever since. Now it’s up to me to decide whether or not I’m going to bring this back to session on Monday.

I don’t know if M realizes quite how my stomach dropped when she said that. It was instant, like a punch to the gut. I immediately started the self-talk loop of Oh, she’s going to terminate you. She thinks you don’t need this. She thinks you’re wasting her time.

Even though she said something like how someone could still be in therapy with the knowledge that I have, I still heard additional subtext there: They could be in therapy, but why would they?

I guess in my head, M can say her comment was a joke, and maybe it truly was, but don’t jokes often come from a grain of truth? I just felt so much like she oversimplified things. As if because I have a good amount knowledge and have learned skills like I was no longer worthy of therapy and needed to be left to figure things out on my own.

Can I tell you that the thought of being without therapy is terrifying to me? I’m sure I could survive it, but that’s about it. I’d be surviving, just keeping my head above water.

Sure, I may have learned a lot from therapy, but has she ever stopped to consider why I don’t use my skills? What are the roadblocks there? Has she considered how I could use therapy to cope with changes in my life that I haven’t experienced before, like if I were to be in a relationship or something similar? Therapy is so much more than just skills.

Maybe I’m making something out of nothing. After all, she didn’t say she was kicking me out. She didn’t say I had to stop. But I guess I just fear what she might not be saying. I know I should trust her and not try to read into her words, as M always tells me she’s direct and will tell me what she’s thinking.

What makes things more complicated is that we’ve been trying to figure out if twice a week therapy will be able to continue when school comes back into session for me. It’s been frustrating on my end, because she won’t commit to just giving me a permanent timeslot due to her changing schedule. But when I said something about how two sessions a week has been helping me, she agreed. So why all of the sudden are we questioning why I need therapy?

I just didn’t think it was a funny joke. I felt misunderstood and a little stung by that remark. Like I said, after I’ve been putting in a huge effort into tearing down my walls and being real with her, this felt like a big step back for me. I want to close myself off again because if I’m real with her will she just say something else like that?

So I have a choice to make. Will I bring it up with her on Monday? Or will I pretend everything is fine? I know M would probably want me to bring it to the table because she says the resentment will build otherwise. However, I feel very strongly that I will not get what I need from that interaction. And maybe she might be a little mad at me? I probably shouldn’t care about that, but I still do.

I don’t know what to do.

Slow, Steady Steps

Already it’s been almost a whole month since I last sat down to write. I can hardly believe that. Time is going so fast, and yet sometimes the days feel so slow. It’s strange the way life works.

I have a feeling this post may be all sorts of all over the place, because it’s really just meant to be a general update on my life. I’m not sure what direction I plan to take it yet, so let’s just see what happens.

The biggest news is that Dr. N returned on Friday from her maternity leave. That was a huge relief to me after 4.5 months without her.

As the time got closer and closer to our scheduled appointment, I found myself anxious over how it would go. M had kept saying to me that I’d gotten reminders about the appointment and no one had called to cancel it, so it was happening. I wasn’t so worried that it wouldn’t happen, but I was more concerned about the actual meat of the session. What if she was different? What if she wasn’t planning on staying back? What if there was some other catch that I’d have to deal with? It just seemed like the were too many possible ways for things to go awry.

One of the reasons I’ve been fretting over this is that Dr. N and I have known each other almost four years now as of the beginning of May. If you take away the 7 or so months we didn’t work together due to maternity leaves, that’s about 3.5 years. And 3.5 years is when J never came back. 3.5 years, taking into account a maternity leave there, is about the same amount of time L and I worked together before termination. In fact, we were also one month shy of knowing each other for four years before everything fell apart.

I try not to look for those types of patterns, but they seem to be automatically obvious to me. I’m so wrapped up by dates and their significance. Maybe it doesn’t make a lick of difference how long I’ve worked with someone. Maybe that was truly just a coincidence. But I remember L saying to me a few months before we ended that maybe I was caught up in fearing I was losing her because it was the same time period in which I lost J. She, too, said she wasn’t going anywhere and look how that worked out. So I was afraid that either Dr. N would either be letting me know that something was going to stop our work or something would be off in the relationship that would lead us to an end.

In the end, our session was fine. I spoke about the actions I’d taken in our time apart that I was proud of and the things that I need to get more of a handle on. She was not judgmental of my struggles, even though one of those struggles was inconsistency with my medication. We just talked it through and set my homework to be taking my meds every day over the next week. She didn’t drop any bombshells on me.

At the conclusion of our thirty minutes, she said she felt I was doing well and that she was proud of me. I wish that I didn’t still hinge so much on what my psychiatrist thinks of me, but I do. Those words were like gold and I held them close. I had wanted her to be proud and she was. That counted for something.

I’ll be signing a release so that M and Dr. N can have a conversation about me. That always feels weird to me, having my providers talk. J and Dr. N did when Dr. N first started working with me, but she never did have a conversation with L. And L and J spoke twice, once before J left and once when she wasn’t coming back.

While I know it’s good for people to be on the same page, I get this feeling of insecurity about the words exchanged. I always ask what was shared, and no one has ever been averse to telling me, but it’s the worry about the details I’m not privy to. The things that they don’t tell me about the conversation because it’s probably better I not know.

I try to have trust in my providers. They’re not there to gossip and they’re professionals, so it would make sense that everything they share will be focused on the task at hand: coordinating care. Still, I know they’re also human, and that’s where I get nervous.

Either way, I’m the one that opened this door, mostly because I’m hoping Dr. N will share a perspective that is helpful to M. Dr. N knows me so well at this point, whereas M and I are still just taking slow, steady steps towards closer rapport.

And how is M? Well, she’s okay. She was the topic of much of my conversation with Dr. N on Friday. We talked about the whole debacle of choosing between M and B, and why I ultimately went with M. I told her how I don’t think anything will ever match the level of closeness I had with J; that was so unique in itself. But will we get to a level like I had with L? I don’t know. Dr. N and I both know that the closeness I had with L at some points didn’t make for a stable relationship when all was said and done, and she pointed that out to me. She thinks that maybe I just have to wait it out with M, and let the relationship develop naturally.

Another thing we discussed and what I’m very hesitant to admit to M is that her style is so extremely different than J or L. That’s what I struggle most with. I don’t even know how to describe it other than casual. She’s unlike L, who had a lot of fire and passion in everything she said and unlike J, who was just dripping with empathy and compassion. Not to say she’s not compassionate, but she doesn’t wear it on her sleeve the way J did.

I’m so focused on the relationship and I think she doesn’t like that or doesn’t feel it’s necessary. The other day, she said it doesn’t matter if she likes me or not (although she does like me). But to me, it does matter, because I feel like that will inform my ability to be open and honest with her. If I don’t think she cares for me, I’m not going to want to trust her with anything, period.

Also, while she says she’s very direct, I find that she’s only direct when I ask her a specific question. What she doesn’t do and what I need her to do is to read between the lines with me. I need her to notice I’m shutting down and to call me out on it, because sometimes I can’t do it myself. Asking for that is a challenge for me though, as I feel like I’m supposed to be able to just naturally be vulnerable and is it unfair to expect she can know when I’m holding back? L knew by my facial expressions and my tendency to fidget. But as Dr. N reminded me, L had a lot longer to become acquainted with my tendencies than M has.

Usually when I sit down to talk to her, I feel myself immediately closing off. I’ll say I’m fine, even if I’m anything but. She doesn’t know enough to question that yet, although I did finally admit to her on Wednesday that fine with my rarely actually means it. I just have a hard time working myself up to vulnerability from the start of session. I hardly ever know where to begin.

We are meeting 1-2 times a week at this point. I advocated for the second session because I remember how helpful that was with bridging a relationship with L. However, she can’t always make it work so more often than not it’s only 1 session. I don’t have the therapy clock going in my head like I used to, the one that counts down the days until my next session, because I’m truly not as attached to M as I was J or L. I wonder if that will ever happen. I wonder if it’s a good idea for that to happen. As I’ve said before, not attaching like I have in the past keeps me feeling sane, but it definitely inhibits the work I feel like I can do.

