Posted by crushedout on November 29, 2004, at 21:36:45
Hi all. I'm back from vacation. As those of you have followed my story know, my T and I had an appointment for tomorrow. (I had halfhearted tried to fire her but she emailed me back saying she'd keep the time open for me in the hopes I'd come in.)
So, I saw T2 today and immediately after the session (well, as soon as I got home), I called the old T to tell her I wouldn't be coming to see her this week. And that I'd give her some kind of definite decision about next week and ongoing ASAP and no later than next Monday. I said she could call me if that was a problem.
She called a few hours later. She said she was exercising her option [my words] to call if she had a problem. First, she pointed out that I called her within the 24-hour period (I was ten minutes late! and it wasn't even a real appointment. I told her I probably wasn't coming in and *she* was the one who decided she wanted to hold it open for me) and that secondly she wanted me to come in and talk to her about what was going on.
I said I didn't know if that was a good idea and I had to think about it but that I doubted I was going to do that. She said asked me what I was afraid would happen. I stammered, said it was complicated, and then said something lame about how it would cause me a lot of turmoil. She said she could see why I would want to avoid turmoil but that she hoped I would withstand some turmoil in order to "honor the connection" we had.
I told her I thought that was too much guilt to lay on me. She said that it wasn't about a guilt trip -- it was for my benefit, to honor the connection that *I* had with her. But that also she had to, in honesty, admit that she wanted me to come in, that she hoped I would.
I told her I would come in if I thought it would be helpful to me, but since I was the one paying for it, I didn't think it was right for me to come in as a favor to her. She agreed that wouldn't be a good reason to come in.
We left it that I would think it over and let her know. When she hung up, it felt like she was pretty angry at me.
I guess my plan is to email her today or tomorrow and very briefly tell her that she should not hold any more sessions for me, and that I'll let her know if, in the future, I decide I'd like to see her for a last session (or two or whatever).
I'm tempted to also respond a bit to the "respect our connection" stuff (because it seems to clearly show that she does not approve of the way I'm doing this, which is not an incentive for me to see her again) but I'm afraid I would just be opening up a can of worms. I'm also considering apologizing to because I feel guilty just leaving her without an explanation and/or telling her that I'll write her a letter if nothing else, explaining why this happened. But do I really owe her anything like that? I don't know.
The truth is that although the phone call left me feeling hurt (she hung up in a sort of nasty way), I also liked it a lot. It was like a shot of heroin in the arm for a junkie who hasn't gotten high in a month. I felt a kind of warm, familiar rush.
I guess that's telling.
poster:crushedout
thread:422054
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041123/msgs/422054.html