M seems good about boundaries, but also we’ve never really had long conversations about what the boundaries are. We had one short interaction about texting, since that what I believe was probably a huge part of my downfall with L. M said that I can text her if I really need her, but that I have to be flexible with waiting for an answer if she’s in session or outside hours. I feel that’s more than fair and yet, I’ve only texted her related to appointment times and cancellations.

Truth is, I’m really quite terrified at the thought of even cracking open the door with texting.

It’s been a little over seven months now that I’ve survived without those texts like I had with L. Even towards the end of my relationship with her, I had significantly decreased the frequency of my texting out of what was probably instinct that I’d become too much but felt more like a competition with myself at the time to maintain a disintegrating relationship.

The point now is that I don’t know how to go back and even if I did, I don’t know what’s okay. What constitutes as really needing someone? I know without question that I overused the texting with L, even though I tried not to. Even though I was always respectful and never expected an answer right away.

Whatever my intentions were, it became too much for her as I’ve come to believe. She never said that outright, but it was my mentioning of our last texts and my perception of her tone that ultimately whipped her into a frenzy and led us into the two hours of conflict. So I believe it was too much access, too much having to be present for me outside the room, that pushed her to the end of her clinical rope. Was that my fault? I often think yes, but have been told no, because I wasn’t the one setting the boundaries.

I’m not good with grey area. I much prefer black and white. I can text or I can’t. I deal with it myself or I have someone to help me. Instead it’s I can text, but I need to be mindful of how badly I really need it. Which makes sense and is probably better for my healing, but just feels so confusing to me. What if I text and get rebuffed? What if it leads to a conversation about boundaries? That, to me, would feel like rejection and it would definitely cause me to put up walls. No, better not risk it. If I don’t text, then I can’t get in trouble for texting at a time that isn’t judged to be a real need.

Maybe I’ll change my mind if I really do need it. I know that texting or an extra phone call can be hugely valuable if it’s done at the right time. Maybe I’ll know what that time is when it comes. Or maybe I’ll just keep pushing it off, trying to deal with it myself. After all, L’s big complaint was that I was saving up all my feelings for therapy instead of coping in the moment. I’ve come back to that again and again, because I know she was right, and tried to take steps to stop doing that. Steps to help me stop being so reliant on therapy.

M and I will continue to keep working towards making progress. I asked her last week if she’d thought I’d made any and she answered by saying that she and I have made progress. She said she’s not pushing me much because of my history, but that it might be time to start pushing more. I know that I need it, I need the accountability for my feelings, or I won’t always take it myself.

I guess what I have been afraid to say around her is that I’m not yet completely confident in her. Obviously it’s not her job to fix me but I think I expect some different strategies or reframes that I haven’t come upon before and I’m just not experiencing those yet. I’ve been hoping she’ll find new patterns of behavior I’m not aware of and offer different insights.

Granted, our relationship is still so new, so it’s very possible she’s just still trying to get to know me. I get that, but when I’ve been in therapy for almost seven years, having to start back at zero feels like stalling out. I want to be making more movement quickly and that’s just not realistic.

I still struggle with her (lack-of) opinion on L. One of the reasons I was so hesitant about sticking with her at first was because she really wouldn’t give me what I wanted regarding L’s actions. I wanted her to be outraged or at least put off by the way L handled our relationship and she stayed pretty mute about it. With time, I’ve seen her give subtle indications about what she thinks, never outright condemning L, but making comments that would suggest she’s on my side in the matter. Comments that reinforce it wasn’t my fault or that L let me get too close to her. I don’t know if she’ll ever give me her direct opinion, even if I ask, but I’m trying to take what I’ve seen as a win and just accept it.

Speaking of L, I do plan to send her the letter I’ve written her. At some point, anyway. Not yet. It still needs to be tweaked. I read it to M when I wrote it and she said “that’s a good one.” I haven’t read it to Dr. N as she’s just gotten back, but I plan to. I know that I need to maybe add a few more things, especially about what I want by way of response. She may not be open to responding or she may not be willing to see my side in it. I like to think that enough time has passed that she could see her part in this differently, but I really don’t know. She didn’t seem at the end like the same therapist I knew all the time we worked together. I didn’t recognize her under her frustration.

If she’s not able or willing to admit to her mistakes, I honestly don’t want a response at all. It would just set me off. But knowing her, she wouldn’t be able to not respond. This is the same person that answered me at 1am when I sent her an email she was unhappy with, which I never posted about on here but was probably the beginning of the end for us. She also said once that it wasn’t a fair expectation from me to say my piece but not let her get to say hers.

In some ways, I understand that, but in this situation I feel she already got to voice her feelings, I never got to voice mine. Sure, it could be argued I had what would have been our last two sessions to do that (the one I walked out of and the one I cancelled), but I was busy being blindsided then. I never could have put together my thoughts then the way I did now.

Really, I don’t know how this would shake out. I do know that it could lead to a sense of closure, and maybe I wouldn’t be thinking about L as much as I do. Right now, I still want to talk about her often and rehash it all because it feels so unfinished. Maybe that wouldn’t change, but maybe it would. So many maybes in this post.

And well, I could keep going, but I’ve already said a lot so it may be best to stop here for now. More to come soon.

Here We Go Again

Last week, Dr. N informed me that she is pregnant and will be taking her maternity leave in December.

It’s been about a year and a half since L returned from her maternity leave and in the last few months, I’ve wondered whether I’d be confronted with this experience of temporary losing one of my cherished mental health providers. L’s daughter is nearly two now and Dr. N’s son is almost three, so it was never out of the realm of possibility.

Dr. N never said one way or another if she wanted another child and I never had the courage to broach the topic. Perhaps thats because boundaries state that I’m not allowed to ask L if she is pregnant and I didn’t want to descend into treacherous waters a second time if Dr. N had the same boundary. Plus, how does one even bring that up?

When Dr. N told me, I think I covered the immediate stomach plunge very well. Even though I’d pondered it, her admission still caught me by surprise as it was in the middle of our session, seemingly out of nowhere. She asked me if I had any response and I just smiled painfully. “Not yet.” That was accepted, but I was reminded I’m allowed to bring it up whenever I want to talk about it.

I sat on the information over the weekend, turning it over in my mind. I didn’t really want to bring that to L for our Monday session. The main reason for this is probably because the last time Dr. N told me she was pregnant, J told me she was also pregnant the very next session. I know L wants another child and my timing never seems stellar, so it could very well happen again.

Either way, I sat in the parking lot on Monday with such anxiety in the pit of my stomach I thought I might throw up. Upon entering session, L then informed me super casually at the outset of an upcoming vacation. I withdrew, pretended that didn’t bother me, and off we went. I was able to distract from the dreaded conversation for awhile by pinning focus on the workbook we’ve been combing through, but my body language gave me away.

As an aside, I wish I wasn’t so readable all the time.

I kept trying to avoid the topic by talking about some work stress, but L asked what else was up. So I told her. She was admittedly sympathetic and she did not then drop her own pregnancy bomb. However, she didn’t tell me she wasn’t pregnant either.

I guess I shouldn’t have expected she would because of the boundary that exists, but I think I hoped she might see how much I was struggling and give me that small piece of relief, especially after I told her about the connection between Dr N’s news and J’s the last time around.

Anyway, we spent the whole session doing a dance I’m so familiar with lately. She encouraged me to feel my feelings and I backed away, trying to dissociate from them. This happened for a number of reasons. Part of me was angry at L for not explicitly giving me the comforting knowledge that I wouldn’t be losing my whole support system at once. Part of me felt that no matter what she said, it wasn’t okay to have my feelings out loud and should have instead been dealt with privately. Part of me straight up couldn’t handle the anguish.

L kept trying to problem-solve and I shut down further. Then the session was over. We talked about it maybe a little more on Thursday, but I didn’t feel like engaging much there either since it was clear the information I needed most would not be coming. Other topics came up anyway, so we focused on those.

I didn’t plan on being upfront with Dr. N about my feelings in our session that followed, but in the silence I did give her an honest account of how I’ve struggled with the news. It’s mostly fear; the last time she left we’d just started working together and I had little to no attachment to her. Now, I care deeply. Even though I didn’t want to, I cried, which I don’t do very often in front of her. Dr. N was very empathetic and allowed me the space. I was still in tears when we signed off.

So now we’re at this space where I have to just deal with the news in my own way. I don’t see any real reason to bring it up during therapy anymore because why beat a dead horse? It is now my load to carry.

I think what I’ll miss most about Dr. N while she’s away (she has promised to return and I mostly believe her) is her calm and rational demeanor. Whereas L is loud and brash at times, Dr. N has a very reasonable and soothing tone when she speaks. She has helped me handle challenging feelings towards L a number a times when I think I otherwise might have sabotaged the relationship and I don’t know what I’ll do while she’s not there to be my sounding board.

Three months feels like such a long time.

And what else is going on? Well, therapy with L continues to ebb and flow. I think it’s clear in how I spoke about our sessions that I still harbor some feelings of frustration towards her.

That’s not consistent though, honestly. After my last post, we talked about my feelings of pressure to be the perfect client. She worked with what I brought her and encouraged me to tell on my minions a little bit more when they start trying to draw a line between her and I. She reminded me again that her working with me is a choice that she continues to make, she doesn’t feel obligated. That should comfort me but for some reason it just makes things feel more tenuous even though she’s never stopped making the choice to work with me in my craziest of moments.

For every moment of connection, there are three more of me quietly tossing around her words in my head, trying not to swallow them the wrong way. Minions jump on board and start the process of twisting those words against her, trying to persuade me that she is in fact very tired of my nonsense. I wonder if I should bring something up, to “tell on them,” but then I feel so ashamed of myself for having these thoughts that I squash that notion.

A lot of times now I can move on from the ‘she doesn’t like me,’ ‘she’s mad at me,’ and the ‘our relationship isn’t special’ thoughts in the moment. Yet they’re like boomerangs in that they keep coming back.

I think the real problem is that while I know certain thoughts are distortions, when I attempt to reframe them I’m hit again with the hard truths of therapy. Yes, she likes me, but there’s a limit. She’s not mad at me, but there are certain boundaries that exist now that didn’t before. Our relationship might have rings of specialness to it, but it’s just like so many others she has. I am a client, she is my therapist. There is nothing more.

This piece from the last post still rings so true:

I’ve spent so much of my time in therapy trying to accept the limits of L’s role. I’ve tried to be okay with what it means to be connected while not allowing the connection to get too intense, too meaningful. But that hurts in its own way.

So where does that leave me? Confused, most of the time. I’ll be sitting there and she’s saying and doing all the right things, yet I want to cry. To run. To get up and walk out of there and never come back because how can this be so painful even when it’s all going according to plan?

I just cannot bear to bring this up because I positively cannot emotionally tolerate it when she confirms those things as true.

On top of that, I think I’m still holding onto some residual anger that the rules did change. The boundaries have shifted. L would likely argue that these changes were necessary when the lines blurred and maybe they were. However, the fact that she let it get to the point where these changes had to be made makes me feel pinches of hurt.

It hurts, it does. There was once a level of casualness that probably never should have been there, but it was anyway. It’s what blurred the lines to begin with, I think. At one point, I advocated for some of that to change. At another, our rupture forced even more change. Still, the way she acted towards me in our earlier days, whether helpful or not, made me feel like I was special to her in a way that I don’t feel exists anymore. When those boundaries went up, I feel like it evaporated.

If that casualness had never been there, if the boundaries had been more concrete from the start, maybe I wouldn’t be harboring this anger now. But maybe we wouldn’t have developed the rapport we had for awhile. I’m really not sure.

This begs to be talked about at times, but I just don’t think I could ever say any of this to her, just like I could never tell her how painful it was to not get the relief I needed when I told her about Dr. N. I feel like in the past she would have given that to me and now she won’t. The stark change hurts, it’s confusing to the emotional part of me.

Either way, when she stepped up to defend herself, I know I would just shut down and it would distance us more. At least right now, with all of that laying concealed, I can safely talk about other things. I still know her room is safe in many ways, there’s just the nagging of those insecurities or doubts that gets in the way sometimes.

The last week and a half or so, I’ve left feeling awful. It starts at any point during session and builds the closer we get to the end. My suicidal thoughts/self-harm urges have been through the roof and it’s taken the ride home to decompress and come back down to tolerable distress level. I don’t want that to keep happening. So something has to change, but I just don’t know how to go about it.

Dr. N suggested that maybe some of this is obsessive thinking, my OCD flaring. She posited that maybe putting a reminder in my phone reminding me that my thoughts post-session are biased and not grounded in complete reality. She encouraged me to disregard them as much as possible, since they don’t always seem to be a reflection of what actually happened in session.

I’ll try that, of course. I appreciate her perspective. I also know that while a lot of it might be OCD-thinking, there are bits that have to do with everything I discussed.

I wish it were simpler. I wish I could just go to session, feel connected, do the hard work, and leave without it completely dismantling me each time.

I mentioned something like this to L and she said it’s the goal for me not to lean so heavily on therapy, and to instead use it as a tool. I took and twisted that too. It bothered me because I’ve worked so hard not to lean on her, I haven’t even texted her outside of therapy in 2 months! But alas, my attachment still creates problems for me. Maybe that’s what she meant.

I’m about 2,000 words in now and still things don’t feel any clearer. I think the ultimate feeling I have right now is sadness that my relationship with L feels so precarious lately despite all the work we’ve put into it. If you ask her, we’re solid, but I struggle to internalize that.

There was a time I probably idealized her too much, but at least then our connection felt really safe and comforting to me. I miss the part of that which was helpful to my growth.

I don’t know where we go next, but I guess I’ll find out on Monday.

Hard Truths

Right now, I am sitting bundled up in sweats with a candle lit and calming music playing in the background. I haven’t spoken a word since I left L’s office almost an hour ago. I don’t know what I’d particularly say, as I live alone, but usually I’ll greet the cat or mumble to myself about one thing or another as I move from space to space in my house.

Today, none of that. I don’t want to hear the sound of my own voice. I don’t want to take up space. I don’t want to exist at all for the moment and I feel myself wanting to burrow in my bed with the covers over my head and not come out for awhile. I don’t want to be confronted with the hard truths, because they hurt. Being me and feeling all my many feelings hurts.

I probably sound quite dramatic. I suppose in actuality it really isn’t all that bad. Nobody’s hurt. Nobody’s dying. I simply have left my past two sessions feeling like I don’t ever want to go back to therapy again.

Which, for me, really feels like the end of the world. And that’s the problem.

We’ve come up against some heavy stuff in our past two meetings. The big trigger was that L told me she going away for 10 days at the end of the month. Or at least it’s 10 days between seeing her with me missing two sessions. Before all that came up though, I’d been carrying a lot of sadness in and out of session with me related to our relationship (or maybe just my attachment to L) that I hadn’t been directly addressing.

It looks like this. I spend the time in between our meetings wishing that I could talk to her or at least feel 1/10 of the safety and connection that I experience when I’m with her in that room. I also box up my feelings and try to keep them as small as possible, for feeling them is the same as being sucker punched right in the gut again and again. I spend so much time suppressing the words that want to come out, because there’s no one I feel I can bring that to, it’s up to me to handle. So I do. I handle it.

Then, when I finally get to her, it’s almost like I go into overload with all of that emotion crashing down on me. Often she’ll start by simply asking me how I am and I never know where to begin, because how does a person accurately sum up a few days worth of intense emotion? It doesn’t seem possible. And often, it seems redundant, because we’ve talked about so much of it the session before that and the one before that and so on.

Because I know there’s no way to shed myself all of that stuff I’ve been holding, to really lay it all out and actually have it stay outside my mind, I just start somewhere. Usually wherever she goes I’ll follow, because I’m not picky about which hole gets unplugged first when I know enough of the crap will eventually come flowing out regardless. So a lot of time I let L lead our little dance. She’ll drift from topic to topic and I’ll just tag along behind her, letting it slowly seep out as we hit on this and that. Drip, drip, drip.

L’s care for me is clearly evident. I know she wants the best for me and wants me to heal. She wants to explore my feelings, to help, to fix. But lately connecting with her is so, so painful. Each time I let out the vulnerable part of me and allow her to see it, it’s almost as if it grows in size, which makes it so challenging to stuff back in the box an hour later.

And when time is up, I tear myself away. I force myself to my feet and trudge back out into the world, where it’s just me and those big feelings again. All the time. So then I’m back in the stage of thinking about being with her, where it’s safe, and wishing I could share that pain with the person who does her absolute best to hold it with me, when no one else will.

I wasn’t particularly hiding these feelings before, we’ve touched on it here and there. It’s just when she’ll ask me if there’s anything else I want to say or what else is on my mind that I’ll stare at her and think well how do I even bring this up? Why should I even bring it up? It’s always there.

At this point, I just expect her to know it’s there. I think she does. She recognizes that the big feelings don’t go away just because we aren’t talking about them. I just don’t know how to acknowledge them briefly without them taking over. How to say well, that attachment is still pretty strong and it’s still stirring up intense feelings of need for comfort and safety. I feel it from the second I walk in the door. Which I do. I’m trying to be more mindful when I’m in the moment, but I always fixate on the time slipping by. Too many glances at the clock.

L has said that she doesn’t want to focus too hard on the relationship for that makes it implode. So why would I bring this up again and again? There’s no point. It would probably make things worse.

So there’s all that. And then there’s her impending vacation, which I’m certainly not looking forward to. I know I’ll be fine without her. I know I can handle myself. I know our relationship doesn’t cease to exist just because she isn’t around for a little while. I know she still cares. I know she deserves a break. I know I’ll get to see D in the interim, which is a generous gift, but I also know that the goal is emotional independence.

Which, ultimately, is a huge trigger for me.

L and I talked recently about my resentment that I have to handle my shit by myself sometimes when what I really want is to be taken care of.

Growing up, I never had that kind of relationship with my parents where I could talk to them about my problems, for I never felt they understood and often the conversation would take a turn in a direction that wasn’t helpful and maybe even escalated me. My big emotions weren’t understood, even though both of my parents suffered from their own. Maybe that’s why; there was no room for mine when their own anger suffocated them. Either way, I was largely left to fend for myself emotionally.

I remember once, when I really let out how hard things were, my mom yelling well, maybe you should see a therapist! But it wasn’t the kind, considerate offering it sounded. It was more a suggestion of how ridiculously she felt I was acting in the moment. And surprise, surprise, there was no follow up and no therapy.

This led to me confiding in friends who didn’t have the capacity to handle the intensity of my feelings, which pushed them away. I felt totally and utterly alone most of the time. I’m still working on not completely blaming my parents for this, as I know the good intentions were there.

So you see, when J entered my life, and then L, I’d never felt so much unconditional acceptance. I’d never been validated in that way. What was given to me through therapy was a level of support I hadn’t imagined. In a way, that is addicting to someone who has been starving for emotional connection her entire life. Once I’d experienced it, I no longer wanted to exist without it. That’s why therapy is so important to me.

When it isn’t there, when there is no L, I can do it of course. However, it’s so reminiscent of a time where I struggled so immensely, stumbling around on my own in the dark that I end up in tears even at the thought of it. Because I remember how much that young girl hurt all the time and I don’t want to keep living with those feelings. L’s words immediately meet the needs of that hurting child. Her encouragement and her belief in us restores me, restores that girl.

We’ve talked about me being the one who needs to be there for my inner child, how important that is. I know it’s true. I need to be the emotional support for myself. There’s no one else that can do it, but that just feels so so unfair sometimes.

I think I would feel more willing if there was someone outside of the therapy room that I could count on to have some real emotional intimacy with. But with my parents and current friends not being an option, and there being no romantic relationship to speak of, that leaves me quite alone. I can carry the pain for awhile, but I need to be able to unload it sometimes. I deserve to have someone who is willing to listen.

Hard truth time.

L has a life outside of work, one that doesn’t involve me. As such, I cannot have unlimited access to her. It is not her job to be there for me or take care of me. In fact, she needs that break from me, the time away, to live her own life, especially because I can be a lot for anyone to handle, her included. Her job is to model a healthy relationship, to provide strategies, to offer in-the-room support, but our relationship doesn’t exist beyond that. We are not friends. We are not family. She has other people she does this for. I am a client, part of a job. I am not special in any way. I need her, but she doesn’t need me.

And one day, our relationship will end. That will be that.

In the process of writing this post, I’ve taken pauses. At this point, I’m a few days removed now from that session and the pain I was feeling on Monday night. Now we’re on to Wednesday and I’m contemplating my session tomorrow.

We landed on this topic the other day purely by accident, because I wasn’t planning on rehashing it. We talked again about the delicate balance of her knowing I need support but trying to encourage emotional independence. As I stated some of these hard truths, she affirmed them, which heightened how I was feeling.

By the end of session, we were both frustrated. In a moment of pure angst, I wondered aloud why I was even going to therapy. I guess in my mind, I was thinking that if emotional independence is the goal, why am I fostering this relationship that’s all about vulnerability and reliance on another person? For me to be successful in therapy, as L even said, there has to be some level of that. Yet that’s so confusing for me. Because how does one get to emotional independence through so much leaning on someone else?

Things are so black and white to me. I want it to be all one way or all the other. This idea that there is going to be grey area, times where it’s okay to lean on her a little bit more and times where I need to work on making my own decisions or nurturing myself, is scary and puzzling. How will I know which time is which? I will simply spend every time obsessing over whether it is okay to reach out to her for support and then shaming myself for doing it.

So I guess really the biggest area that we’re talking about here is the outside contact because that’s where this issue arises. I miss when the texting seemed more straightforward to me. Ever since our rupture, I’ve been so nervous to reach out in between sessions, whether for reassurance or extra support. L says that the door is still open to do this, but when I think too much about it I end up telling myself that I’ve asked for too much even by just asking if we’re still okay.

I can hear her, as I write this, telling me to let her set her own boundaries.

I’ve also found that her responses to my pleas for support, where they used to help, now often sound recycled and trite. It makes me wonder whether she truly is annoyed or just feels obligated. Or whether I’ve just wrung her dry of things to say. Then I feel bad again, and I begin to question our relationship again.

I don’t want her to take the option for text away, but I feel like there needs to be a conversation about it. Maybe.

But then, I don’t know, because I don’t think I can handle it when she throws those hard truths back at me again. I said before we were both frustrated by the end of session. It really came to a head as she was restating some of those truths as if she was trying to justify her position. I kept telling her “I know” as my voice rose and eventually it got to the point where I couldn’t even let her speak. I knew whatever she wanted to say was just going to hurt.

So she paused. And I felt it, that irritation. I felt immediately guilty. When she did speak again, she said she didn’t know what I expected from her and she wasn’t sure she could meet my expectations.

Every thing in me went on high alert. She’s leaving, she’s leaving, she’s going to leave you. You’ve screwed up and ruined everything. But I tried to play that down, because I was afraid if I showed I was upset then that would worsen the situation.

Looking back, I don’t know what it was she thought I expected from her that was too much. I never said that I expected her to take care of me or be there beyond the therapist role; I just said that part of me wishes for it deeply. I think I got so frustrated because I felt misunderstood and like I was somehow being scolded about all the reasons these hard truths are necessary when really I just needed her to sit in that with me. She validated, but overall she was trying to fix it, and it’s just something that can’t be fixed.

I don’t want to talk about the hard truths anymore in therapy. All they do is cause pain. I think it’s time that I really do stand on my own two feet and deal with all the pain I have surrounding the reality of a therapy relationship by myself. Maybe that’s really just for the best.

Atom Bomb

I have a lesson for all you friends in therapy: don’t google your damn therapist. Especially if that therapist happens to no longer be your therapist because she’s off enjoying motherhood. Don’t do it. Just…don’t.

I’m sure you’re all brimming with anticipation to know just how did I learn this lesson for myself this week.

As I stated in my post last week, I’ve been really missing J. I’m not sure why she’s all the sudden on my mind so much, but as the case may be she’s occupying quite a bit of space. Maybe it’s because therapy has been so inconsistent with L in the last couple weeks. Maybe it’s just because no matter how much time passes, I’m never going to outrun the impact she has on me.

For example, on Friday when Dr. N and I were talking about the to-be-explained situation, she wondered aloud whether it might be time to accept that the era of my life with J is permanently over, instead of on a who-knows-how-long temporary hiatus. I immediately broke into tears, overcome by the possibility of something that I’ve never been able to admit to myself might be true. Talking about her is still the easiest way to make me cry.

But anyway, before I’m off on a tangent, let’s remember the real point of this. Don’t google your damn therapist. Why, you ask? Well, you never know what you might find. And if you aren’t prepared, it may knock you off your feet.

On Wednesday night, something struck me that made me decide to do the exact thing I’m cautioning against. I was thinking about her and every once in awhile when I do, I’ll look her up just as this reminder that she’s out there. I’m usually not looking for any more than that. Like I’m not trying to track her down or anything. It’s just seeing her name pop up, usually attached to her previous practice address, that comforts me.

In the past, maybe five or six sites would fall in line, all with that address, her name, credentials, etc. On Wednesday though, suddenly those sites had changed. One or two still had the old address, but a higher number boasted a new address that I’d never seen before in another town.

I didn’t want to think much of it, but a sickening fear snaked through my head. Maybe this wasn’t the same person? Doubtful; her name isn’t super common and the credentials matched. It just didn’t make sense.

Then I saw the page I’d visited often in the past. Mind you, I’m still talking maybe six links down. I wasn’t scrolling for pages. There had always been two reviews of her service on this site: a review from a disgruntled parent of one of her clients and one from me that I’d posted protectively after reading the first rude review. You know, because no one bashes my therapist! That day, there was a newer review from December 2021.

December 2021. As far as I knew, she hadn’t been practicing too far beyond July 2020. When had that changed?

The post was positive, praising her warmth, care, and skill, and it about broke me. She was practicing? Why hadn’t she told me? How could she?

I felt instantly betrayed and abandoned. I just couldn’t configure in my mind how she would have gone back into the field and left me out of the equation. It wasn’t like we hadn’t been in contact. We still email every 2-3 months and in every single email I always tell her that I miss her and our work and that as wonderful as L is, she isn’t J. If she had gone back, she had to know I’d want the opportunity to work with her again.

My mind was racing. Did she not want to work with me anymore? Did she not care for me the way I thought she did? Was everything I felt about our relationship being special a lie?

For most people, this type of knowledge would not send them reeling. But when you have BPD with co-occuring attachment issues and your therapist is the first person who unconditionally accepted you without any form of judgment, it matters. It matters a lot. She didn’t just change my life, she saved it, and when she left the field to be a mom it nearly killed me. So to think that there had been an opportunity to be provided care from her that was being denied? Well, that didn’t sit well with me at all.

Needless to say, I barely slept that night.

Thankfully, I had a session with L the next day. By some miracle, I’d avoided bringing her into it the night before through text. Part of me didn’t even want to bring it up in case she already knew or somehow she made it worse. But as always my complete inability to hide my emotions gave me away. When she asked me how my day had gone, despite describing myself as “good” moments earlier, I felt my face fall before I could think to save it.

We talked about the whole story I described and how I’d landed here. She agreed that the evidence did point in the direction that she might be practicing again, but warned me that I had absolutely no context. It would be cruel of me to assign myself shame by making the situation personal. Perhaps J didn’t want to be seen as poaching me from L when we were settled in our relationship? Perhaps she was practicing with a very different type of client? L didn’t know, but she didn’t want me making up worst case scenarios either.

Seeing how damaging this was to my mental status, she encouraged me to reach out to J.

The session further eroded as I realized if J was in fact back, and she did offer for me to work with her again, I’d have a choice to make. J or L. I asked L if she’d make me choose and she said that I couldn’t work with both of them. That just wasn’t how things went. More tears from me.

L said that if it came to it, she was willing to bow out. Then she added that she didn’t want us to stop working together and that she cared about me just as much…I think. I honestly don’t remember as I was mid panic attack. But I remember she tried to reassure me. It fell flat as all I could think was I’m going to lose one of them in this.

I’ve always known that I might end up in a spot where I do have to choose. At first, I would have picked J without question. But after L and I have worked so hard to build the solid foundation we have, would I make sense to leave that behind? As much as I loved J, we had our stuff too and she seemed more easily rattled by me than L, who doesn’t seem to be bothered by very much. Would I be choosing J based on feelings when the facts pointed to L as a better match at this point in my treatment?

Too many questions.

Another night and another day went by. I relayed all this to Dr. N, who agreed with L that it made the most sense to reach out directly. J was the only one who could answer my questions and without those answers, I’d be haunted by the unknown. So as soon as I clicked off of my weekly session with Dr. N, I pulled up my email. I wrote the least accusing and judgmental email I could come up with, one that just laid out where I was at and what information was I needed.

I pressed send. Then I sat in silence, in limbo.

I expected from our previous communication to have to wait days for a response and I didn’t know how I was going to manage it. God Bless J, because she must have gotten my email right away and known how much I was struggling. She answered me within twenty minutes.

So in case you’re curious, she is not currently practicing. Or at least, she’s not practicing to an extent that we could continue our work together. She didn’t address the review I found and I didn’t probe further, so I guess I won’t know about that any time soon. Perhaps one day. All I know are her words that nothing’s changed.

Oh, she’s also pregnant again, so even if she was practicing that would come to an end when she’s due in July.

I’m so grateful she didn’t leave me in limbo long. And she did tell me that if she were to go back in the field, she would tell me, so there’s that. I’m happy for her because I know she wants a big family. And I’m pleased for me that I don’t have to worry about choosing. L just means too much to me to think that I would upset the good thing we have going right now.

While I’m happy I got my answers, I know that I could have avoided all this by just not googling my damn therapist. Maybe I’ll learn my lesson and at least stay off the internet as related to L before I find out something I don’t want to or am not supposed to know.

I need something different

Dear L,

I’ve been putting off writing this for awhile, just like I’ve been putting off talking about it, because I really didn’t believe that doing so would make any bit of difference.

You’d probably think differently, or at least you’d probably want the chance to try for a better outcome than I’ve dreamed up.

I wonder: do you think differently? Have you even noticed me putting up walls and purposely holding back from making any real connection?

It’s hard to imagine you haven’t noticed, because we both know that try as I might it’s pretty challenging for me to pretend nothing is wrong when I’m feeling otherwise. But if you’ve noticed, you haven’t said anything at all.

Maybe you really haven’t noticed though, because I find it hard to believe you’d recognize a blip on the radar of our relationship and not call any attention to it. It’s not in line with the person I know you to be or the experiences I’ve had in the past.

I don’t know and there’s only one way to find out, but I’m scared.

I guess I should start by saying that I’m angry with you. Not a white hot rage kind of anger, just the kind that’s been simmering just under the surface. The kind that slowly creeps up on you and then is just suddenly there.

First, let’s talk about the things that can’t be changed. The past-focused anger. You might be expecting it, but I don’t think I ever resolved the feelings I had around you missing session because of the baby and then going away on vacation. I know it’s within your right to do those things. I know I’m supposed to just accept that you being a mom means these things are going to happen sometimes.

Maybe I haven’t even accepted the idea of you as a mom. It reminds me of something J said once right before we terminated. She called her practice her “first baby.” In a way that didn’t seem right because why would you abandon your baby as she did. Still, I got the point she was trying to make. That was the first thing she put her heart and soul into nurturing, her first calling. And so now when I think about you, I apply the same line of thinking. Your career was your first calling too, but now you have another one that takes priority.

I know you didn’t make the same choices J did, I know you “want to have it all.” You’re doing your best to manage both, and sometimes it’s like nothing has changed, but overall it’s still hard for me because I know who you’d choose if it came down to it, and I know that’s not me. I’m not saying it should be either, but the constant remembering of that is truly a gut punch each time.

God, I hate that I sometimes resent your daughter for existing. For being more important. That makes me sound like a child.

So yeah, I’m still angry about that I guess. That’s not the only reason though, and it’s taken a lot of parsing out for me to really understand where the rest of this anger is coming from.

I need you to be really careful in how you respond to all this, because as much as I may be saying it, there’s still a huge part of me that’s fighting reality. A step in the wrong direction will likely lead to me feeling rejected, even for something as simple as you jumping on board and agreeing with me. I know that doesn’t leave you with many options, but this is the whole reason I’ve been keeping me mouth shut in the first place.

The truth is, I think the lines have blurred in our relationship. Where there was once an obvious line in the sand it’s smudged now and that’s making a lot of things unclear. We’re both to blame for this. We’re obviously comfortable with each other and we both let the boundaries loosen. I visited your instagram before it was private, I bought you that sign with a quote I knew you loved for no other reason than I thought you would like it, and then I bought the baby an outfit when I couldn’t figure out any other way to use my expiring reward points. Yes, I did all of that, but you let me. If you felt unsure about it, you never voiced it.

And now, I think I’m a little bit angry that you let me go so far. I think I’m angry at the fact that it’s coloring my perceptions of our relationship, that it let me feel closer to you than is typical.

I realize that things are muddier than they were when I was texting you on the regular for reassurance. Then, there was still the obvious power imbalance at play, still a concrete sense of what was okay and what would mean going too far.

Now? It’s not so simple and for that reason I’ve stopped texting you at all, feeling like any form of contact is asking for too much after overstepping the way I have.

I’ve also stopped letting myself connect in session, because it’s too confusing not to know where things stand. Rationally, I know my role and I know yours, but we went into unfamiliar territory to the point that now I’m not sure what’s okay and what’s not.

And I’m mad, because this doesn’t feel safe.

When I think about it, one huge difference between you and J is that she always very much limited her self-disclosure. It made it hard in some ways, but in others I knew it was important for the stability of our relationship. I never questioned where I stood.

I know you like to be human and let pieces of yourself out and I’m okay with that in small increments. I am. I just don’t think I’m okay with the level of sharing that we had progressed to.

I have to say it: We’re not friends. We can’t be, not if we want to maintain the sanctity of our actual therapist-client relationship. And it sucks, because I think you would be a pretty killer friend. But both fortunately and unfortunately for me, that won’t happen. Fortunately, because I wouldn’t change the therapist-client relationship we do have. Unfortunately, because you matter to me and it’s hard to admit the truth when it stings like this.

That’s a huge piece of this too, but again it’s not the only other contributing factor. Something else that’s related to me holding back is that lately, I don’t feel like you’ve really been hearing me.

I’m not sure when this started, but I think the most clear point for me is somewhere in the period of when I came back after the session where I cried to you about wanting to die and feeling so low.

You were excited, then, as you often are, for how quickly I turned things around. But you forgot, in your excitement, that me making good choices didn’t just eliminate all the dark feelings. The suicidal thoughts. They’re still there, just as intense, and right now I feel so alone in them.

You’ve asked about them here and there and I’ve been honest, even in a that nonchalant way I’ve been trying to pull off. I act like it’s just a fact of life and you go along with it. You don’t dig any deeper. Maybe that’s my fault, because I should put emphasis on what I want to talk about. I just don’t feel like it is even helpful to do that because all you focus on is the positive.

Lately, you say to me “this is great” about a lot of things and I don’t know how to tell you that it’s not great. I know you’re trying to appreciate my progress and yes sometimes that’s absolutely what I need. I know you see growth where I see dirt. But I feel like you’re clinging to the positive above all else and missing the fact that I’m still really in a lot of pain.

That makes me wonder: am I not supposed to talk about it anymore? If you’re just going to try to turn it around and make it positive, why would I bother?

I could go on, but I think I’ve reached my full point for this letter. I’ve said as much as I can bear to say right now and I’m trying to live with the fact that this isn’t a perfect recounting of all my troubles. It’s incomplete and that has to be okay.

We’ve always worked everything out and you’ve never given me a reason to believe that wouldn’t be the case here. I guess I’m just so unsure of what I even really want from you in some ways, that it feels like this will never get better.

I get scared you’ll think we’re no longer compatible to work together because of the things I said, the way I feel. It’s silly, but is it really?

Our relationship is so significant to me, I want to work through this. I want to go back to real laughing instead of the fake giggles I do to distract you from my discomfort. I want to stop having to control my face all the time and focus so hard on making good eye contact. I want to stop pretending.

Please help me do that, please help me alleviate this anger and whatever is hiding beneath it, because I don’t know any other way forward.

The L Word

For the first time in a long time yesterday, I cried in session about missing J.

When I say cried, I mean full on crocodile tears, runny nose, and bright red eyes. I was fully in my emotion and it was taking charge of me.

It started off actually talking about some of the difficulty I’d had with seeing L’s baby during my session last week. I was reluctant to bring this topic to the table, but L encouraged me to try. Somewhere along the line, we got from feeling like my time with L was interrupted to how much I really miss J.

I think it went like this: Having L cancel our session on Thursday, despite the justifiable reason, threw me for a bit of a loop. When I thought about her canceling because of the baby, it made me wonder if she’d be cancelling often for this reason. That made me think about J, who cancelled everything indefinitely to be a mom to her kid(s). So there I sat thinking: What if L finds figuring out this whole process to be a pain? What if she decides she’s done trying to fit in work?

It’s not the most rational thought, because I’ve been assured otherwise multiple times, but it’s one that nagged me nonetheless. I even ended up texting L on Friday night asking just that: “Are you leaving me?” Not even an hour later, she replied with a “No ma’am!” I wish that had helped more.

Anyway, I guess one situation triggered awful memories of the other. Being without L in that uncomfortable way brought up the reminder of J’s absence and how painful it was to sit with and then to discover she wasn’t coming back. And that just reminded me that I miss her.

My thoughts don’t go to J as much as they used to, but I’m still drawn that way more often than I’d care to admit. Most often, I’ll think about her while I’m out walking, when my mind is given free reign to run around like a child at recess. These walks are where I relive all my worst moments too, so J is a comforting thought I can use to push the bad memories away. Mostly, I think of pivotal moments in our relationship, I think of what she might say to me now, I think of what it might be like to be in her presence again if even for five minutes.

Like true grief and loss, the longer time elapses between last July and now, the more I begin to forget the little things she would say or certain mannerisms. It’s so hard, because it’s not like she’s really gone. She’s out there, living a life, and it’s not one that includes me.

Thankfully, I’m not 100% cut out of that life, and emails are still allowed. Still, the invisible but obvious boundaries surrounding that (not emailing too often, not sharing too much, not asking too many questions) keep it from measuring up sometimes. For example, I really wanted to email her yesterday after session but it hasn’t even been two months yet. I usually aim for three or four in between emails; anything more seems like it would be bothersome.

I can’t believe it’s been almost a year now since our final session. I remember back before she was ever pregnant, when there was no immediate leave on the horizon, but I used to agonize over the idea of being without her all the same. I used to think that some day there would come a time where she wasn’t in my life and I wouldn’t be able to picture it. I’d have to shut down because wondering how I would approach that situation brought on too much distress. It was that foreign and that painful of an idea for me.

And then it happened. I had no choice and here we are. L spent so much time right in the first months after trying to convince me of my resiliency. She pointed out how me living and thriving even within my pain was a sign of what I could handle. If this really was my worst fear coming true, then I was surviving it.

So I survived it. I continue to survive it. I even told L last week that sometimes I’m grateful things worked out the way that they did, that I think there was a reason J exited my life when she did, to make room for L. There was a time I’d never have been able to say that, let alone believe it. But it’s true; I do think sometimes of J’s shortcomings. It’s amazing I can admit she had them with the way I revere her now, but I haven’t totally forgotten some of the pain of feeling not quite understood, like there was a hole that she couldn’t seem to fill. I remember that frustration and how it sometimes escalated into intense anger.

I’ve told L this many times before, and probably posted it here, but I’ve never once been angry with her to the same degree that I was with J. If you were reading back when L first entered my life, to help me deal with my J drama in the first place, you know I was deeply entrenched in what felt like an unwinnable war with her. My anger skyrocketed a little more each session as I felt our relationship fray further and further at the edges. I was highly considering giving up on my relationship with J when I sought out L.

She was the person who helped me see reason. She was the reason I stayed in the fight that ultimately brought J and I closer than we’d been previously. And maybe for that reason, or for the fact that she confronted the attachment stuff with such understanding, my anger never got there with her. Sure, I’ve been angry, but never the slam-the-door-scream-in-my-car kind of anger that would leave me equal parts wanting to see J and also never see her again.

L has provided her own reasons why she thinks the situation is different. I can’t remember all of them, but I know one musing of hers was that I went through some of the most significant changes with J. Going from no therapy to therapy is stark contrast and that’s an intense experience. J did lay all the groundwork for a lot of my initial insights about my patterns of thinking and behavior. Maybe L’s right, but I happen to believe some of what I’ve gone through and am going through with L has been even more transformative. Yet, no scathing anger. Just trust, connection, and the occasional frustration that is always talked out within the next session.

I certainly don’t believe it’s because I cared more for one than the other. I definitely used to put J on that pedestal, to say that no person could ever compare. Even now, as I’ve told J through email, there is something that makes our relationship not able to be duplicated or replaced. However, as L and I have built a strong relationship, she’s risen to quite the same level.

Once, D asked me what I would do if I had to make a choice between then. It had been something I’d struggled with before I knew J wasn’t coming back: how did I go back to J when things with L were so solid? I remember consistently trying to convince L it would be a good idea to see both of them, because I wasn’t ready to let her go. When D asked, I told her that I’d probably go back to J, but now I’m not so sure. She could definitely provide me with a lot and there’s so much comfort in just talking to her, but the value of L’s expertise is also unmatched.

If I ever have to confront that problem, it’s likely years (and years) down the road, so I shouldn’t worry about it at all. I mostly don’t, until J comes to the forefront of my mind again and I start imagining what it would be like to be back with her. When I say these things in email (about what it might have been like if she had returned), she doesn’t acknowledge it, which can be hard. But I think maybe sometimes, as happy as I imagine she is, maybe she thinks about it too.

The point is: L did what I didn’t think anyone could do. She taught me that I could form a solid relationship with someone else that really mattered. Of course, now there’s literally no other person I’m interested in doing that with that isn’t her. So that backfired a little bit.

Before L came back from leave, we talked (or rather she gave me absolution) via email about me not going back to her and instead sticking with D. As I told L when she did come back, there was never a snowball’s chance in hell that I’d pick anyone else but her. It wasn’t like the J vs. L dilemma; this one wasn’t even close.

And so all this crying about J yesterday and missing her ended with me telling L something I’d been wanting to say for weeks. Something I didn’t dare utter aloud because I didn’t want her to think I was weird or creepy or stupid, but a feeling that had been growing each week she matched all of my feelings with her gentle, yet oh so direct, compassion.

It began with J, which felt much safer to say since she wasn’t in the room. I loved her, I cried, looking L right in the eye.

I know, she said. It makes a lot of sense. Then a little bit more about how our relationship naturally grew to love and how the therapeutic relationship wouldn’t be quite as powerful without that. Always normalizing for me.

I didn’t say what I really wanted to say in that moment and we talked a little bit more. Then I must have done something with my face: closed my eyes, or sighed, or shook my head or maybe all of those things. But L looked at me pointedly and asked what I had just shut myself down from saying. Even though I’m pretty sure she knew exactly where we were headed.

I paused, looked away, was quiet a few more moments but I finally said it. I love you too.

I never ever dared to say that in person to J, although . I remember once, earlier in our relationship, I said I hate you jokingly in response to something she’d done or said. Then I of course took it back, told her I was kidding. I said something like It’s the opposite. I mean I don’t love you, but I like you a lot.

Yeah, J agreed then, it would be weird if you said loved me.

Reflecting on that, no wonder if I was so scared to say it to L. I’d been set up to believe I’d been labeled as creepy client years ago, even though I’m sure J’s intention wasn’t to shame me.

There, L said immediately, not deterred or grossed out, you said it. It’s out.

She didn’t say it back, and I think part of what took me so long to admit it was preparing for that exact response, but her eyes said a lot. Her words didn’t have be explicit for me to know that she cares deeply, and maybe even loves me too. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

I don’t know how a post that was initially meant to be about J morphed into one about L, but isn’t that just symbolic of my entire existence with them?

Today I have a vulnerability hangover. It started last night with another text to L: Are we okay? I feel like I ruined everything. Her response: We are safe! You didn’t ruin a dang thing.

As I sit here, wanting to curl up in shame for all the feelings that I’ve had about my therapists, the intense desire to be with them and talk to them and receive their care, I try to hold on to that. But mostly I’m just wondering if L is lying for my benefit and it would have been better to have left things unsaid.

Feelings of Rejection

L will be back from her leave one week from tomorrow. It’s a strange feeling to anticipate her return, because I was robbed of this experience with J. So now any little bits of excitement are often squashed by worry that this won’t work out.

We’ve emailed back and forth twice. She tells me she is pumped for her return and that we’ll reinvent our relationship in the best way. D assures me that she’s heard L mention to colleagues how excited she is to be back at work. So it would seem like I should believe her. And I guess in a sense, I do.

What I’m now worried most about is that she’s going to disappear pretty much all over again. Oh, and I’m feeling super rejected over a choice that probably had nothing to do with me.

If you were reading then, you know that I found out about L’s pregnancy through her instagram. She had decided not to make it private at the time, for whatever reason. I hid my knowledge about that for over a month before the news about J leaving forced me to reveal the truth.

I thought she’d be angry or frustrated with me, I thought I’d broken a boundary, but L seemed hardly phased. I think this is one of the things I love about her, that she is not rattled by pretty much anything I throw at her. In fact, she barely seemed to mind and as her maternity leave crept towards us, she reminded me that I could creep on her instagram while she was gone to see pictures of the baby.

So that was fine and that’s how it went. L doesn’t update her page all the time, but usually once a week or so there would be a new picture. I found having this privilege to be such a relief. It was connecting, it made me feel like she wasn’t quite so far away.

And then all the sudden last week, I couldn’t see her page anymore. She’d made it private.

I was thrown off by this because I really didn’t see it coming. I think part of me thought that if she ever was going to do that, I’d get notice from her beforehand because she knew I was looking.

In the moment, I felt stung. I really absorbed that information as though I had been personally rejected, the weight of the boundary being placed nearly knocking me over. I’d had this thing available to me and now it was not.

It wasn’t that I felt like I needed to know every minute detail of her life, but she’s always been pretty open with self-disclosure. She’ll tell me a story about her husband or her pet, and she never really seemed to care that I could see her social media because she described it as showing that she’s human. It was a nice bonus. So what suddenly changed?

Of course, the most anxious piece of my brain supplied that she’s pregnant again. I had asked her a few months ago to make sure that when she announces it the second time, please let me know before she puts it on social media. So maybe this was her way of concealing the truth until she can tell me in person. Her daughter is so young, but it’s not impossible.

And holy crap, if that’s true I’m going to lose it.

She did say in her last email that we have “all the time in the world” now to recreate our relationship, but that was days before her page went dark, so who really knows.

The other part of me thinks that maybe she was trying to protect her daughter, which makes a lot of a sense but still hurts. D doesn’t get this. Not that I’ve told her about the whole instagram thing because she’s L’s boss and I don’t want to somehow get her in trouble, but she definitely always comes back to the fact that L is a mom now and the kids come first.

That is always painful to try to accept. Again, it’s not that I want to come first in L’s life, it’s not like I think I deserve to, but there is something to be said about the fact that her position in her practice was top priority to her and now it won’t be. It opens doors for cancelled sessions and other changes because life revolves around this new little human and it’s a hard truth for me to swallow.

When I mentioned the possibility of cancellations, D told me I could be right, and I think because she’s a mom and maybe because she doesn’t get the whole attachment thing, she didn’t realize how much that hurt to hear. She expects me to just accept it, whereas I have to remind her two things can be true: I can understand why but still feel how difficult it is to suddenly drop in the ranks.

I guess I feel it so strongly because when J had her son I was literally left behind when there wasn’t enough space for both of us in her life, and this recreates that feeling for me.

Maybe all of this will barely even matter once we start seeing each other again. Maybe L’s right and our dynamic will be different in the best possible way, but right now all I see are the question marks. All I know is that it WILL be different, despite that I don’t know how.

I’m so sick of these mixed feelings.

Ups and downs

I thought that I was making really good progress in my journey forward without J. Nothing groundbreaking, but things were slowly easing to the point that I wasn’t completely weighted down by the heaviness of her absence.

It turns out though, the thing that was supposed to bring me joy ended up setting grief back to day one.

Let’s go back a little bit. Because first I want to talk about L and how things are going there. She and I have gradually been building a solid foundation, both putting in a lot of work and effort to make our relationship super strong. It’s gratifying in a way to see that pay off.

Twice this month, I’ve showered L in baby gifts. First, I gave her the pile of baby clothes I had bought her that filled a large bag to the brim. The significance of the clothes was that there was one outfit for each day that I texted her from November through now. That was a big undertaking, and a lot of money, but it was also how I found my feelings of joy surrounding the impending birth of her daughter. The money didn’t matter in the end, it was about the process of slowly adding to my collection over a period of a couple months.

When I gave her this gift, she told me it meant the world to her. You mean the world to me, I replied, my eyes glazing over with tears. As if that could even convey how important she is to me for the role she’s taken on. She looked very touched.

About a week and a half later, L celebrated her birthday. I had already decided that this would be the time I’d gift her the two blankets and two loveys that I’d crocheted for her. Yes, two, because the first blanket I made didn’t meet my standards, so of course I had to immediately get to work on another.

That session, I was drowning in a lot of the shame I had about my suicidal thoughts and feelings. I didn’t want to talk about it, but was pressed to, and eventually I admitted to her that I’m still not positive she believes me when I talk about wanting to kill myself.

I don’t really know why I feel this way. She’s never done or said anything even remotely dismissive. I wonder if it’s because she’s never had any outward reaction, never shown me the way it affects her when I say these things, the same way that I could easily read emotions in J. She remained calm too, but her fear and concern were always palpable, whereas I can glean nothing from L.

And as I’ve said before, I’m not trying to scare her, but talking about it scares me so I guess sometimes I wonder how she can hear all this and still remain completely open and accepting without any bit of reaction.

L reassured me, again, that she does believe me. She’s just “meeting me where I’m at”, which is just about her favorite expression in the world next to “one day at a time.”

As the session drew to a close, I felt anxious, part of me trying to close myself off from her while the other part tried so hard to hang on. It’s hard not to know what our therapists are thinking, and I often take her ambiguous responses to mean she’s upset or angry with me. Maybe because I think she should be.

I’m going to think that you’re mad at me, I told her, looking forward in time to what it might feel like when I was alone again with the memories of session spinning through my mind. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Why? she wanted to know

Because I said I didn’t think you believed me, I said as if the answer was so obvious. I didn’t want her to think that I was questioning her or making some kind of an accusation, even though I guess I kind of was.

L wasn’t fazed by this. She’s never fazed by anything, a fact that makes her so different than J. She just smiled, as she often does, with a simple solution. Well then you’ll text me and I’ll assure you otherwise and we’ll be set.

We parted ways. Then not long after I got home, I got a text message from her. “I just wanted to let you know that I consider being your therapist a huge honor, privilege, and blessing.”

This came so out of the blue and alerted all the sentimentality in me. J had said things similar to that before (e.g. I’m very glad we met or I think the world of you), but this seemed to be taking it a step beyond even that. I was overwhelmingly touched, the same as L had been by her gifts, and really grateful just to have her.

I think it was for reasons like this that I was starting to move away from some of the grief I had about J. Granted, it hadn’t all vanished, but it was more manageable and wasn’t eating me up in the same way. I knew that I had L, that felt comforting enough, and it was the fact I’d retreat back to when the pain came up about J.

Then on Tuesday, I did something that was a totally new step but also something I was greatly looking forward to. I sent J the first email.

I didn’t even know if she’d respond at all. She’d said she probably would, and that made me feel good, but I didn’t want to assume anything. I knew that would be the immediate path to devastation on my part. I’d had the letter typed up for weeks before sending it, but September 1 felt like the right time.

She didn’t respond right away. I was frequently checking my email in the hopes that she would. Then on Thursday while I was out walking with a friend, I looked at my phone and there it was. An email from her.

That was wonderful timing of course, because it was exactly when I couldn’t read the email. I gripped my phone tightly, fought through the feelings of anticipation, and finished my walk. Once my friend had gotten in to her car, I knew I was free to read it.

I don’t even think I read the thing closely until maybe the fourth or fifth try. I was so anxious to absorb her words that I really just zipped right through it trying to capture everything at once.

In the end, what I want to say most about this email is that it outperformed all my expectations. I expected a few sentences, a few validating statements, and then a nice tying up statement. What I instead received was FIVE PARAGRAPHS addressing almost every subject that I’d brought up to her in my equally long email.

She celebrated my self-harm free streak with me (18 months on the 20th!), she told me about how her son was doing, she reassured me about the upcoming school year and L’s impending leave, and she shared her gratitude that my relationships with L and Dr. N have developed into what they are. All in one email.

You’d think this would be everything I ever wanted from J, and in a way it was. It was so, so endearing to be able to sense the care and compassion in her words. No one would take the time to write something like that if they didn’t care about the person they were writing it for. Instead, while I was so happy to hear from her, I was also overcome immediately with grief.

L described it as “I took a baseball to the face” and that seemed to be a pretty good representation of how I was feeling. Everything was feeling fine and then BAM – feelings. I certainly wasn’t expecting to react this way, but my brain had other plans for me. I crumpled down to the floor and sat there, on the verge of tears, unsure what to do next.

The only thing that I could do was distract, so I went and read a book that I was already halfway through. It was the simplest task I could think of that would transport me away from my current batch of feelings. This was where I stayed for over an hour, just biding my time until I got to go see L. Thank god J answered me on a night I already had therapy.

I was desperate to see L because with J’s email, all the old wounds were reopened. They felt fresh, like she had just left me all over again. It was like I’d had a real taste of being with her again, but ultimately it came up short. I felt that vying for my old therapist, the intense need to see her and be with her, despite knowing that this very well couldn’t happen. So I wanted L instead, because I wanted to remember how familiar and safe she is right now to me; the torch has been passed and I’ve adjusted to that as much as possible.

I knew what was awaiting me at therapy and I broached the subject pretty quickly because there was no way I was going to be able to hide it. The feelings had bubbled to the surface as anger in the time between me reading the email and plopping down on her couch. It confused me.

So when L asked me to “update her” as she always does, that’s where I started. I’m angry I think (anger is so difficult for me to identify in myself sometimes) and I’m not sure why.

I’m still not totally sure why. I guess it’s anger at a situation I can’t control. It’s anger at being left behind. It’s anger at her life seeming so perfect when mine continues to be a struggle. But regardless of that anger, what came out during my session was lots of tears. I cried and lamented the loss.

And all the while L sat with me and assured me my feelings were completely normal and even expected given the circumstances. She passed me tissues, made me laugh, and pushed me forward through the pain. I survived the night even as my attachment disorder threatened to tear me in two.

It kills me that the next time I decide to email J (every 2-3 months is what I agreed on), L won’t be here either. So not only will I have to process the email, I’ll have to process the fact that the person I want to process it with isn’t there.

I’m super happy for L and all, but the timing of this maternity leave couldn’t really feel any worse.